The FCPA Blog

FCPA violations: The Justice Department is targeting individuals who pay bribes to foreign officials. Photo by Ken MayerTwo former Willbros managers on Thursday were given jail time for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They bribed foreign government officials and employees of state-owned firms to win pipeline work and gain other advantages.

Jim Bob Brown, 48, was sentenced in federal court in Houston to one year and one day in prison and fined $17,500; Jason Edward Steph, 40, was sentenced to 15 months and fined $2,000.

Steph, who once served as general manager of on-shore operations for Willbros International, pleaded guilty in November 2007. He said in his plea that in 2005 he, Brown, and others arranged to pay about $1.8 million in cash to Nigerian officials.

Brown pleaded guilty in September 2006 to conspiracy to violate the FCPA. He and Steph cooperated with the government’s investigation.

Brown said from 1996 to 2004, he and others plotted to negotiate lower Nigerian federal and state taxes in exchange for bribes to revenue officials. And he admitted conspiring to make corrupt payments to officials in the Nigerian court system in exchange for favorable treatment on pending cases. Brown also paid at least $300,000 in bribes to Ecuadorian government officials from PetroEcuador and PetroCommercial in exchange for contracts. The DOJ said all the payments violated the FCPA's antibribery provisions.

In May 2008, Willbros Group and its subsidiary Willbros International paid $22 million and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ to settle criminal FCPA charges in connection with corrupt payments to Nigerian and Ecuadorian officials. Willbros Group also paid $10.3 million (disgorgement of $8.9 million, plus prejudgment interest of $1.4 million) to resolve the SEC's civil enforcement action.

In December 2008, another former executive and an ex-consultant of Willbros International Inc. were charged in the case. Consultant Paul G. Novak, 43, pleaded guilty in November 2009 to conspiracy to violate the FCPA. He's scheduled to be sentenced on February 19. James K. Tillery, 49, a former Willbros International executive, was also charged but remains at large.

In May 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Steph and former employees Gerald Jansen, Lloyd Biggers, and Carlos Galvez with aiding and abetting Willbros Group's violation of the antibribery, books and records, and internal controls provisions of the FCPA, and knowingly circumventing the FCPA's internal controls and books and records provisions. All four consented to permanent injunctions, with Jansen and Galvez ordered to pay civil penalties of $30,000 and $35,000 respectively. Determination of Steph's civil penalty was deferred pending his sentencing in the criminal case.

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Substantive FCPA violations and conspiracy to violate the FCPA both carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Here are some recent FCPA-related sentences:

• In November last year, Frederic Bourke, who was convicted at trial, was sentenced to a year and day in jail for conspiracy.

• David Kay and Douglas Murphy started serving their sentences last year for substantive FCPA violations. They were convicted at trial and sentenced to 37 months and 63 months respectively.

• In April 2009, Virginia-based physicist Shu Quan-Sheng was sentenced to 51 months in prison. He pleaded guilty in November 2008 to one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and two counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act.

• In September 2008, two former executives from telecoms company ITXC Corporation avoided prison. Roger Michael Young was sentenced to five years probation with three months home confinement after he pleaded guilty in July 2007 to violating the FCPA and the Travel Act. Steven J. Ott also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years probation with six months in a community confinement center and six months home confinement.

• Also in September 2008, Albert "Jack" Stanley, KBR's former CEO, pleaded guilty to a two-count criminal information charging him with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. He agreed to a seven year jail term with a chance for reduction based on his cooperation. 

• In  April 2008, a former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu, received 15 months in prison for conspiring to award World Bank contracts to consultants in exchange for kickbacks and for helping a contractor bribe a foreign official. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and to violating the FCPA.

A copy of the DOJ's January 28, 2010 release is here.

See our prior posts about Willbros and its personnel here.

A former consultant for a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc. pleaded guilty on November 12 to paying $6 million in bribes to officials who worked in the Nigerian government, in government-owned companies, and in a political party there. Paul G. Novak, 43, pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and one substantive count of violating the FCPA. He's scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, 2010.

The bribes were intended to help Willbros win and keep contracts for the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS) Project, worth about $387 million. The project was a natural gas pipeline system in the Niger Delta.

Novak, along with alleged co-conspirators James Kenneth Tillery, Jason Steph, Jim Bob Brown and three employees from a German construction company based in Mannheim, Germany, agreed to make the corrupt payments to, among others, government officials from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, a senior official in the executive branch of the federal government of Nigeria, members of a Nigerian political party and officials from the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd.

To fund the bribes, Steph and others used a Willbros' subsidiary, Willbros West Africa Inc. (WWA), to enter into agreements with two consulting companies Novak represented. Without providing any services, the consulting companies would invoice WWA and be paid from Willbros' bank account in Houston to accounts in Lebanon. Novak then used money from the Lebanese accounts to bribe the Nigerian officials.

In addition to Novak, two Willbros employees have pleaded guilty in the case and Willbros has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement:

On September 14, 2006, Jim Bob Brown, a former Willbros executive, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, for his role in making corrupt payments to Nigerian government officials to obtain and retain the EGGS contract and for making corrupt payments in Ecuador. Brown's sentencing is currently scheduled for January 28, 2010.

On November 5, 2007, Jason Steph, also a former Willbros executive, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, for making corrupt payments to Nigerian government officials to obtain and retain the EGGS contract. Steph's sentencing is also scheduled for January 28, 2010. See our post here.

On May 14, 2008, Willbros Group Inc. and Willbros International Inc. entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a $22 million criminal penalty, for the illegal payments to government officials in Nigeria and Ecuador. See our post here.

James K. Tillery was charged, along with Novak, for his alleged role in the bribery scheme in an indictment unsealed on December 19, 2008. According to the indictment, Tillery was a Willbros employee and executive from the 1980s through January 2005. He remains a fugitive. See our post here.

Download the DOJ's November 12, 2009 release here.

Our assigned subject is bribery abroad. So naturally some have wondered why we haven't talked about Chevron's legal tangle in Ecuador and accusations it might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act there. A couple of readers -- apparently from Ecuador -- even sent us what they said was evidence against the American oil company. It wasn't. We only found news stories from local papers and a copy of our own post about Chevron's $30 million oil-for-food settlement (here).

The reason we haven't talked about the Ecuador case is because we have no idea what it's really about. Like a gargantuan version of Jon & Kate, the back-and-forth charges have left us completely confused -- too addled to have an opinion.

As for facts, here's what we know, or what we think we know:

The case started 16 years ago. A group of Amazon residents alleged that Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001, contaminated large areas of rain forest before ending its operations and leaving the country. In a civil suit in the local courts, Chevron is facing damages that could reach $27 billion. The FCPA allegations (coming from sources in Ecuador, including the attorney general) involve an alleged plot by the oil company to bribe the country's leaders and a judge hearing the case.

Chevron says it's the Ecuador government and courts that haven't been honest. As evidence, it released tapes in August that appeared to implicate politicians and the judge in a plot to take $3 million in kickbacks from clean-up contractors if Chevron is found liable. Just how and why the tapes were made and given to Chevron is a mystery. The New York Times quoted Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing the Ecuadorans suing Chevron, as saying: “I suspect this is a Chevron sting operation; there needs to be an investigation into Chevron’s role in this as much as the judge’s. I find it awfully odd that these individuals would secretly film meetings using James Bond devices like a spy watch and a spy pen."

One of the men who made the tapes -- yes, using "watches and pens implanted with bugging devices" -- Diego Borja, was a Chevron contractor providing logistics services. The company said it didn't pay him for the tapes but gave him money to leave Ecuador with his family because of safety concerns. “Chevron had no involvement in the videotaping,” Kent Robertson, a company spokesman, told the New York Times. “Chevron referred this matter to the U.S. Department of Justice and Ecuador’s prosecutor general after making every reasonable effort to verify the evidence that was presented.”

Professor Ralph Steinhardt at George Washington University Law School -- a heavyweight expert in international civil litigation -- told the Times: “For someone who is trying to figure out what you can learn from this, it’s not as though it yields a rational narrative. In trying to appreciate the complexities of this case, you need to have the skills of a poker player rather than the skills of a lawyer.”

OK then. We've often displayed to ourself and others a lack of poker-playing skills. So for now at least, we fold.
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The Justice Department's aggressive enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against individuals continues. On Friday, a former executive and an ex-consultant of Willbros International Inc., a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc., were charged in connection with a conspiracy to bribe government officials in Nigeria and Ecuador. Former consultant Paul G. Novak, 41, was arrested on arrival at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. He was returned to the United States from Constantia, South Africa after his U.S. passport was revoked. James K. Tillery, 49, the former Willbros International executive, remains at large.

An indictment unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Houston charges Novak and Tillery with conspiring to bribe Nigerian and Ecuadorian government officials to obtain and retain gas pipeline construction and rehabilitation business from state-owned oil companies in those countries. Tillery and Novak face one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, two counts of violating the FCPA in connection with the authorization of specific corrupt payments to officials in Nigeria and Ecuador, and one count of conspiring to launder the bribe payments through purported consulting companies controlled by Novak.

If convicted of all charges, they each face up to 35 years in prison and fines of the greater of $250,000 or twice the pecuniary gain or loss from the FCPA offenses and, for the money laundering conspiracy, $500,000 or twice the value of the funds involved in the transfer.

The indictment says Tillery was a Willbros International employee and executive from the 1980s through January 2005. From 2002 until January 2005, he served as executive vice president and later as president of the company. Novak was an employee in the mid-1990s and later worked as an oil and gas consultant in Nigeria, purporting to provide consulting services to companies in that field.

Tillery and Novak, along with a Nigerian working as a consultant and employees of a German engineering firm Willbros had partnered with, conspired to pay more than $6 million in return for a $387 million contract to construct Nigeria's Eastern Gas Gathering System, according to the indictment. From late 2003 to 2005, payments were made and others promised to Nigerian officials. The indictment also alleges that Tillery, Novak and other Willbros employees based in South America paid $300,000 to officials at the state-owned oil company in Ecuador, PetroEcuador, and its subsidiary PetroComercial, in exchange for a $3 million contract to refurbish a 16-mile gas pipeline between Santo Domingo and El Beaterio.

In May this year, Willbros Group and Willbros International paid $22 million and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ to settle criminal FCPA charges in connection with corrupt payments to Nigerian and Ecuadorian officials. Willbros Group also paid $10.3 million (disgorgement of $8.9 million, plus prejudgment interest of $1.4 million) to resolve the SEC's civil enforcement action. As part of the settlement, the Willbros companies have been cooperating with the DOJ's ongoing investigation.

In November 2007, Jason Edward Steph, 37, who once served as general manager of on-shore operations for Willbros International, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the FCPA by bribing Nigerian officials. Steph said that in February and March of 2005 he, former Willbros executive Jim Bob Brown, and others arranged to pay about $1.8 million in cash to the officials. Brown also pleaded guilty to a similar charge in September 2006. He and Steph are cooperating with the government’s investigation and are waiting to be sentenced.

In the May 2008 SEC complaint against Willbros Group, Steph and former employees Gerald Jansen, Lloyd Biggers, and Carlos Galvez were named for aiding and abetting Willbros Group's violation of the antibribery, books and records, and internal controls provisions of the FCPA, and knowingly circumventing the FCPA's internal controls and books and records provisions. All four consented to permanent injunctions, with Jansen and Galvez ordered to pay civil penalties of $30,000 and $35,000 respectively. Determination of Steph's civil penalty was deferred pending his sentencing in the criminal case.

Willbros Group, Inc. trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WG. It provides construction, engineering and other services to the oil and gas industry.
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Download the DOJ's Dec. 19, 2008 release regarding Paul G. Novak and James K. Tillery here.

Download the DOJ's indictment of Novak and Tillery here.

Download the DOJ's May 14, 2008 release regarding Willbros Group Inc. here.

View the SEC's Litigation Release No. 20571 (May 14, 2008) in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Willbros Group, Inc., et al., Civil Action No. 4:08-CV-01494 U.S.D.C., Southern District of Texas (Houston Division) here.

Download the SEC's May 14, 2008 civil complaint against Willbros Group Inc., Jason Steph, Gerald Jansen, Lloyd Biggers and Carlos Galvez here.

Download the DOJ's November 5, 2007 release regarding Jason Edward Steph's guilty plea here.

Download Steph's November 5, 2007 Plea Agreement with the DOJ here.
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A Tokyo executive was sentenced to two years in jail and fined $80,000 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to rig bids for the sale of marine hose and other industrial rubber products.

Former Bridgestone manager Misao Hioki pleaded guilty to two felony counts filed on Dec. 8, 2008 in U.S. District Court in Houston. He was charged for his role in a conspiracy to violate the FCPA by making corrupt payments to government officials in Latin America and elsewhere. He was also charged with conspiring to rig bids, fix prices and allocate market shares of marine hose in the United States and other countries.

Marine hose is used to transfer oil between tankers and storage facilities. The marine-hose cartel fixed prices worldwide from 2004 to 2007 for products worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hioki was one of eight foreign executives arrested in May 2007 following their participation in a cartel meeting in Houston. The Justice Department said he's the ninth individual to plead guilty in the bid-rigging investigation but is the first person in the cartel to plead guilty to an FCPA charge.

The DOJ said Hioki and his co-conspirators:

* Negotiated with employees of government-owned businesses, who are foreign officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in at least the following Latin American countries Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela to make corrupt payments to those foreign officials to secure business for his company and its U.S. subsidiary;

* Approved the making of corrupt payments to the foreign government officials through the local sales agents, to secure business for his company and its U.S. subsidiary;

* Paid the local sales agents a commission for each sale and, if a corrupt payment to the customer through the local sales agent was involved with the sale, concealed that payment within the commission payment made to the local sales agent; and

* Coordinated these corrupt payments in Latin America through the U.S. subsidiary’s offices in the United States including its Houston office.

It's becoming more common to see FCPA charges in cases investigated primarily for other offenses. Last month, for example, Shu Quan-Sheng, a naturalized U.S. citizen who sold controlled space-launch technology to China, pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and to two counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act.

And in September, U.S. citizens Nam Nguyen, Joseph Lukas, Kim Nguyen, and An Nguyen, along with their Philadelphia-based company, Nexus Technologies (see our post here) were charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and four substantive counts of violating the FCPA. They're accused of bribing government officials in Vietnam to secure contracts to supply high-tech items -- including third-party underwater mapping and bomb containment equipment, helicopter parts, chemical detectors, satellite communication parts and air tracking systems. That case doesn't yet involve charges under U.S. export laws.

View the DOJ's Dec. 10, 2008 release here.

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