In the FCPA Enforcement webcast yesterday featuring Mark Mendelsohn of the DOJ, Mendelsohn answered several interesting questions about bribes and facilitating payments. Asked whether there was a minimum dollar value that a bribe would have to surpass before the DOJ would prosecute, Mendelsohn said that the DOJ had no such internal threshold, and that each case had to be taken on its own unique facts and circumstances. He explained that a company could reap enormous benefits from the most modest of bribes, and could also get absolutely nothing from a huge bribe.

Mendelsohn was also asked for the DOJ's latest views on "facilitating payments," which are legal under current U.S. law but prohibited under foreign laws such as the newly-enacted Bribery Bill in the UK. He responded that he does not expect the U.S. to repeal the exception under the FCPA for such payments. However, he said, companies are becoming aware that making facilitating payments can create compliance challenges if they are not handled in a consistent fashion globally. Indeed, the compliance challenges posed by such payments are so great that many companies either limit their use to matters receiving approval from senior executives or ban them altogether. Benno Schwarz of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher added that in Germany, the current "best practice" for corporations is to simply ban facilitating payments.