Alstom SA, a French power and transportation company, will pay a record $772.3 million to settle U.S. claims that it doled out tens of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials around the world, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday. The sum is the highest amount the DOJ has ever secured to end a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation.
The company also pleaded guilty to FCPA charges as part of the deal to resolve the matter. The company didn’t have strong internal controls to discourage graft and falsified records connected to a scheme to bribe officials in the Bahamas, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan for more than 10 years, U.S. prosecutors said. Additionally, Alstom U.S. subsidiaries Alstom Power Inc. and Alstom Grid Inc. both entered into deferred prosecution agreements that would allow the DOJ to dismiss criminal FCPA charges against them in three years.
