Legal News

Where?s George Terwilliger? Doing the FCPA Thing, Like Everyone Else

By Jennifer Forsyth

Last week, the LB pointed out that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is keeping plenty of lawyers busy these days. One of them, it turns out, is George Terwilliger, former deputy attorney general and now global head of the White Collar Practice Group at White & Case.

Terwilliger (pictured) says that about 50% of the practice group’s time these days is spent on internal investigations and other activities for companies caught under the Justice Department’s spotlight related to the FCPA.

Who’s keeping the practice group so gainfully employed? Mark F. Mendelson, deputy chief of the DOJ’s fraud section, who Terwilliger says has been a bulldog on these cases, making clear that he intends to use a number of statutes, including wire and mail fraud, to go after violators of the act.

Terwilliger explained that foreign companies, who might otherwise be beyond US jurisdiction, may become Justice Department targets if they are joint-venture partners or otherwise acting with U.S. firms where corrupt payments are suspected and correspond using wire or mail facilities with US partners in furtherance of a payment scheme, triggering US jurisdiction under the wire/mail fraud statutes.

Despite all this activity, Terwilliger still had time to attend a Washington, D.C. premier of HBO’s “Recount,” the cable network’s take on the prolonged 2000 election between Bush and Gore. While there, Terwilliger, who as you may recall was a leader in Bush’s legal team in Florida, commended Laura Dern on her portrayal of Katherine Harris, the controversial secretary of state. Terwilliger says Dern got Harris just right.

Photo:AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).