The New York City Bar has released a report recommending that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was enacted in 1977 to prevent U.S. companies from getting an unfair advantage over their competitors by paying bribes abroad, be reconsidered, saying it puts American companies at a disadvantage in global competition. The International Business Transactions Committee said in its report that a sharp upswing in FCPA enforcement in recent years has forced U.S. companies to spend more ensuring compliance with the law and has made foreign companies wary of doing business with U.S. companies. Between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. government filed over three times as many foreign corruption actions as all other countries combined, the committee said, citing a report from the anti-corruption non-profit TRACE International.
The committee recommended that the government try to reduce the asymmetry between its efforts to curb foreign corruption and those of other countries. One way to do this, it said, would be to get other countries to agree to step up their enforcement against foreign corruption. Another would be to lower compliance costs for U.S. companies—for example, by instituting a scheme under which companies would enjoy a presumption of compliance if they made annual regulatory filings, similar to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
