The FCPA Blog

Andy Spalding, a lawyer on a year-long Fulbright Research Grant in Mumbai, India, writes to us from time to time. Here's his latest dispatch:

Dear FCPA Blog,

I have just returned from a week in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which your readers know to be an FCPA hot spot. I tried to preach the anti-corruption message through a series of lectures at one of the law schools, and interviewed a number of local practitioners.  This experience taught two undeniable lessons:

1.  It is nearly impossible to overstate the importance of curbing corruption in Kazakhstan. Graft is endemic (the country ranked a miserable 120 on the 2009 Corruption Perception Index) and perpetuates all manner of legal and social pathologies. The citizens of Almaty are perhaps as cynical about their government as any I have ever met, and with very good reason. Worse yet, U.S. companies have participated in, and reinforced, this culture of corruption, as we all learned through watching the James Giffen case explode in 2003. But this brings me to the second lesson:

2.  The present FCPA enforcement regime has done that country tremendous harm. How did the U.S. respond to the discovery of systematic bribery by U.S. companies in Kazakhstan? The same way that we respond to nearly every such revelation: we slapped severe criminal sanctions on myriad U.S. persons and hoped that other companies would get the message. Those companies did indeed get a message; whether it is the message we want to convey is a very interesting question. Since Giffen's arrest, western investment in the oil and gas sector in Kazakhstan has dropped precipitously. This is hardly surprising, and some would argue that it is precisely the desired outcome. But consider what happened in its wake. In that same period of time, investment has gone up, just as rapidly, from a well-capitalized country that has refused to adopt the OECD Convention: China.

Query: is Kazakhstan any better off now? I can tell you that the Kazakhstanis most certainly do not think so. There is a level of apprehension there about rising Chinese investment and influence that is quite shocking. A lawyer from a leading U.S. firm said, "My clients used to all be from the west, and now they're almost all Chinese."  Another lawyer said, "The Chinese don't like to spend as much on lawyers, because they solve their legal problems through other means." Those of us in anti-corruption circles know exactly what that lawyer meant. The law students are petrified by the prospect of working for, or with, Chinese companies -- "they don't do business the same way," so many of them told me. And yet, many of these same students are taking Chinese language classes.

Will corruption go down in Kazakhstan after the Giffen case? Certainly not. Has our withdrawal of FDI from Kazakhstan somehow set that country on the road to reform? This answer is also certain.

What's the remedy? Finding a way to enforce the FCPA that deters bribery without deterring investment in developing countries like Kazakhstan. We're smart enough to figure it out. Simply washing our hands of corruption by pulling out of developing countries like Kazakhstan, leaving them to be ravaged by companies that bribe without any fear of penalty, is morally irresponsible.

Thanks,
Andy Spalding

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Readers with experiences in Kazakhstan or similar countries are welcome to comment as well.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of VirginiaThe Miller Center of Public Affairs [at the University of Virginia] has a long tradition of luring influential people to speak to engaged citizens, but this genteel practice degenerated on Friday, March 19, at an appearance by the lawyer who wrote the infamous “torture memos” that the Bush Administration used to justify waterboarding terrorist suspects. While irate audience members shouted at the interrupters, the Center’s programs director, George Gilliam, scolded disruptive protesters during the talk by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. -- Uncivil discourse: Protesters disrupt Yoo at Miller Center, The Hook

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Free speech is something most Americans say they believe in. But some don't act that way. Shouting down a speaker because his or her view is unpopular isn't free speech. It's using more volume to drown out less volume. If we're honest, many of us would say we believe in free speech for ourselves but not for our neighbors. That's why we all need the First Amendment.

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Andy Spalding's views of FCPA enforcement as a de facto economic sanction against developing countries aren't always popular. But they force us to look again at national and global anti-corruption policy. We think Stephanie Connor's response to Andy's most recent comments in this space sum up the counter-argument nicely. She says,

Dear Andy,

Don’t get me wrong, I think your analysis of the FCPA as a de facto sanction is downright brilliant. But we have to distinguish between increases in investment and decreases in poverty. As many commentators have noted over the last several decades, foreign direct investment does not impact poverty because of corruption. This is one of the most significant factors playing into the relationship between resource wealth and economic failure. Corruption prevents the proceeds of investment from spreading throughout an economy because it creates strong incentives for political actors to control the access to resources. 

Moreover, we cannot gloss over the practical realities that “black-knights” will face when they invest in corrupt economies, and what that means for long-term investment. For example, when the Angolan government rejected IMF funding in 2007, China stepped in as Angola’s benefactor. But the Chinese government soon grew exasperated with the rampant corruption, and demanded greater transparency.

You and I agree that we need robust international anti-corruption enforcement. But others are abusing a short-term analysis of the FCPA's impact on investment to reach the opposite conclusion. I’m referring to a recent suggestion that FCPA enforcement will undermine Haiti’s recovery. For the first time in its sad history, Haiti is getting some attention from the international community, an influx of donor money, and an opportunity to rebuild. This is not the time to advocate for bribery.

No amount of FCPA enforcement will completely stamp out corruption. There will always be local officials who demand bribes, and there will always be free-riding foreign companies who choose to ignore the law. The FCPA seeks to punish comparatively wealthy actors who benefit from and sustain a lack of transparency. We should give the law some time to work.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Connor

Get ready for even more FCPA enforcement against individuals. The DOJ's Mark Mendelsohn was quoted this week by Reuters as saying:

"If you look at who we're prosecuting, we're prosecuting mid-level to senior level corporate officers and employees, CEOs, CFOs, heads of international sales. My point is these are people with significant positions in companies."

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Innospec's docs. Thanks to the kindness of a reader, the criminal information, sentencing memo, and plea agreement can now be downloaded from our post here.

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For the record. Andy Spalding, whose provocative comments appear in this space from time to time, has never said graft is good. Our over-zealous headline writers came up with that silly phrase.

Andy himself says: "I certainly don't believe that 'graft is good' . . . I do believe, though, that our efforts to reduce bribery can, quite unintentionally, sometimes produce bad results.  But fortunately, we need not choose between enforcing the FCPA or not.  Rather, we should develop an approach to enforcement that is more sensitive to the reality of collateral damage in economically desperate countries, one that punishes bribery without punishing the citizens, for example, of Haiti."

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What time is it there? Expanding cooperation between the DOJ and the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office is one of the year's most important FCPA enforcement trends. How's it working? We don't really know. But it brought to mind this clip from Extras.

Last week we heard from Washington, D.C. lawyer and former aid worker Stephanie Connor. She disagreed with some comments Andy Spalding, left, has made in this space. Andy's a lawyer on a year-long Fulbright Research Grant in Mumbai, India.

He's questioned whether bribery is always bad and enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act always good. (His concepts were discussed without attribution to him in a recent WSJ Law Blog post "Is the FCPA Standing in the Way of Haiti’s Recovery?" here.)

Here's his response:

Hi Stephanie,

First, nice to meet you and thanks for your comments. They have forced me to examine my assumptions in some unexpectedly difficult ways.

I understand the crux of your comment to be that we should not treat the FCPA as if it were primarily designed as a poverty reduction tool. I agree.

Rather, the statute is primarily designed to be a bribery reduction tool, and we should not evaluate its success in the first instance by the extent to which it reduces poverty. But to say that it is not designed to be a poverty reduction tool is very different from saying that we should enforce it without regard to its impact on poverty.

As strongly as I agree with the former statement, I disagree with the latter. Indeed, many believed in 1977 and still believe today that proper enforcement of the FCPA will have the collateral effect of mitigating poverty -- through reducing corruption, we will eventually improve economic productivity. I am among those who subscribe to this theory, when thinking about the very long term.

But what if FCPA enforcement has the more immediate effect, quite unwittingly, of exacerbating already severe social problems, including but not limited to poverty? Should we take notice? Should we modify our approach to enforcement? Can the FCPA be enforced in such a way that it can deter bribery without deterring investment in developing countries? I certainly believe that it can, and that it should. Is there a reason why it should not?

I would truly love to hear your response.

All the best,
Andy Spalding

Views from other readers are also welcome.

Editor's Note: For the record, Andy has never said graft is good. Our over-zealous headline writers came up with that phrase. Andy himself says: " I certainly don't believe that 'graft is good' . . . I do believe, though, that our efforts to reduce bribery can, quite unintentionally, sometimes produce bad results.  But fortunately, we need not choose between enforcing the FCPA or not.  Rather, we should develop an approach to enforcement that is more sensitive to the reality of collateral damage in economically desperate countries, one that punishes bribery without punishing the citizens, for example, of Haiti."

We like hearing from readers. Here's a note from Washington, D.C. lawyer Stephanie Connor, left:

Dear FCPA Blog,

I'm grateful for the insights this blog, and its many contributors, have provided throughout the years. This includes the admirable work of Andy Spalding, Art Carden and Lisa Verdon – academics who cast doubt upon the ultimate utility of the FCPA as a means of combating corruption and reducing poverty in the developing world. As a lawyer and a former aid worker, I don’t always agree.

While I believe anti-corruption enforcement is necessary, I am troubled by the tenor of the recent dialogue surrounding that enforcement. This has nothing to do with the quality of the analyses that Spalding, Carden and Verdon are providing, and everything to do with the fact that expectations for what the FCPA can and should accomplish have grown completely out of hand.

The works of Spalding, Carden, and Verdon are important. Poverty reduction strategies need to be evaluated, measured, and critically assessed. But the FCPA is not a poverty reduction strategy. We cannot mistake supply-side anti-corruption enforcement for the wider effort to reduce corruption in the developing world -– a project that will require significant advancements in health, education, and the rule of law, for starters. The FCPA simply aims to ensure that U.S. actors do not provide monetary lifelines to the autocrats and oligarchs who will be threatened by the advancement of their people. It will not solve the underlying problems of poverty.

Holding the FCPA up as the magic bullet for poverty reduction is unfair to those who have foregone lucrative opportunities in order to comply with the law. By framing the anti-corruption effort as a means of vanquishing poverty, we risk handing an early victory to opponents of the Act. When the FCPA is inevitably unsuccessful, the enthusiasm for anti-corruption may dissipate, the resources for FCPA enforcement may quietly disappear, and those companies that have sacrificed so much to act within the confines and spirit of the law would be left at an even greater disadvantage. 

I admire the business people and aid workers who refuse to pay bribes. They often make that choice because they realize that paying one official will lead to a torrent of other requests. The FCPA supports them. The law allows them to tell a soldier with a greedy glint in his eye that they would pay him but cannot do so without risking their company and their job. This is much easier than telling him that they could pay him but just don’t feel like it. 

A successful anti-corruption effort will take more than a few years, or even a few dozen years, of enforcement. Maintaining that effort over a prolonged period requires that we also manage our expectations. It should be enough that the FCPA reduces some high-level corruption. We need not, and should not, ask it to do more.

Best Regards,

Stephanie Connor

The views expressed in this post belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of her employer.