By Cydney Posner

The Washington Post reported on the increase in cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The article reports that, over the "past three years, federal prosecutors have more than doubled the number of criminal cases focused on FCPA violations, according to Justice Department statistics….Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who leads the criminal division, recently told reporters that the department had more than 140 open investigations centering on foreign bribes. In a November speech, Breuer said prosecutors would be taking a closer look at foreign sales by pharmaceutical companies after years of focusing on the defense and oil services industries. He also vowed to continue to charge individual business executives with crimes related to the FCPA."

Many settlements under the FCPA involve hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in penalties: "The BAE settlement [$400 million], which has yet to secure judicial approval, followed big-ticket corporate agreements last year, including $1.6 billion in global penalties in a long-running case against German conglomerate Siemens and $579 million in penalties to resolve an investigation of Halliburton KBR."

 

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