Bio-Rad Laboratories paid a total of $55 million Monday to settle FCPA offenses. About $40 million of that went to the SEC as disgorgement. That payment landed tenth on our list of the biggest FCPA-related disgorgements.
Disgorgement, according to contributing editor Marc Alain Bohn, is a remedy authorized by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that’s “used to deprive wrong-doers of their ill-gotten gains and deter violations of federal securities law.”
Disgorgement first appeared in an FCPA enforcement action in 2004 when ABB Ltd disgorged $5.9 million to resolve books and records and internal controls offenses.
Since then the SEC has used disgorgement in more than three-quarters of its FCPA-related enforcement actions.
Here are the current top ten FCPA-related corporate disgorgements. All amounts also include pre-judgment interest:
1. Siemens $350 million in 2008
2. KBR $177 million in 2009
3. Alcoa $161 million in 2014
4. Total S.A. $153 million in 2013
5. Snamprogetti $125 million in 2010
6. Technip $98 million in 2010
7. Daimler $91.4 million in 2010
8. Pfizer $45.2 million in 2012
9. Alcatel-Lucent $45 million in 2010
10. Bio-Rad Laboratories $40.7 million in 2014
* * *
For comparison, here’s our current list of the top ten FCPA enforcement actions of all time.
__________
Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
Comments are closed for this article!