FCPAméricas Blog
The Lack of Legal Certainty in BCCA Leniency Agreements
11.28.2015
This guest post is from Eloy Rizzo, a senior attorney with the law firm KLA – Koury Lopes Advogados in São Paulo, Brazil. Mr. Rizzo focuses on anti-corruption and compliance issues, as well as on complex litigation. Mr. Rizzo currently interns at Miller & Chevalier’s anticorruption team in Washington, DC.
The Brazilian Clean Company Act (“BCCA”) came into effect on January 29, 2014 establishing the civil and administrative strict liability for legal entities for acts against the public administration, either foreign or Brazilian. Among the applicable penalties are monetary fines ranging from 0,1 to 20% of the legal entity’s gross revenues of the last fiscal year, the publication of the sentence and the prohibition to receive public incentives, subsidies, donations or ... Read more
6 Reasons to Have an Anti-Bribery Compliance Program
11.25.2015
An anti-bribery compliance program is a system of self-governance established by companies in order to prevent and detect bribery acts and remediate compliance failures. In a global marketplace, an effective anti-bribery compliance program is becoming a critical component of a company’s business model. There are various reasons for why a company should have such a program in place. This post highlights six.
Mandatory requirement. While in most jurisdictions companies are not obligated to have anti-bribery compliance programs, in certain jurisdictions they may be required to do so. In the UK, for example, companies can be liable for failure to prevent bribery. Local laws may require companies to have other sorts of compliance programs. In many jurisdictions, anti-money laundering laws, for example, obligate individuals and legal persons ... Read more
Banco Do Brasil’s New York Branch Learns the Hard Way to Beware of the “Good Guy Exception List”
11.20.2015
The following guest post is from Timothy O’Toole, a Member of Miller & Chevalier who focuses on sanctions, export controls, and other international regulatory and compliance issues.
Earlier this month, Banco Do Brasil’s (BDB) New York branch agreed to pay a $139,500 civil penalty arising out of what the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) labeled as BDB’s “apparent violations” of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (the Iran sanctions). A careful review of what happened (or at least what the settlement suggests happened) can help other companies and financial institutions learn from BNB’s situation, especially when it comes to the handling of what is commonly referred to as the “good guy exception list.”
To understand where the “good guy exception list” ... Read more
