With the Biden administration making repeated commitments to fight bribery and corruption and a jump in whistleblower submissions to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, signs are promising for aggressive enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the US anti-bribery law, writes Phillips & Cohen partner Erika Kelton for Forbes.com.
Just as encouraging as the Biden administration’s commitment to fighting foreign bribery and corruption is the increase in whistleblowers reporting violations of the FCPA. Enforcement of anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws depend heavily on whistleblowers and the high-quality, inside information that only they can bring.
In fiscal year 2021, the SEC received 258 whistleblower submissions alleging bribery and corruption violations – a 25% jump over each of the previous three years under the Trump administration and the most since fiscal year 2016, when there also were 258 reports of FCPA violations.
The record-setting whistleblower awards issued in the past 16 months by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the SEC – nearly $200 million and $114 million, respectively – encouraged a flood of whistleblowers last year.
Read the article, “‘Significant Resolutions’ Of Foreign Bribery Cases Expected This Year,” on Forbes.com.