FCPAméricas Blog
Can FCPA Compliance Be Good for Business? What the experts say …
9.12.2012
One of my favorite FCPA compliance visuals is the one about the ambulance and the cliff. The saying goes that it is much easier to park the ambulance on top of the cliff, where it can keep people from falling off, than it is to park it at the bottom, where it must pick up the bodies. In terms of the FCPA, modest, up-front precautionary measures can avoid significant FCPA liabilities on the backend.
But can FCPA compliance actually be good for business too? The proposition might seem counterintuitive. How can more breaks on business actually be good for business? Compliance is time consuming and misdirects scarce company resources.
However, practitioners who have worked with multiple companies on compliance see it happen. Companies that do compliance right are positioned to achieve concrete business benefits. Here are the reasons that FCPA compliance experts give:
Strength. Compliance projects strength. When a company sends a consistent message that it conducts itself ethically, foreign officials are less likely to ask for bribes. Conversely, tolerating improper payments is a slipper slope. Once foreign officials tag your company as one that will pay bribes, the requests become more frequent and the amounts much larger... Read more
FCPAméricas Law Clerks: Apply Today
9.11.2012
Apply today to be an FCPAméricas Law Clerk. The program is sponsored by Matteson Ellis Law, PLLC. Law Clerks perform semester-long unpaid internships with the leading U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) blog of the Americas. Applications are currently being considered for the September through December 2012 semester. As an FCPAméricas Law Clerk, you will play a key role in running the premier anti-corruption legal blog in the region.
You will gain first-hand, substantive exposure to a variety of areas of FCPA enforcement and compliance; research strategies for international anti-corruption laws; emerging best practices in anti-corruption compliance programs; enforcement trends by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; and, corruption risks and issues relevant in Latin America.
DETAILS:
– Preference given to law students near completion of their degree. – Spanish and/or... Read more“Empresas Fantasmas”: Detecting Phantom Vendors
9.07.2012
Speak to an Argentine about public corruption and he or she will probably invoke the term “empresa fantasma” at some point. Phantom vendors are a common form of facilitating bribery in Argentina, as noted in reports there. In fact, they are common in many parts of the world. Companies focused on FCPA compliance should be particularly alert to the risk.
How does it work? Usually a local employee sets up a bogus consultancy or contractor. The company then pays the entity for some purported good or service. In actuality, the entity provides nothing of value and the money is kept for other purposes, sometimes self-enrichment, other times to pay bribes to officials for a business benefit in return.
When conducting internal investigations or audits, these are ways to detect empresas fantasmas:
Paid and Approved Vendor Lists. A common control that companies use to avoid phantom vendors is an approved vendor list. Third parties added to the list have been vetted and determined to be legitimate and necessary to the company’s business. Companies often allow exceptions for the u... Read more
