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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

Oh wow. FCPA violations. One of the key rules of American business is that you do not dance around with the FCPA [0]. (I suspect many new startup managers are not familiar with the FCPA but you can bet their investors are.) Violations of the FCPA do not just result in fines, they result in actual jail time for whomever did the bribing, whether they be individual low-level employees, contractors, or CEOs.

That said, the FCPA explicitly allows small "greasing" bribes that encourage low-level bureaucrats to expedite some action they would have taken anyway -- when such greasing payments are legal in the country in question. Obtaining the medical records of a rape victim certainly does not fall within this exception.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act

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Note that the facilitation payment exception to the FCPA is (i) extremely narrow; (ii) still requires the company to accurately report the payment as a facilitation payment, which Uber probably didn't do: https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/06/17/the-fcpas-fa...

> On top of that, even if a grease payment is exempt from the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, if that payment were not accurately recorded as a facilitation payment in the company’s books, then the company would be in violation of the FCPA’s accounting provisions–and if the mischaracterization in the books was “willful and knowing,” this would also be a criminal violation. On the other hand, if the company were to accurately record facilitation payments in its books, it would be officially confessing violations of the host country’s anti-bribery laws, as well as the laws of other countries that might have jurisdiction over the transaction (such as the UK) that lack any exception for facilitation payments in their foreign bribery laws. It is perhaps for this reason that I’m not aware of any company that today formally records facilitation bribes accurately in its books.

Very interesting! Thanks. The FCPA is a minefield that I'm still trying to wrap my head around many years after I was first trained on it.

What do you mean by "minefield"? To me, it sounds pretty easy to comply with - just don't offer (or accept) bribes.

Yes, what could possibly go wrong if an official doesn't respect the fact that you can't bribe them, pay their "official" fee, or hire a consultant from a very short list of "approved" consultants?

Anyone who hasn't chosen to spend years in jail when they were a victim of the airport mall shoplifter scam is an example of someone who has violated the FCPA.

Is this what you mean by "airport mall scam"?

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g293916-i3687-k6457766...

TL;DR -

Get accused of shoplifting and police give you the option of paying a $5k - $10k fine to avoid waiting in Thai jail for months awaiting trial.

Some accounts say it wasn't a scam and the people were actually caught on CCTV and that they were given the option of a paying a bribe to avoid waiting months in jail.

Exactly, and the defense claimed they handled the goods and put them back with the video being cut to simply imply they never were put back..

If you can claim duress in this case, then can you not bribe authorities in every case of being arrested and awaiting trial? Do you need to file paperwork to claim this duress, might another country acquire this paperwork before you flee? AFAIK, it is all a minefield as the higher post claims.

If they're holding you on trumped up allegations demanding a bribe to let you go, that falls under the FCPA's duress exception: http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2012/11/14/doj-and-sec-release-...

Could you bribe someone to avoid imprisonment for trial in US courts for health or safety reasons?

I don't think the DOJ will necessarily honor that unless you have some kind of health condition and evidence the foreign court is refusing to hear about it.. I don't think anyone in the cases I referenced made medical arguments before bribing officials.

As you point out for a business the FCPA is both elementary, serious, and enitrely possible to comply with.

That said the "jail time" provision is a joke. Going from memory no corporate officer has ever gone to prison for an FCPA violation. A handful have been hung out to pay nominal fines. The vast majority of personal culpability (when it does happen) are settled by the company.

Edit: yes, some employees have gone to jail. But not officers that I can recall.

While I feel the same raging wish to see corrupt business leaders suffer, I think it's just the nature of these cases that most enforcement works via Civil liability.

The FCPA is mostly concerned with larger, often public companies. Corruption at that level almost certainly is a sign of a organisational failure. It's the shared responsibility of a lot of people to create structures that don't allow for corruption.

At the core of it are the incentives: for an employee to consider bribing someone, a lot must have gone wrong. After all it carries the risk of jail time for them, while any benefits go to their employer first.

I distinctly remember that for quite some time doing buisness in israel put you on a black list on many arab countrys in the middle east.

So finding out who bribed to do buisness with both sides- was as easy as clicking on the "subsidiary" map on many companys sides.

And there they where, in peacefull coexistance, overcoming stupid hatred and propaganda with pocket butter.

"Doing business"? Hell, setting foot in Israel puts you on a blacklist in many Arab countries, to the extent where if you do this often you generally carry two passports. Goes the other way around too... try going into Israel after having Lebanon or Syria stamps on your passport and enjoy an hour in a dimly lit room answering questions to a couple of stone faced idf officers.

An off-topic gotcha can be illegally importing things into overseas offices --those momentary expediencies can result in long term bans or oversight from those governments when trying to get other things in legally.

Always follow your legal dept guidance. No matter how trivial it may seem (it's just for the expo, client demo, etc).

They've crossed a number of bright lines and they're still here. I don't mean this in a good way.

Aren't there some rumors that the Trump administration is weakening enforcement of the FCPA?

The Wikipedia article says that Trump called the FCPA a "horrible law" but Jeff Sessions says he'll continue to enforce it.

Which means "selective enforcement".

What part about "Jeff Sessions" didn't you get?

The dude is pretty fanatical when it comes to enforcing the law. I don't think he understands what "selective" means.

Enforcing the law like not committing perjury during his confirmation process?

I didn't say he was good at doing the job consistently, just that he seems pretty fanatical about enforcing it. I can see him ignoring the political side of things and enforcing laws very comprehensively depending on how it fits his ideology and the mood he's in that day.

All laws are selectively enforced.

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