Foreign companies can’t be blamed for wondering if they’re being singled out under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The names in the FCPA-related headlines alone are enough to cause high anxiety. ABB, Siemens, BAE, DaimlerChrysler, AstraZeneca and many more. But are U.S. prosecutors really focusing too much attention on U.K., European and other foreign companies instead of American firms? Probably not, at least according to the numbers. Here’s the situation.
Foreign companies weren’t subject to the FCPA at all until 1998, when the law was amended and, in the words of the U.S. attorneys’ manual, “expanded . . . to assert territorial jurisdiction over foreign companies and nationals.” For the next five years under the FCPA, the Justice Department hardly gave foreigners a second look. That began to change in 2004, when the number of all FCPA investigations started rising, and the number of purely foreign companies (not foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parents) being investigated rose along with the tide. Of the 20 investigations launched in 2004, says Dan Newcomb in Recent Trends and Patterns in FCPA Enforcement, four concerned purely foreign corporations. The numbers, he says, increased from 2005 to 2007, with about 13 investigations involving purely foreign companies, out of around 50 ongoing FCPA investigations in all. So while the actual number of foreign companies involved in FCPA problems has increased, the percentage of foreign firms under investigation has decreased during the past four years.
So why does it seem like the DOJ is picking on foreign companies? Partly because their headline-making names are so familiar. ABB Ltd (Switzerland) Vetco Gray UK Ltd, Akzo Nobel, NV (the Netherlands) and Statoil ASA (Norway) were all subject to still-fresh DOJ enforcement actions. And foreign companies under ongoing FCPA investigations include similarly big names: AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden, pharmaceuticals), BAE Systems (UK, defence) DaimlerChrysler (Germany, automotive), Innospec (UK, chemicals), Magyar Telekom (Hungary, telecoms), Norsk Hydro (Norway, energy), Novo Nordisk (Denmark, health, pharmaceuticals) Panalpina (Switzerland, transport), Siemens (Germany, engineering, electronics), Smith & Nephew (UK, medical devices) and Total (France, energy). All of them are well-known at home and most are famous around the globe.
Foreign attention has also been drawn to the FCPA by the so-called parallel investigations, where the DOJ and an anti-corruption agency from another country work together. Again, Dan Newcomb provides the details:
Among recent FCPA investigations by the United States government, parallel investigations in the following foreign jurisdictions were reported: Brazil (Gtech); China (Siemens); Costa Rica (Alcatel Lucent); France (Halliburton, Total SA); Germany (Bristol Meyers, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens); Greece (Siemens); Hungary (Siemens); India (Xerox); Indonesia (Freeport, Monsanto, Siemens); Israel (Siemens); Italy (Immucor, UDI, Siemens); Korea (IBM); Liechtenstein (Siemens); Nigeria (Halliburton, Siemens); Norway (Siemens); Russia (Siemens); and Switzerland (Siemens).
There’s no way to know what percentage of FCPA violations are actually caused by foreign companies. So there’s no way to know if foreign companies are getting more or less FCPA attention than they deserve. But in some cases, the DOJ doesn’t have a choice. For example, it had to launch investigations when Siemens and BAE made headlines around the world for alleged corrupt practices on U.S. soil, and when evidence emerged that Panalpina’s Houston office may have led an entire industry into an FCPA quagmire with its customs clearance and permitting practices for the oil and gas services segment.
But whether foreign companies receive exactly the “right” amount of FCPA attention from the DOJ isn’t so important. What’s important now is that when foreign companies are subject to the FCPA’s compliance requirements because of where and how they do business, they should do everything reasonably necessary to comply with the law. They should have an effective compliance program. That should be true not only for the FCPA, by the way, but for the laws of all the countries they’re subject to. The only other option is to watch for their names in the headlines.
2 Comments
This posting struck me as perhaps a distinction without a difference – the article is about DOJ investigating “purely foreign” companies for FCPA violations, but multinational companies that are “purely” anything these days are rare.
Of the 14 companies you describe as “purely foreign,” 11 were listed on the NYSE at the time (Norsk Hydro delisted), and 9 had at least one – and sometimes many – substantial subsidiaries incorporated in the U.S., and often with names easily confused with their foreign parent, such as Smith & Nephew Inc. (US) and Smith & Nephew PLC (UK). Innospec, although its headquarters are in the UK, is actually a U.S. company. Only one company you name – Panalpina – appears “purely foreign.”
For that matter, even Panalpina has substantial US operations and its Houston office had a big role to play. Even so, we think it is possible to distinguish between companies that started out as US firms and expanded overseas, and those that started out overseas and expanded into the US (either into the US capital markets or its stream of commerce or both). But your point about the internationalization of business is a good one. Perhaps we’re saying the same thing?
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