Lawyers as Targets: How Attorneys Get Ensnared in Fcpa Misconduct
| Publication year | 2018 |
| Author | Lou Ramos and Ben Klein |
Lou Ramos and Ben Klein
Lou Ramos is a partner in DLA Piper's Washington, DC office whose practice focuses on complex white collar litigation, government and internal investigations, and compliance counseling. Before returning to DLA Piper, Lou served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia and as the lead compliance investigations counsel for a Fortune 100 company.
Benjamin D. Klein is a senior associate at DLA Piper and the Editor-in-Chief of the firm's Global Anticorruption Newsletter. He is a frequent commentator on topics ranging from corruption to cryptocurrency, and his writing has been featured in national print and digital publications including Law360, the National Law Journal, and the New York Law Journal.
There are some statements that corporate leaders never expect to hear from their employees, particularly from those entrusted with managing their company's legal and compliance risks.
"I should have refused to draft the contract that we used for paying bribes."
- Former Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd. In-House Counsel Jeffery Chow"I was making these bribe payments," "I knew better than to get involved in such illegal conduct," and "I lost my moral compass."
- Former PetroTiger Ltd. General Counsel Gregory Weisman
These are two jarring examples, pulled from court hearing transcripts of two recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions. The prosecutions of veteran lawyers at two different multinational corporations—Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd. and PetroTiger Ltd.—offer a sobering truth: those responsible for protecting their companies from corruption-related risks can be held criminally accountable for their lapses in judgment. In both cases, federal authorities targeted in-house counsel for their participation in bribery schemes, securing both guilty pleas and cooperation agreements.
Recently unsealed court documents shed light on the moments when these attorneys lost their moral compasses. In the paragraphs that follow, we examine the conduct that led to their prosecutions and identify potential pitfalls for both legal and compliance professionals, especially those responsible for managing bribery risks.
On December 22, 2017, Singapore-based Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd. (Keppel Singapore) and its wholly-owned US subsidiary, Keppel Offshore & Marine USA Inc. (Keppel USA), agreed to pay more than $422 million to American, Brazilian, and Singaporean authorities to resolve charges stemming from a decade-long scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to government officials in Brazil. The resolution was the second-largest anti-corruption enforcement penalty in 2017 and the DOJ's first coordinated antibribery action with its Singaporean counterpart. Keppel USA pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA while Keppel Singapore entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with a similar charge. The DOJ accused Keppel Singapore of conspiring to violate the FCPA by "paying approximately $55 million in bribes [between 2001 and 2014] to officials at the Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras and to the then-governing political party in Brazil" through a consultant "in order to win 13 contracts with Petrobras and another...
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