The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has become a familiar feature on the American corporate landscape. As the U.S. government continues to devote greater resources to investigating FCPA violations, other nations have broadened the enforcement of their own anti-bribery laws and expanded the level of inter-government cooperation in prosecuting corruption. There is also a new focus on corporate transactions, as the enforcement agencies turn their attention to the FCPA implications of mergers and acquisitions.
Baker Botts attorneys are at the forefront of these developments, both in the United States and abroad. We can offer companies unparalleled experience and mature counsel regarding FCPA matters.
Our litigation and counseling experience encompasses every aspect of the FCPA, both civil and criminal:
- internal corporate investigations
- governmental investigations and white-collar defense
- due diligence investigations
- advice in connection with significant corporate transactions, including due diligence and the structuring of deals
- risk-assessment and risk-management counseling
- corporate compliance and employee training
- Department of Justice opinion requests
- collateral consequences, such as monitors, and suspension and debarment
We are also experienced in responding to government investigations occurring outside the United States, and we have coordinated ground-breaking multi-jurisdictional investigations. Our FCPA experience covers the world — Europe, Africa, South and Central Asia, the Far East, Russia and the former Soviet Union, South America, the Middle East — and we have working knowledge of the anti-corruption laws and enforcement agencies of many countries.
Our lawyers have top credentials. One of our partners has served as the General Counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission, others are SEC alumni, another is the former Chief of the Criminal Fraud Section of the Department of Justice, and many of our lawyers have served as in-house counsel to various corporations, both domestically and internationally. Our lawyers litigated the first-ever FCPA case to go to trial, United States v. Crawford Enterprise, Inc., and they also speak and write frequently in many different forums about all aspects of the Act.
Our clients include numerous Fortune 100 companies and others, both public and private, in every region of the world, and in many different industries, such as energy, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, defense, real estate development, and information technology. And the work we have done for these clients — many of whom have faced novel or unusually complex FCPA issues — gives us unique insight into the cutting-edge issues now facing companies under the FCPA.
We have conducted countless internal investigations and represented companies in numerous governmental investigations, including one of the largest multi-year, multi-jurisdictional investigations ever brought under the FCPA.
We were involved in the recent Department of Justice opinion request that set a new standard for FCPA due diligence in connection with certain mergers and acquisitions.
We have recently worked directly with governmental officials in an African nation, in concert with U.S. government officials, in an attempt to alter the climate for corruption in one regulatory sector in that country.
We provided crisis management for a company whose asset had been detained and held while foreign officials attempted to extort a bribe.