Legal News

Another Individual Falls in DOJ?s FCPA Ramp-Up

By Ashby Jones

Once upon a time, there existed a little federal law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The government enforced it on occasion, mostly against companies accused of paying foreign officials in order to gain a foothold in a foreign land. The companies would promise to clean up their behavior, pay a fine, and life would go on.

But in recent years, the Justice Department has broadened the scope of its FCPA enforcement — and started targeting individuals. Law Blog colleague Dionne Searcey covered the trend in this piece from October of last year.

And now the fallout’s happening. The recent ‘Catch 22′ sting brought about the arrest of nearly two-dozen executives on FCPA-related charges. Thursday, the Justice Department announced that a Virginia man had pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe former officials in Panama. Click here for the story, from the Main Justice Web site; here for the news release from the DOJ.

According to Main Justice, John Warwick, 64, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to make corrupt payment to former Panamanian officials. Warwick and a co-conspirator, Charles Jumet, authorized bribes of more than $200,000 in order to secure business for Ports Engineering Consultants Corp., an engineering firm based in Virginia Beach.

The DOJ release states:

According to court documents, Warwick and Jumet participated in a conspiracy to pay money secretly to Panamanian government officials for awarding contracts to PECC to maintain lighthouses and buoys along Panama's waterway. In December 1997, the Panamanian government awarded PECC a no-bid 20-year concession to perform these duties. Upon receipt of the concession, Warwick, Jumet and others authorized corrupt payments to be made to the Panamanian government officials.

Warwick agreed to forfeit $331,000 and faces up to five years in prison. Jumet pleaded guilty in November.

In addition to signaling a willingness to go after individuals, Main Justice noted that governments were increasingly cooperating in the prosecution of such cases.

"It illustrates a trend of greater intergovernmental cooperation," Danforth Newcomb, founder of Shearman & Sterling's FCPA practice, told Main Justice.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 11, 2010 (boomark / email).