The department last year resolved the fewest number of FCPA cases since 2006 -- two corporate settlements and six individual prosecutions. The drop came as the department shifted its focus to pursuing bigger prosecutions. One current probe focuses on Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which in 2011 disclosed possible violations in Mexico to the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has said it’s cooperating.
The U.S. prosecuted about 80 FCPA cases from 2005 to 2015, Khouzami said.
Ten Years
“That’s over ten years, and you may wonder why so few?” he said. “A lot of these cases were not addressed because we didn’t have adequate resources to investigate them.”
The Justice Department’s FCPA unit has grown to 29 line attorneys from 19, with six supervisors, Andrew Weissmann, chief of the fraud section, said Tuesday during a speech at a Global Investigations Review conference in Washington. Prosecutors in Washington are aided by 30 agents in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
“It will be the largest it’s ever been in the fraud section’s history,” Weissmann said.
FBI agents working out of Los Angeles will focus on transactions in Asia, investigators in Washington will scrutinize government contracts, New York-based agents will examine Wall Street banks, and those in Texas will probe the oil industry, Caldwell said. The U.S. is also stepping up its cooperation with other countries.
Self-Disclose
Companies that self-disclose are typically seeking lesser penalties from the government.
The new self-disclosure initiative may make it less likely that companies will voluntarily reveal wrongdoing to the Justice Department, said Mike Koehler, a law professor at Southern Illinois University who writes the FCPA Professor blog. Because the government is demanding complete cooperation, companies may be reluctant to come forward, he said.