Checklist for Defending FCPA Cases

Most readers of this blog will be familiar with the Lindsey Manufacturing and Esquenazi Rodriguez prosecutions earlier this year. Both sets of individual defendants in these cases were convicted of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). These convictions were what the FCPA Blog called, “quick verdicts”. There was also the first of four groups of defendants tried in the Gun Sting case. In this case the jury deliberated for five days before the judge declared a mistrial. The second group of defendants is currently in trial.

While the Lindsey Manufacturing defendants have yet to be sentenced, Joel Esquenazi was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Carlos Rodriguez received a sentence of seven years. The John O’Shea case, which was set to go to trial this week here in Houston has been delayed until January, 2012 and the individual defendants in the Control Components case, US v. Carson, are scheduled to go to trial next spring. So there is an increase in the number of individuals going to trial and the length of their sentences, with apparently more to come.

An article in the September issue of The Champion, the monthly magazine of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, entitled “You Mean You’re Really Going to Try an FCPA Case?” authors Timothy O’Toole and Andrew Wise provide “a checklist of defenses that should be explored” if an individual finds himself in such a prosecution. They list some of the defenses that might be raised.

The Foreign Official Defense

While the trial judge in the Carson case made a ruling on the defense claim of who might be a foreign official under the FCPA, the authors believe that the factor listed requires a “complicated analysis and are difficult to apply.” Therefore, with “the absence of any appellate precedent, it remains to be seen whether this fact-based analysis will prevail or whether courts will ultimately accept the Carson defendants’ argument that employees of a state-owned business enterprise are not, as a matter of law, ’foreign officials’ under the FCPA.” This would allow such a defense to at least be explored.

Facilitation Payments

This defense might be available where the amount of the alleged bribe made is small and is made to obtain a “routine, ministerial act…” However, the authors note that the line between a bribe and a facilitation payment is a “blurry one” and the Department of Justice (DOJ) considers this exception to “quite narrow.” I would also add that any payment where the facilitation defense is claimed should not be recurring.

Promotional Expenses

This defense might arise where the defendant is alleged to “have paid for travel as well as room and board for foreign governmental officials coming to the United States.” However, the FCPA specifically requires that such payments under the exception to the FCPA might be “reasonable and bona fide”. The authors note that if you took foreign government officials to Disneyland and your employer is not the Walt Disney Corporation that this defense is not available to you by stating, “The more the trip looks like a routine business trip, and the more that the company itself pays for meal and lodging expenses directly, the more viable the defense becomes.” If you have taken the foreign officials to your plant for a visit, have paid for coach travel and have not paid for wives or other family members, this defense might be available. The overall key is reasonableness.

Local Law

The authors note that “The FCPA also contains an affirmative defense for payments to foreign officials that are ’lawful under the written laws and regulations’ of the foreign country.” However, there is no country in the world which allows the bribery of its governmental officials so there has never been a successful invocation of this defense.

Jurisdictional Defenses

The jurisdiction of the FCPA is quite broad reaching any US company, US citizen, anywhere in the world, and any employee of any US company; all for “acts that take place entirely outside of the United States.” The authors note that even with this very wide application, the DOJ interprets this jurisdictional base quite broadly so that “enforcement authorities have based jurisdictional claims entirely on foreign wire transfers denominated in U.S. dollars, under the theory that such transfers proceed through a correspondent bank account in New York.” This may be quite a difficult defense to raise.

Business Nexus Requirement

The authors cite the statute for the basis of criminalization of a payment to a foreign governmental official

(i)                 influencing any act or decision of such foreign official in his official capacity, (ii) inducing such foreign official to do or omit to do any act in violation of the lawful duty of such official, or (iii) securing any improper advantage … in order to assist [the company making the payment] in obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person.

Recognizing that the first two elements are more or less straightforward, the authors argue that the third element is “more difficult to apply both because it often involves administrative action similar to the circumstances in which facilitating payments can be made, and because there is confusion about the meaning of the ’obtaining or retaining business’ requirement.” This is the “business nexus requirement.” The authors believe that the case which has the most thorough discussion of the business nexus requirement, the Kay case, “provides little clarity about the scope of the FCPA’s reach other than to suggest that the government must prove a ‘business nexus’ beyond a reasonable doubt.” Due to this lack of “clarity” the authors posit that the business nexus requirement is one that defendants “should pursue both through pretrial motions and potentially as a fact-based defense before the jury.”

Mens Rea

This requires that any payment made to a foreign governmental official is made knowing “that all or part of the money would be used to bribe” such foreign official. As the FCPA is a criminal statute, the government “must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the required mental state coexisted with the proscribed act, i.e., that the defendant acted with the requisite ‘corrupt intent’ when the alleged misconduct occurred.” However, the government also can invoke the “willful blindness” doctrine which the authors define as a doctrine that “merely allows a finding of ’knowledge’ and ’willfulness’ in a situation where the evidence shows the defendant ’actually knew but he refrained from obtaining final confirmation’”. The authors argue that the mens rea defense is important in defending high level company officials when bribes were paid by a lower level employee or an agent.

Entrapment

This is reserved for cases which might be similar to the Gun Sting case in which the government engages in an undercover sting to obtain indictments for violation of the FCPA. Recognizing that this defense will never be an “easy one” it may be “an easier one to pursue in white collar cases than blue collar cases due to the potential differences with regard to predisposition evidence.” Also, as was found after the mistrial in the first Gun Sting trial, juries may be sympathetic to situations where the government creates an entire scenario which the defendant may have believed such conduct was not illegal. Contrast this with the recent conviction of Raj Rajaratnam where the case involved wiretaps but was not an undercover sting operation with an entire business opportunity created by the government.

I found this article though provoking and quite interesting that it should be in the monthly magazine of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. I do believe that there will be an increase in the prosecution of individuals under the FCPA as there is an outcry for such prosecutions even from Congress.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2011

CCI:Background Facts and Criminal Allegations Part II

CCI: Background and Criminal Allegations-Part II

We are reviewing the background facts and some of the criminal allegations involved in the Control Components Inc., (CCI) matter. Yesterday we reviewed the background facts and guilty pleas to date. Today we will visit criminal allegations brought against the remaining defendants.

As we noted in yesterday’s post on April 8, 2009, six former CCI executives were charged in a 16-count indictment with violating the FCPA and the Travel Act (here). They are: Stuart Carson, CCI’s former chief executive officer, Hong (Rose) Carson, CCI’s former director of sales for China and Taiwan, Paul Cosgrove, CCI’s former director of worldwide sales, David Edmonds, CCI’s former vice president of worldwide customer service, Flavio Ricotti, CCI’s former vice-president and head of sales for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Han Yong Kim, the former president of CCI’s Korean office. Hong (Rose) Carson was also charged with one count of destruction of records in connection with a matter within the jurisdiction of a department or agency of the United States. These defendants are alleged to have made corrupt payments for the purpose of influencing the recipients to award contracts to CCI or skew technical specifications of competitive tenders in CCI’s favor.

I. The Travel Act

One of the unique aspects of this Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prosecution is that in addition to criminal charges based upon the FCPA, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has brought the defendants up on charges under the federal US law commonly known as the “Travel Act” (8 U.S.C. § 1952).

The Travel Act is aimed at prohibiting interstate travel or use of an interstate facility in aid of a racketeering or an unlawful business enterprise. It prohibits the use of communications and travel facilities to commit state or federal crimes, but until now was mostly known for its use in prosecutions for domestic crimes. Its impact to the FCPA is that the Travel Act applies to foreign as well as interstate commerce; it can be also used to prosecute US companies and individuals which engage in bribery and corruption of foreign officials AND commercial bribery and corruption of private foreign citizens.

The Travel Act elements are: (1) use of a facility of foreign or interstate commerce (such as email, telephone, courier, personal travel); (2) with intent to promote, manage, establish, carry on, or distribute the proceeds of; (3) an activity that is a violation of state or federal bribery, extortion or arson laws, or a violation of the federal gambling, narcotics, money-laundering or RICO statutes. This means that, if in promoting or negotiating a private business deal in a foreign country, a sales agent in the United States or abroad offers and pays some substantial amount to his private foreign counterpart to influence his acceptance of the transaction, and such activity may a violation of the state law where the agent is doing business, the DOJ may conclude that a violation of the Travel Act has occurred. For example in the state of Texas there is no minimum limit under its Commercial Bribery statute (Section 32.43, TX. Penal Code), which bans simply the agreement to confer a benefit which would influence the conduct of the individual in question to make a decision in favor of the party conferring the benefit.

The Travel Act came into play for these defendants as the DOJ alleged they violated or conspired to violate California’s anti-bribery law (California Penal Code section 641.3), which bans corrupt payments anywhere of more than $1,000 between any two persons, including private commercial parties. In the indictments, the Travel Act charges relied on alleged violations of California’s anti-corruption law. The CCI matter was not the first case to use the Travel Act in conjunction with the FCPA. As reported in the FCPA Blog, the matter of U.S. v. David H. Mead and Frerik Pluimers, (Cr. 98-240-01) D.N.J., Trenton Div. 1998, defendant Mead was convicted following a jury trial of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and the Travel Act (incorporating New Jersey’s commercial bribery statute) and two counts each of substantive violations of the FCPA and the Travel Act. In its 2008 article entitled, “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Walking the Fine Line of Compliance in China” the law firm of Jones, Day reported the case of United States v. Young & Rubicam, Inc., 741 F.Supp. 334 (D.Conn. 1990), where a Company and individual defendants pled guilty to FCPA and Travel Act violations and paid a $500,000 fine. In addition to the Mead and Young and Rubicam cases, the DOJ’s website on “A Lay Person’s Guide to the FCPA, specifically states that “other statutes such as the mail and wire fraud statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, 1343, and the Travel Act, which provides for federal prosecution of violations of state commercial bribery statutes, may also apply…” to US companies doing business overseas.

All of these machinations brought about by the DOJ bringing a claim under the Travel Act would not be relevant under the UK Bribery Act. The UK Bribery does not make a distinction between public and private actors so that bribery of a private citizen by a UK company to further its business interests is just as illegal as bribery of a foreign governmental official.

II. Rose Carson and the “Big Flush”

In a separate criminal allegation against the individual defendant Hong “Rose” Carson, the DOJ alleged that she engaged in conduct which constituted obstruction of justice. This an additional count and it carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The criminal complaint alleges that after she learned that CCI had hired lawyers to conduct an internal investigation into corrupt payments overseas and sometime prior to her interview, Ms. Carson tore up documents relevant to the internal investigation and flushed them down a toilet in CCI’s ladies room. Thus she was charged “with obstructing an investigation within the jurisdiction of a federal agency when she destroyed documents relevant to CCI’s internal investigation of the corrupt payments by flushing them down the toilet of CCI’s ladies’ restroom.”

So you might wonder how someone who flushes documents down a toilet and then is interviewed by company lawyers not federal agents can be charged with federal obstruction of justice. This brings up a host of questions. One posed by the FCPA Blog was whether Ms. Carson was warned by any company employee “that concealing information from company lawyers conducting an internal FCPA investigation could be a federal crime?” Even if the company attorneys handling the investigation provided the now standard corporate attorney Upjohn warnings, how does a company attorney asking questions morph into a de facto federal agent during an internal company investigation regarding alleged FCPA violations and is the attorney thereby required to provide a Miranda warning to employees during a FCPA investigation?

As we have previously noted, in a recently released paper entitled “Navigating Potential Pitfalls in Conducting Internal Investigations: Upjohn Warnings, “Corporate Miranda,” and Beyond” Craig Margolis and Lindsey Vaala, of the law firm Vinson & Elkins, explored the pitfalls faced by counsel, both in-house and outside investigative, and corporations when an employee admits to wrong doing during an internal investigation, where such conduct is reported to the US Government and the employee is thereafter prosecuted criminally under a law such as the FCPA.

Employees who are subject to being interviewed or otherwise required to cooperate in an internal investigation may find themselves on the sharp horns of a dilemma requiring either (1) cooperating with the internal investigation or (2) losing their jobs for failure to cooperate by providing documents, testimony or other evidence. Many US businesses mandate full employee cooperation with internal investigations or those handled by outside counsel on behalf of a corporation. These requirements can exert a coercive force, “often inducing employees to act contrary to their personal legal interests in favor of candidly disclosing wrongdoing to corporate counsel.” Moreover, such a corporate policy may permit a company to claim to the US government a spirit of cooperation in the hopes of avoiding prosecution in “addition to increasing the chances of learning meaningful information.”

Where the US Government compels such testimony, through the mechanism of inducing a corporation to coerce its employees into cooperating with an internal investigation, by threatening job loss or other economic penalty, the in-house counsel’s actions may raise Fifth Amendment due process and voluntariness concerns because the underlying compulsion was brought on by a state actor, namely the US Government. Margolis and Vaala note that by utilizing corporate counsel and pressuring corporations to cooperate, the US Government is sometimes able to achieve indirectly what it would not be able to achieve on its own – inducing employees to waive their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and minimizing the effectiveness of defense counsel’s assistance.

So, what are the pitfalls if private counsel compels such testimony and it is used against an employee in a criminal proceeding under the FCPA? Margolis and Vaala point out that the investigative counsel, whether corporate or outside counsel, could face state bar disciplinary proceedings. A corporation could face disqualification of its counsel and the disqualified counsel’s investigative results. For all of these reasons, we feel that the FCPA Blog summed it up best when it noted, “the moment a company launches an internal investigation, its key employees — whether they’re scheduled for an interview or not — should be warned about the “federal” consequences of destroying or hiding evidence. With up to 20 years in jail at stake, that seems like a small thing to do for the people in the company.”

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Ed. Note-on March 3, the FCPA Blog reported that the DOJ unilaterally dismissed its Obstruction of Justice allegation against Rose Carson. See post here.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2011

Robert Kennedy, the Travel Act and the FCPA

Robert Kennedy, the Travel Act and the FCPA

What does Robert Kennedy have to do with the Foreign Corrupt Practices and how has a nearly 50 year old statute aimed at US based organized crime now impacted the FCPA? It turns out quite a bit and perhaps it will be quite a bit more in significantly widening the scope of the FCPA.

Robert Kennedy’s contribution is that while Attorney General, he urged Congress to enact the Travel Act in 1961 which was passed as part of the same series of bills as the Wire Act and was a part of his program to combat organized crime and racketeering. The Travel Act is aimed at prohibiting interstate travel or use of an interstate facility in aid of a racketeering or an unlawful business enterprise. It prohibits the use of communications and travel facilities to commit state or federal crimes, but until now was mostly known for its use in prosecutions for domestic crimes. Its impact to the FCPA is that the Travel Act applies to foreign as well as interstate commerce; it can be also used to prosecute those US companies and individuals which engage in bribery and corruption of foreign officials AND commercial bribery and corruption of private foreign citizens.

The Travel Act elements are: (1) use of a facility of foreign or interstate commerce (such as email, telephone, courier, personal travel); (2) with intent to promote, manage, establish, carry on, or distribute the proceeds of: (3) an activity that is a violation of state or federal bribery, extortion or arson laws, or a violation of the federal gambling, narcotics, money-laundering or RICO statutes. This means that, if in promoting or negotiating a private business deal in a foreign country, a sales agent in the United States or abroad offers and pays some substantial amount to his private foreign counterpart to influence his acceptance of the transaction, and such activity may a violation of the state law where the agent is doing business, the Justice Department may conclude that a violation of the Travel Act has occurred. For instance, in the state of Texas there is no minimum limit under its Commercial Bribery statute (Section 32.43, TX. Penal Code), which bans simply the agreement to confer a benefit which would influence the conduct of the individual in question to make a decision in favor of the party conferring the benefit. As noted below, the state of California bans payment of more than $1,000 between private parties for the purposes of influencing a business decision.

The Travel Act was most recently used when four executives of Control Components, Inc. (“CCI”) were indicted on April 8, 2009 for alleged violations of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provision and the Travel Act. According to the indictment, the defendants conspired to make hundreds of corrupt payments with the purpose of influencing the recipients to award contracts to CCI or skew technical specifications of competitive tenders in CCI’s favor. The Travel Act came into play as the DOJ alleged the CCI employees violated or conspired to violate California’s anti-bribery law (California Penal Code section 641.3), which bans corrupt payments anywhere of more than $1,000 between any two persons, including private commercial parties. In the indictments, the Travel Act charges relied on alleged violations of California’s anti-corruption law.

On July 31, 2009, CCI itself pleaded guilty to substantive FCPA anti-bribery charges and to conspiring to violate both the FCPA and the Travel Act. CCI admitted that, between 2003 and 2007, its employees made more than 150 corrupt payments, totaling approximately $4.9 million, to officials of state-owned enterprises in China, Korea, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates, and paid $1.95 million in bribes to officers and employees of foreign and domestic private companies in violation of the Travel Act. CCI agreed to pay a criminal fine of $18.2 million and to retain an independent compliance monitor for three years.

In July 31, 2009 Press Release announcing CCI’s guilty plea, the DOJ referenced the Company’s private overseas bribery. It said:

According to the information and plea agreement, from 1998 through 2007, CCI violated the FCPA and the Travel Act by making corrupt payments to numerous officers and employees of state-owned and privately-owned customers around the world, including in China, Korea, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business for CCI. Specifically, from 2003 through 2007, CCI paid approximately $4.9 million in bribes, in violation of the FCPA, to officials of various foreign state-owned companies and approximately $1.95 million in bribes, in violation of the Travel Act, to officers and employees of foreign and domestic privately-owned companies. [DOJ Press Release: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pr/press_releases/2009/07/07-31-09control-guilty.pdf

The CCI matter was not the first case to use the Travel Act in conjunction with the FCPA. As reported in the FCPABlog, is the mater of U.S. v. David H. Mead and Frerik Pluimers, (Cr. 98-240-01) D.N.J., Trenton Div. 1998. In this case defendant Mead was convicted following a jury trial of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and the Travel Act (incorporating New Jersey’s commercial bribery statute) and two counts each of substantive violations of the FCPA and the Travel Act. In its 2008 article entitled, “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Walking the Fine Line of Compliance in China” the law firm of Jones, Day reported the case of United States v. Young & Rubicam, Inc., 741 F.Supp. 334 (D.Conn. 1990), where a Company and individual defendants pled guilty to FCPA and Travel Act violations and paid a $500,000 fine. In addition to the Mead and Young and Rubicam cases, the DOJ’s website on “A Lay Person’s Guide to the FCPA, specifically states that “other statutes such as the mail and wire fraud statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, 1343, and the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, which provides for federal prosecution of violations of state commercial bribery statutes, may also apply…” to US companies doing business overseas. See: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/docs/dojdocb.html

What does this mean for US companies doing business overseas? The FCPA Professor and others have written extensively on the broadening of the definitions of who is a ‘foreign official’ and what is a ‘state owned entity’ under the FCPA. However with the incorporation of the Travel Act into FCPA prosecutions, these broad definitions may be completely blurred away if all foreign private citizens can be brought in under the FCPA by application of the Travel Act. US companies doing business overseas, which have a distinction in their FCPA compliance policies between gifts for and travel and entertainment of employees of private companies, and employees of state owned entities or foreign officials should immediately rethink this distinction in approach. The new decade is upon us the Kennedy-era statute of the Travel Act may become as relevant in overseas law enforcement in the 20-teens as it was in the domestic arena for the past 50 years.

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This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2010