How does the thirty-month prison term Ousama Naaman received last week compare with other FCPA sentences?
It’s near the middle.
Here are some shorter sentences:
In January this year, Antonio Perez received two years in prison in the Haiti Telco case. He admitted paying $36,375 in bribes.
Leo Winston Smith was given just six months jail time in December 2010. The former salesman for Pacific Consolidated Industries was 75 and in poor health.
In October 2010, Bobby Jay Elkin Jr., a country manager in Kyrgyzstan for tobacco company Dimon Inc, copped just three years probation. The judge called him a hero for helping his subordinates during local rioting.
In September 2010, Nam Nguyen was sentenced to sixteen months in prison. His brother, An Nguyen, received nine months, and their sister, Kim Nguyen, was sentenced to two years probation.
Joseph Lukas, a co-defendant with the Nguyens, was let off with two years probation.
In August 2010, Hollywood couple Gerald and Patricia Green got six months in jail. Gerald Green, 78, was suffering from emphysema.
Frederic Bourke was sentenced in 2009 to a year and a day in prison. The judge said, “After years of supervising this case, it’s still not entirely clear to me whether Mr. Bourke is a victim or a crook or a little bit of both.”
In all those cases, as in Naaman’s, the DOJ had asked for more jail time.
Some longer FCPA-related prison terms are shown below. Five of those defendants, including Joel Esquenazi, were sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Miami), known as a tough sentencing venue.
In October, Esquenazi received a fifteen-year prison term — the longest in an FCPA-related case. A jury convicted him on multiple related charges — one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and commit wire fraud, seven substantive FCPA counts, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and twelve counts of money laundering. Each money laundering-related count carried a maximum twenty-year sentence.
Chart courtesy of Michael Volkov of Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, D.C. Volkov is the primary contributor to the Corruption, Crime & Compliance Blog.
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