On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission published their long-anticipated guidance on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The 130-page tome is an assembly of longstanding opinion releases, statutes, settlements, and cases. The Wall Street Journal quickly pointed out that some of the DOJ’s interpretation of the FCPA is unsettled law.
Guidance on the FCPA is required by the 1988 Trade Act to ensure that companies and individuals trying to address foreign bribery and accounting controls adequately understand the anticorruption law. The previous version of the guidance, called the “lay person’s guide to the FCPA,” was a concise, reader-friendly review of the FCPA and its scope. The new guidance is significantly more comprehensive, with over 300 footnotes replete with detailed case citations and legalese. Not only does it provide the FCPA statutory language, but it discusses enforcement actions and opinion releases and repackages prominent FCPA cases as instructive hypothetical fact patterns.
