Officers of a Florida telecommunications company accused of bribing officials of a state-owned phone company in Haiti based their defense on a simple claim: The bribe recipients didn’t qualify as ”foreign officials” under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The judge didn’t buy it.
Executives of a Southern California valve company facing similar accusations tried the same argument. Again, no dice. And when a second California company and its executives raised the defense to charges of bribing officials of a Mexican utility, the result was the same. The defendants in that last case were convicted and now face prison.
