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| Public Sector
September 5 2014

Jackson Lewis 2014 Mid-Year Special Report - The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Your Anti-Corruption Compliance Program: What is Required in Today's Regulatory Environment?

"The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (""FCPA"") continues to be a major focus for U.S. regulators including the Department of Justice (""DOJ"") and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (""SEC""). The first half of 2014 has included notable settlements totaling close to $500 million. At the same time, the Eleventh Circuit 's ruling in United States v. Esquenazi has adopted the broad interpretation set forth by the DOJ and SEC regarding what constitutes an ""instrumentality"" of a foreign government. These developments signal that government enforcement agencies do hold organizations accountable to the advice and standards set forth in the DOJ|SEC 2012 publication, A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (""FCPA Guidance""). As noted in our prior report, the FCPA Guidance explains that, in the wake of an established FCPA violation and a pending determination of whether to take action against the organization, the DOJ and SEC take a ""common-sense and pragmatic approach"" to evaluating an organization 's compliance program by asking three fairly simple, albeit broad, questions: (1) Is the Company 's compliance program well-designed?, (2) Is it being applied in good faith?, and (3) Does it work? More recently, in November 2013, the World Bank and its partners released the Anti-Corruption Ethics and Compliance Handbook for Business (the ""Handbook""), which was developed ""by companies for companies"" to address the concern that ""a myriad of existing international principles for business can be confusing, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises with limited resources."" The Handbook attempts to define, from the perspective of companies, best practices in anti-corruption compliance. Source: A Special Report by: Jackson Lewis Corporate Governance & Internal Investigations Practice Group, August 14, 2014"