FCPA Digest - Recent Trends And Patterns In The Enforcement Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Thus far, although the number of enforcement actions has been lower than we've seen in prior years, 2014 has seen a trio of significant corporate prosecutions and several new individual cases. Among the highlights from 2014 are:

§ Average corporate fines and penalties of $193.3 million, significantly above the average of previous years due to three enforcement actions including large sanctions; § The DOJ's use of plea agreements and the SEC's use of administrative proceedings has increased over the use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements; § The Eleventh Circuit issued its opinion in United States v. Esquenazi, largely supporting the government's view regarding the definition of "instrumentality" under the FCPA; § Recent paper victories by the SEC could be perceived as setbacks in the Commission's actions against individual defendants; and § The SEC has continued its practice of pursuing its theory of strict liability against a parent corporation for the acts of its corporate subsidiaries. Enforcement Actions and Strategies

Statistics

Before getting into a substantive discussion, we provide some statistical context for the recent 2014 cases.

We count all actions against a corporate "family" as one action. Thus, if the DOJ charges a subsidiary and the SEC charges a parent issuer, that counts as one action. In addition, we count as a "case" both filed enforcement actions (pleas, deferred prosecution agreements, and complaints) and other resolutions such as non-prosecution agreements that include enforcement-type aspects, such as financial penalties, tolling of the statute of limitations, and compliance requirements. Applying those criteria, the government has brought three enforcement actions against corporations thus far in 2014: Alcoa, Marubeni, and Hewlett-Packard. Also, while court documents have not yet been made public, the beauty products company Avon announced in May 2014 that it has settled an FCPA enforcement action brought by the DOJ and SEC. 2

While we know that the DOJ and SEC are actively pursuing a variety of ongoing FCPA investigations, 2014 has been slow in terms of actual enforcement actions, especially compared with some previous years. While we have yet to see what enforcement agencies will do in the latter half of 2014, beginning in 2010 there has been a gradual decrease in the annual number of corporate FCPA cases. Enforcement agencies have continually denied that their enforcement of the FCPA is waning and, given the number of known investigations currently taking place, the DOJ and SEC may be allocating more resources towards these investigations than to bringing prosecutions. However, as discussed below, the lower number of enforcement actions should be weighed against the higher than normal corporate penalties. This suggests that the DOJ and SEC may be pursuing a strategy of devoting more resources to fewer, high-value cases, rather than casting a wide net and pursuing a higher volume of low-value enforcement actions.

By contrast, the DOJ and SEC were far more active in filing charges against individual defendants. Whether separately or jointly, the DOJ and SEC charged eleven different individuals with FCPA-related offenses (although the eleventh individual, R.V.P. Ramachandra Rao from United States v. Firtash, was named in the enforcement action but not charged with violating the FCPA). This statistic suggests a continued, if not increased, focus on the prosecution of individuals. Indeed, in a recent speech from May 19, 2014, SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White commented on the SEC's continued focus on individual prosecutions, stating expressly "I want to dispel any notion that the SEC does not charge individuals often enough or that we settle with entities in lieu of charging individuals. The simple fact is that the SEC charges individuals in most of our cases, which is as it should be."

Each of these prosecutions against individual defendants can be grouped into three separate cases: United States v. Chinea, United States v. Firtash, and the Petro-Tiger Defendants (where each defendant was charged separately for his involvement in the same bribery scheme in United States v. Hammarskjold, United States v. Weisman, and United States v. Sigelman). The two defendants in United States v. Chinea, Benito Chinea and Joseph Demeneses, were charged in conjunction with an ongoing enforcement action involving the New York broker-dealer, Direct Access Partners, which has already snagged guilty pleas from four individuals in United States v. Clarke and United States v. Lujan, and where the SEC continues to pursue a variety of securities fraud claims in SEC v. Clarke. In that case, the DOJ and SEC charged employees of Direct Access Partners with violating the FCPA and U.S. securities laws, for bribing officials at Venezuela's state economic development bank ("BANDES") to divert business to Direct Access Partners in exchange for kickbacks.

In the cases involving the Petro-Tiger defendants, through indictments that were unsealed in early 2014, Knut Hammarskjold, Gregory Weisman, and Joseph Sigelman, were each separately charged by the DOJ for allegedly bribing Colombian officials in exchange for lucrative oil services contracts. The remaining defendants are each involved in Firtash where the DOJ charged a group of foreign citizens (and one domestic resident of the United States) with conspiracy to violate the FCPA for their involvement in a bribery scandal to acquire mineral licenses in India. Notably, among those charged are one of Ukraine's wealthiest citizens and a sitting member of the Indian parliament.

The corporate penalties thus far in 2014 have been towards the higher side as compared to previous years. Altogether, in the first half of 2014 the government collected $580 million in financial penalties (fines, DPA/NPA penalties, disgorgement, and pre-judgment interest) from corporations. This is noteworthy because, as mentioned above, there have only been three corporate enforcement actions thus far and the aggregate penalties have already exceeded the totals from 2011 and 2012 as well as nearly surpassing that of 2013. Indeed, the total sanction in Alcoa was the fifth largest in history ($384 million) and the $161 million in disgorgement ranks third all time. Although overshadowed by Alcoa, the $88 million sanction in Marubeni and $108 million sanction in HP represent significant penalties in their own right. These higher than normal amounts are likely due to a combination of complex bribery schemes that spanned many years (Alcoa and HP) and the reluctance of the defendant company to cooperate with U.S. enforcement agencies (Marubeni).

On the individuals side, two of the three Petro-Tiger defendants, Hammarskjold and Weisman, pleaded guilty to the DOJ's charges and are awaiting sentencing. The third defendant, Sigelman, the former co-CEO of Petro Tiger Ltd., has pleaded not guilty and elected to put the enforcement agency to its burden. In Chinea, which is part of the Direct Access Partners matter, the DOJ charged the two defendants separately from the proceedings taking place in United States v. Clarke, as all of the defendants in that case have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. The DOJ followed the same process when charging another defendant, Ernesto Lujan, in the same scheme in United States v. Lujan. By contrast, the SEC filed an amended complaint in SEC v. Clarke to include Chinea and Demeneses as its civil enforcement action remains ongoing.

In Firtash, all of the defendants except Dmitry Firtash remain fugitives. Firtash himself was arrested by Austrian authorities in Vienna on March 12, 2014 and, after posting bail of approximately $174 million, will remain in Austria pending extradition proceedings to the United States. The U.S. government has also requested that Indian authorities extradite K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao, though few expect any developments in the near future in those proceedings.

Types of Settlements

Despite the relatively few corporate enforcement actions in 2014, the DOJ and SEC have demonstrated a growing willingness to settle charges without the use of deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements. While we doubt that the DOJ and SEC are moving towards doing away with deferred and non-prosecution agreements altogether, the 2014 cases indicate that the enforcement agency practices may be evolving. This is particularly salient given recent comments by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White, who have hinted (sometimes not so subtly) at an increased priority in obtaining guilty pleas from corporate defendants.

In the case of the DOJ, in each of the three corporate enforcement actions, the Department settled the charges through the use of corporate plea agreements (though we note that the DOJ only used a plea agreement in its case against HP's Russian subsidiary while deferred and non-prosecution agreements were used in the cases against HP's Polish and Mexican subsidiaries respectively). While the distinction between plea agreements, deferred prosecution agreements, and non-prosecution agreements may be minor in substance and consequence, the government's decision to extract a guilty plea is generally understood to be a harsher form of corporate punishment. Under a deferred or non-prosecution agreement, the corporation admits to the facts presented in the government's case, agrees to pay a specific penalty, and agrees to ongoing cooperation with the government; the sole difference from a guilty plea is the fact of the conviction. However, although the collateral consequences of a guilty plea can be severe, including reputational harm, automatic debarment from government procurement, and potential effects in private civil litigation, it is clear that the government is sensitive to these issues and helps corporations avoid the worst of these by structuring the pleas with subsidiaries...