Anticorruption Compliance & Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

The Squire Sanders anticorruption compliance and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) team helps clients to comply with the US FCPA, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and other anticorruption regimes, and works to provide global solutions for clients facing the challenges of increasingly complex regulation and intensified global enforcement.

We excel in cross-border collaboration. Whether a US issuer is conducting FCPA due diligence for a merger transaction spanning multiple jurisdictions or a Europe-based company is responding to an RFP in the Middle East involving an Asia-based services provider, our strong capabilities and cohesion enable us to bring our team members' collective insights regarding cultural matters, political risk and legal issues to bear in counseling our clients.

We provide the following full range of anticorruption services to US-based and non-US-based issuers, private and public companies, individuals, boards of directors and audit committees in diverse industries:

• Compliance: preparing customized compliance and training programs and conducting risk assessments and audits to prevent and detect potential FCPA violations.
• Due Diligence: identifying “red flags” and conducting risk based pre-acquisition due diligence in a cost effective manner to minimize potential successor liability.
• Protective Measures: preparing protective anti-corruption-related contract provisions or obtaining opinion releases from the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
• Internal Investigations: conducting internal corporate investigations in the United States and around the world (Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, Greece, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Republic of Congo, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Ukraine) and advising boards of directors and audit committees on the results of investigations.
• Defending DOJ and SEC Enforcement Proceedings: representing clients in enforcement proceedings concerning investigations in Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Yemen.
• Gifts and Entertainment: counseling clients on guidelines for business courtesies to foreign officials under the FCPA and local anticorruption laws.

Our lawyers in each jurisdiction closely track changes to local anticorruption statutes and their application and are able to provide advice on the local laws and business culture. Considering the joint-prosecution and collaboration between the SEC and DOJ with their non-US counterpart enforcement agencies, knowledge of local anticorruption laws is an invaluable asset. For example, the UK Bribery Act has extraterritorial application and strict liability for companies lacking adequate anticorruption procedures. We are presently providing anticorruption guidance to companies with operations in the UK on how this law will impact their operations in the US and emerging markets around the world. Squire Sanders has also been chosen as the partner law firm in the Czech Republic and Hungary for TRACE International, Inc., a leading nonprofit membership association addressing anticorruption issues for multinational corporations.

We take an integrated approach in analyzing FCPA and anticorruption issues. This approach includes the new obligations under the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as Sarbanes-Oxley and anti-money-laundering laws. Our lawyers also have depth of experience in successfully dealing with the full spectrum of export control and embargo laws that may be triggered by our clients international activities. We also are able to include on our global FCPA/anticorruption teams the legal disciplines that often accompany anticorruption issues. These interrelated disciplines often include corporate, regulatory, labor and employment, civil and criminal law. One cannot provide effective representation in this very complex area of the law without learned input from lawyers experienced in these legal disciplines.