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 …

“Pay To Prescribe”: A Case For Strengthened Enforced Of The Fcpa In The Global Pharmaceutical Industry In 2017 And Beyond, John T. Jessee Jr.

Law Student Publications

This paper will use recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions to argue that a revamped and increased enforcement of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions in the pharmaceutical industry will be an absolutely critical task in 2017 and beyond, as there is much work to be done in cleaning up the industry. The paper will begin by outlining a brief history of the FCPA and examining its basic enforcement provisions. It will then examine the nature of the pharmaceutical industry’s bribery through a detailed analysis of several recent high profile enforcement cases within the industry. Lastly, the paper will propose …

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 …

Culpability And Modern Crime, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law has developed to prohibit new forms of intrusion on the autonomy and mental processes of others. Examples include modern understandings of fraud, extortion, and bribery, which pivot on the concepts of deception, coercion, and improper influence. Sometimes core offenses develop to include similar concepts, such as when reforms in the law of sexual assault make consent almost exclusively material. Many of these projects are laudable. But progressive programs in substantive criminal law can raise difficult problems of culpability. Modern iterations of criminal offenses often draw lines using concepts involving relative mental states among persons whose conduct is embedded …

The Domestic And International Enforcement Of The Oecd Anti-Bribery Convention, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

International corruption law is a growing, if understudied, area of international economic law. This Article examines two aspects of governments' enforcement of the OECD's Anti-Bribery Convention. The first aspect is the member state's efforts to enforce its own national legislation prohibiting foreign corruption within its territory and with regards to its nationals doing business abroad. The OECD Treaty's obligation concerning member states' enforcement of their own national legislation is somewhat ambiguous. While the obligation to pass particular national legislation is quite clear and specific, the treaty does not specify what resources that a state must dedicate to internally enforcing these …

Reviving The Federal Crime Of Gratuities, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The federal crime of gratuities prohibits people from giving gifts to federal public officials if the gift is tied to an official act. Both the donor and the donee are liable. The gratuities crime is dysfunctional in two main ways. It is overinclusive in that it covers conduct indistinguishable from bribery. It is underinclusive in that it does not cover conduct that is clearly dangerous: gifts to public officials because of their positions that are not tied to a particular official act.

This Article argues that Congress should extend the crime of gratuities to cover gifts because of an official’s …

Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most academics and practitioners with whom the author has discussed the result in Skilling v. United States believe that it is a sensible decision. That is, the Supreme Court did the best it could to limit the reach of 18 U.S.C. § 1346, which all nine justices apparently believed—correctly—was, on its face, unconstitutionally vague. Congress responded quickly and with little consideration with the supremely under-defined § 1346. In the over twenty years since the statute's enactment, the Courts of Appeals have been unable to come up with any unified limiting principles to contain its reach. The Skilling Court, evidently reluctant …

Honest Services After Skilling: Judicial, Prosecutorial And Legislative Responses, Iris E. Bennett, Jessie K. Liu, Cynthia J. Robertson, Govind C. Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In Skilling v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court substantially narrowed the reach of the “honest services fraud” statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, by holding that it applies only to “bribery and kickback schemes,” not to “undisclosed self-dealing by a public official or private employee.” Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010). Two companion cases also were decided the same day. See Black v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2963 (2010); Weyhrauch v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2971 (2010). These decisions have major significance for federal fraud prosecutions.

International Movement To Deter Corruption: Should China Join?, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Global concerns over the corruption of weak governments by firms engaged in transnational business are the source of an international movement that emerged in 1997. Special concern is presently directed at the weakness of enforcement of laws enacted in recent times to deter corrupt business practices in international trade that were enacted in response to that movement. One cause of weakness in law enforcement is the failure of China to share actively in those concerns and the efforts to address them. This essay will briefly record steps taken in other nations to address the concerns and the limited effectiveness of …

Enforcing International Corrupt Practices Law, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay strives to advance the current international movement to
deter the transnational corrupt practices that have long burdened the global economy and weakened governments, especially in “developing” nations. Laws made in the last decade to address this longstanding global problem have not been effectively enforced. Described here are the moderately successful efforts in the United States since 1862 to reward private citizens serving as enforcers of laws prohibiting corrupt practices. It is suggested that this American experience might be adapted by international organizations to enhance enforcement of the new public international laws.

An Honest Services Debate, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary employs a fictional debate to explore the issues raised by the Supreme Court’s decision in Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010), which dramatically cut back on “honest services” prosecutions under the mail and wire fraud statutes. In response to an earlier decision by the Supreme Court reading these statutes narrowly, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 1346, which extends mail and wire fraud to schemes to deprive another of “the intangible right of honest services.” In 2009 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in three cases presenting questions concerning the “honest services” provision. One of the cases …