As the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission increase investigations of FCPA violations, companies try to determine the best way to prevent bribery. How about asking the enforcers of the FCPA? Bill Jacobson is a former assistant chief of the Criminal Division Fraud Section of the DOJ. He was a leader of the FCPA investigation teams and elevated violations to prosecution. Jacobson advised five elements to avoid prosecution: Self Reporting In the instance of a scandal, it is [...]

Guilty. Garth Peterson, a former real estate investment managing director for Morgan Stanley was sentenced to nine months in prison on August 16th, 2012 for violations of the anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Peterson plead guilty to conspiring to evade internal accounting controls which were maintained by his former employer, Morgan Stanley. Bribery. Prosecutors accused Peterson of enabling a Chinese government official and a Canadian lawyer to secretly buy a valuable Morgan Stanley property in [...]

One employee. The trial of former UBS employee, Kweku Adoboli begins in London today, providing another example of how a violation of one employee has the potential to impact an entire company.  The trial is expected to last eight weeks with the potential to expose the UBS company culture and business practices.  Both current and former employees will testify as the company is expected to be scrutinized. UBS is not on trial and will not be able to respond to [...]

  Avoid FCPA Investigations. Many companies ask what can be done to avoid the increasing long arm of the U.S. law enforcers who are vigorously pursuing violations of the FCPA. The short answer: train employees to eliminate corruption. The long answer: set up an effective legal framework aimed to combat corruption with comprehensive policies and procedures to address the risk of corruption; and continuously nurture a corporate culture with zero tolerance of corruption from the top executives to individual employees [...]