Aibel Group Ltd, the UK arm of the British-Norwegian oil-service company has agreed a further fine with the DOJ.
Many FCPA professionals will recall that in February 2007, as part of a massive investigation into the bribery of customs officials in Nigeria, much of it centring on freight-forwarder Panalpina (see FCPA Blog summary here) three subsidiaries of the UK company Vetco International Ltd pleaded guilty in the United States to violations of the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA. Together, they were fined a total of $26m, which was the largest criminal fine to date in an FCPA prosecution by the US Justice Department.
One of those subsidiaries was Aibel Group Ltd, which at the time entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the DOJ instead of a fine. This DPA required continued co-operation, an enhanced compliance program, and retention of FCPA monitors.
Although based in Europe, Aibel came under the auspices of the FCPA because it used other group companies based in the US to effect the bribes to the Nigerian customs officials.
Aibel Group has now admitted that despite spending considerable time and money on FCPA compliance, it still failed to comply with its obligations under the DPA and had continued the same underlying conduct. As part of this plea agreement, Aibel Group agreed to pay a $4.2 million criminal fine.
More on this can be found at the FCPA Blog here.
The DOJ press release can be found here. The plea agreement can be found here.
Reforming Bribery – the new UK legislation?
This post relates to the new Bribery Bill, and the position has moved on since the post was written. A more recent posts on the Bribery Bill can be found here.
On 20 November 2008, the UK’s Law Commission published its final report ‘Reforming Bribery.’ The report can be found here.
The report contains recommendation to repeal the common law offence of bribery, and get rid of a number of related statutory provisions. These offences will be replaced by two general offences of bribery, and with one specific offence of bribing a foreign public official. In addition, there will be a new corporate offence of negligently failing to prevent bribery by an employee or agent.
The mainstay of the proposed new act comprises two general offences. The first is concerned with the conduct of the payer or giver of an advantage to induce someone to behave improperly.
The second offence is concerned with the recipient, who also commits a crime when he or she requests or accepts such an advantage either in exchange for acting improperly, or where the request/acceptance is itself improper.
Both offences extend the law to foreign nationals who reside in the UK and conduct their business there.
The new offence is that of bribing a foreign public official (‘FPO’) where the intention is to influence that official in his or her capacity as an FPO in the obtaining or retaining of business advantages.
Finally, there will be a new corporate offence of negligently failing to prevent bribes being given or offered by an employee or agent of a company or limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales. It will be a defence to this crime that the company had adequate systems in place to prevent bribery.
Directors or equivalent officers of a company that contravenes any of these offences may find themselves held criminally liable as individuals. These new offences will apply to conduct anywhere in the world by a UK national, resident or company and will attract a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for individuals and a n unlimited fine for companies.
The Law Commission stopped short of recommending a new offence of inadequately supervising foreign subsidiary companies, however proposals become law, then the UK’s corruption legislation should in many areas surpass the FCPA.