Over the years, there has been a siren’s call for the addition of a compliance defense to the FCPA. This call has argued that if a company had a compliance in place, it should receive a free pass for FCPA violations engaged in by the company’s employees. Just as the sirens who tempted Ulysses were illusionary beauties, however, the arguments for a compliance defense were ill-advised, unworkable in practice, and not based on any data to support their advocates’ claim that they would actually lessen the global scourge against bribery and corruption.
