Federal prosecutors have agreed to end the deferred-prosecution agreement of Pride International one year early because of its robust anti-bribery compliance program, believed to be the first time ever that the Justice Department has made such a dramatic gesture for past violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
In motions filed in U.S. district court in Houston Nov. 2, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the DPA that they had filed against Pride two years ago this month. At the time, Pride was facing FCPA charges for paying $2 million in bribes in the early 2000s to foreign officials in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. And as usual for FCPA settlements, Pride agreed to a three-year DPA, which would have expired in November 2013.
