Welcome to Dorsey & Whitney’s monthly Anti-Corruption Digest. In this digest, we draw together news of enforcement activity throughout the world and aim to reduce your information overload. Our London, Minneapolis, New York and Washington DC offices edit the digest and select the most important material so that you can use this digest as a single source of information.
In this edition, among the many topics discussed, we report on Louis Berger International’s deferred prosecution agreement, which includes a $17 million criminal penalty, regarding bribes to foreign officials in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Kuwait; updates on the role the United States plays in the governance of international soccer in light of the on-going FIFA investigation; and reports that the former Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, who was convicted in September 2014 on 11 counts of corruption, has seen his appeal rejected.
Reports from the UK include the trial of Sijbrandus Scheffer, a former United Nations consultant, who allegedly accepted bribes to fix a $62 million contract for the supply of healthcare drugs to the Democratic Republic of Congo; a report on the concern expressed by a number of corruption watchdogs with regard to the introduction of deferred prosecution agreements in the UK; and updates regarding the ongoing trial of Tom Hayes, the first individual to stand trial for allegedly fixing Libor, a rate designed to reflect the cost of interbank borrowing.
Global updates include reports on the expanding investigation into corruption at Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil producer; a corruption matter in India regarding the selection process for governmental jobs and places at educational institutions, where tens of thousands of students and job applicants are said to have allegedly paid large sums to bureaucrats and politicians to rig test results; news that a subsidiary of Compass Group, a global catering and services company, allegedly paid bribes to members of the Kazakh government in return for high value contracts; reports that the Prime Minister of Romania, Victor Ponta, has been indicted on charges of corruption; plus anti-corruption developments in Australia, South Korea, Ukraine and more from around the globe.
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Corruption issues are also addressed in the Anti-Fraud Network’s newsletters: see http://www.antifraudnetwork.com for current and archived material; see also the Computer Fraud website at http://computerfraud.us and SEC Actions at http://www.secactions.com.
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