Law Commons^™

No Smoke And No Fire: The Rise Of Internal Controls Absent Anti-Bribery Violations In Fcpa Enforcement, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prohibits bribery of foreign public officials in order to obtain or retain business. It is, for all intents and purposes, an anti-bribery statute. To detect bribery, the FCPA contains accounting provisions related to bookkeeping and internal controls. The books and records provision requires issuers to make and maintain accurate books, records, and accounts; likewise, the internal controls provision requires that issuers devise and maintain reasonable internal accounting controls aimed at preventing and detecting FCPA violations. If one considers the analogy that bribery is the “fire” in FCPA enforcement actions, and books and records violations …

On Maximizing Deterrence Per Dollar: Thoughts Inspired By Peter Reilly, Andrew B. Spalding

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Peter Reilly addresses concerns that practitioners in this space have privately and publicly debated for years. What exactly is cooperation credit? Can we quantify it? The government promises that self-reporting is in our self-interest, but the government’s interest in saying so is obvious enough. What evidence can the government provide?

The difficulty of measuring this credit is somewhat ironic, given the government’s dependence on cooperation. As this essay will show, our modern enforcement regime, which has four components—the internal or independent investigation, voluntary disclosure, cooperation credit, and a negotiated settlement—is the government’s method of maximizing general deterrence with finite …

Voluntary Disclosure Fostering Overenforcement And Overcriminalization Of The Fcpa, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

Professor Peter Reilly’s article, Incentivizing Corporate America to Eradicate Transnational Bribery Worldwide: Federal Transparency and Voluntary Disclosure Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 1683 (2015), challenges the notion that voluntary disclosure of potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations to the government is always the best course of action for a company. In a world where whistleblowers can receive a bounty for information provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),2 self-reporting is a critical, high-pressure decision that each company must undertake when faced with potential FCPA liability.

This Article takes a broader look at …

Corporate America Fights Back: The Battle Over Waiver Of The Attorney-Client Privilege, Michael L. Seigel

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses a topic that is the subject of an on-going and heated contest between the business lobby and its lawyers, on the one side, and the U.S. Department of Justice on the other. The fight is over federal prosecutors' escalating practice of requesting that corporations accused of criminal wrongdoing waive their attorney-client privilege as part of their cooperation with the government. The Department of Justice views privilege waiver as a legitimate and critical tool in its post-Enron battle against white collar crime. The business lobby views it as encroaching on corporations' fundamental right to protect confidential attorney-client communications. …

The Doj Risks Killing The Golden Goose Through Computer Associates/Singleton Theories Of Obstruction, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The DOJ, through its corporate criminal charging policy, puts a premium on corporate cooperation with prosecutors. The "partnership" that the DOJ's cooperation policy demands of corporations is extremely valuable. But the DOJ threatens to kill its own golden goose by bringing a spate of high-profile prosecutions of corporate executives (Sanjay Kumar, Stephen Richards, and Greg Singleton) for obstruction of an "official proceeding" premised on their lies to the corporation's own counsel.