The month of June ended what has been one of the most active half-years in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement ever according to Thomas Fox. The attorney recently covered the subject in a JD Supra blog, citing many high-profile cases in 2019 along with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) revised guidance on evaluating corporate compliance programs.
Fox says lessons learned from recent cases are companies did not receive any credit for self-reporting, though they did for cooperation in other ways. These included thorough internal investigations; meeting the DOJ’s requests promptly; proactively identifying potentially fraudulent issues; voluntarily making-foreign-based employees available for U.S. interviews; and providing the DOJ documents from other countries that did not violate data privacy laws.
Fox also notes as fraudsters become more sophisticated, involving the customer in bribery schemes, companies need to have a due diligence mechanism in place. Several recent cases illustrate the need for customer due diligence.
To learn more about the FCPA enforcement landscape, consider reading Fox’s JD Supra blog. For more information on how to put your own customer due diligence mechanism in place, consider reading the MyComplianceOffice whitepaper “Framework for a Third Party Risk Management Program.”
