FCPA - The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of the US
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Antibribery laws can probably be found in most countries. Many deal with bribery or attempted bribery of government officials within the respective countries' own borders. In fact, as late as the 1990s it was common for countries to permit a tax write-off for bribery of foreign officials in a business context, even while dealing harshly with bribery on their home ground. With a slow beginning in the 1970s in the U.S., and a gradual extension through diplomacy and international organizations, the concept of prohibiting bribery of government officials of foreign countries became more widely accepted and enforced. Now most of the EU countries have laws somewhat similar to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and some countries around the world have implemented laws that are arguably stronger and of considerably broader reach.
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the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (accounting provisions)
1. AGA Medical Corporation (2008)
Demonstrating how easy it is to commit a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), this case involves an alleged agreement by a high-ranking officer and some employees of Minnesota company AGA Medical to make payments to doctors in China for their choice of AGA Medical products over those of competitors. One may ask whether payments would have been appropriate even if the payments had been purely commercial, but in this case the doctors were employees of a government-owned hospitals, making the doctors "foreign officials" under the FCPA. Allegations also included payments to the Chinese national Intellectual Property Office to approve AGA Medical's patents. The Department of Justice summary includes the following note:
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As noted in the summary of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) on this site (to read this article click here), the Department of Justice has announced that, in the event of unintended violations, it will consider as mitigating factors for penalties such matters as a company's history of attempted compliance, the seriousness of those attempts, and the involvement of outside advisers.