Roll Call

It was just two weeks ago that we were waxing about the quiet times for FCPA watchers, due to the temporary bottleneck in the appointment of corporate monitors. But come to think of it, the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, the group in charge of FCPA enforcement, has a lot on its mind right now.

In addition to the monitor controversy, there are sensitive investigations of BAE and Saudi Prince Bandar, along with Siemens, Panalpina and most of the oil and gas services industry. Giant insurance brokerage Aon announced an FCPA investigation. Medtronic is under the microscope with the rest of the leading orthopedic device makers (whose deferred prosecution agreements in their domestic bribery cases helped ignite the aforementioned controversy about corporate monitors).

Last week, even stolid Alcoa joined the FCPA line up, courtesy of an inexplicable federal civil suit filed against it by Bahrain’s Alba (in Pittsburgh, of all places) — which the DOJ promptly stayed while it plays investigative catch-up. And let’s not forget that at least three dozen other companies have disclosed yet-unresolved FCPA investigations over the past few years — Shell recently became one of them (see also Panalpina, above); Halliburton and DaimlerChrysler are two others. And there’s Total, ABB, Bristol Myers Squibb, Tyco and . . . . well, it’s a long list.

So it’s not a quiet time over at the DOJ after all. That means the hardworking people there can be forgiven for little things, like gremlins making mischief on their FCPA Opinion Procedure Release website. Sometimes Releases disappear. This time, it’s Release 08-01. When it was published earlier this year, we posted about it here, and it should be accessible as a pdf file here. As a reminder, Release 08-01 is the wordiest on record. It’s about a proposed investment in an overseas privatization, and describes in detail the due diligence for the deal, protracted negotiations over the parties’ compliance rights and obligations, and some final, remedial due diligence. In other words, it’s packed with issues, action and guidance — so it might come in handy.

Quiet times for the FCPA? Not nearly. In fact, when the dam breaks for the appointment of new corporate monitors, which should be any day now, we’re expecting the busiest FCPA enforcement season ever.