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Latin Node Pleads Guilty to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Daily Business Review
April 10, 2009
image: Photodisc
A defunct Miami telecommunications company agreed to pay a $2 million fine for bribing officials in Honduras and Yemen.
Latin Node, which provided telephone services using Internet protocol technology throughout the world, pleaded guilty Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Paul Huck to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company's parent company has three years to pay the fine.
Latin Node paid about $1.1 million in third-party payments from March 2004 through June 2007 in exchange for an interconnection agreement with Hondutel, the Honduran state-owned telecommunications company, according to court documents.
The company knew that some or all of the money would be passed on as bribes to top Hondutel officials, according the Justice Department.
Latin Node also admitted to making 17 payments of about $1.2 million from July 2005 to April 2006 to Yemeni officials or a third-party consultant in exchange for favorable interconnection rates in the Middle East country.
Company e-mails indicate that the intended recipients included the son of the Yemeni president and other top officials with TeleYemen, the Yemeni government-owned telecommunications company, according to court documents.
Latin Node's corporate parent, eLandia International headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., disclosed potential FCPA violations to the Justice Department after it purchased the Miami company, the U.S. government said. The parent company terminated senior Latin Node management with knowledge of the bribes and dissolved the company.
Miami attorney Peter Prieto, chairman of the national litigation section for Holland & Knight, said his firm was brought in to investigate irregularities uncovered by eLandia after the purchase of Latin Node.
"Over the last seven years U.S. authorities have been more and more aggressive about prosecuting violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Latin Node case is yet another example of this increased aggressiveness," said Prieto, a former federal prosecutor.
"In today's environment, it's important companies know what to do when they encounter FCPA problems."
