One of the more useless annual exercises that folks go through is to detail out the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement statistics each year and use that information to discuss whether the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are prosecuting less or more FCPA cases … as if such parsing had any meaning. Last year was perceived to be a down year, as there were “only” 10 Justice Department and 10 SEC FCPA enforcement actions. The problem with that data point has been borne out over the past 3 months, amid a plethora of new cases announced.
Indeed, February 1 to March 3 was one of the most prolific periods ever seen for FCPA enforcements. In this span of just 31 days, the SEC took the following enforcement actions: (1) against SAP for its bribery schemes in Panama to obtain long-term contracts; (2) against SciClone Pharmaceuticals around its conduct in China; (3) an individual enforcement action against the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LAN Airlines for paying bribes during a labor dispute in Argentina some 10 years ago; (4) another individual enforcement action against a former employee of PTC China, in conjunction with the company’s resolution of its SEC and Justice Department enforcement action; (5) an action against Nordion (Canada) for the illegal activities of its agent in Russia; (6) an individual action involving the Russian agent of Nordion, Mikhail Gourevitch, for his corrupt activities in Russia; (7) Qualcomm for its hiring of family members of employees of Chinese state-owned enterprises, which was done to obtain or retain business with those very same state-owned enterprises.
