Excavating Enforcement Data

Qi Chen, a student from the Chicago-Kent Law School, has updated some important numbers we first reported about two years ago.

Then and now he analyzed how many corporate enforcement actions since 2005 didn’t involve criminal or civil charges against any employees from the company. Those numbers are surprisingly elusive. Results can vary depending on the way enforcement actions are reported, when they’re commenced and finished, what charges are brought, and whether targets are parent companies, subsidiaries, or a combination. So there are lots of decisions to make when counting the cases.

Qi Chen’s methodology was directed by our Senior Editor, Andy Spalding, who also supervised the research. We’re grateful to Prof Spalding as well. But as always, any errors in the final numbers are ours alone.

Digging out the numbers reveals something about how enforcement decisions are made. And that in turn provides some clues as to whether corporate settlements might be replacing individual prosecutions.

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From 2005 through 2011, Qi found 85 corporate enforcement actions by the DOJ or SEC or both. He also found for the same period 106 individuals targeted in criminal or civil enforcement actions or both.

He excluded the 22 Africa sting defendants from all the numbers. But he included the 8 individual Siemens defendants indicted in December 2011. They’re all non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. None of them have appeared in the U.S. to answer the charges and all are apparently categorized as fugitives.

Of the 85 corporate enforcement actions from 2005 to 2011, there were 27 cases in which individuals from the companies were also charged. In those 27 cases, a total of 73 individuals were charged.

That means 58 companies were charged with FCPA offenses from 2005 through 2011, and none of their employees or agents faced any charges (at least not yet). A former DePuy exective was charged and jailed in the U.K. but not the U.S.

For comparison, as of 2009, 37 companies had settled enforcement actions since 2005 and had none of their personnel charged for violating the FCPA.

The research also means that from 2005 through 2011, 33 individuals were charged and the company they worked for wasn’t charged.

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For 2005 through 2011, the corporations charged with FCPA offenses but having no employees or agents charged by either the DOJ or SEC were:

1. AB Volvo
2. ABB Ltd
3. AGA Medical Corp
4. AGCO Ltd.
5. Aibel Group Ltd.
6. Akzo Nobel N.V.
7. Aon Corporation
8. Avery Dennison Corp.
9. Ball Corporation
10. Bristow Group Inc.
11. Chevron Corp.
12. Comverse Technology Inc
13. Comverse Technology, Inc
14. Con-way Inc.
15. Daimler AG
16. Delta & Pine Land Co.
17. DePuy, Inc
18. Diageo plc
19. DPC (Tianjin) Co. Ltd.
20. Fiat S.p.A., et al.
21. Flowserve Corp.
22. GE Invision, Inc.
23. General Electric Co
24. GlobalSantaFe Corp
25. Helmerich & Payne, Inc
26. IBM Corp
27. Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd.
28. ITT Corp.
29. JGC Corporation (S
30. Johnson & Johnson
31. Lucent Technologies Inc.
32. Magyar Telekom, Plc
33. Maxwell Technologies, Inc
34. Micrus Corp.
35. NATCO Group Inc
36. Noble Corp
37. Novo Nordisk A/S
38. Oil States Int’l, Inc.
39. Panalpina World Transport (Holding) Ltd
40. Paradigm B.V.
41. RAE Systems Inc
42. Rockwell Automation, Inc
43. Royal Dutch Shell plc
44. Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Ltd
45. Snamprogetti Netherlands 
46. Statoil ASA
47. Technip
48. Tenaris
49. Textron Inc.
50. The Dow Chemical co.
51. Tidewater Marine International, Inc
52. Transocean Inc
53. Tyco Int’l Ltd.
54. Tyson Foods, Inc
55. Universal Leaf Tabacos Ltda
56. Veraz Networks, Inc
57. Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp.
58. York International Corp.