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On May 16, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a historic decision defining for the first time what constitutes an "instrumentality" of a foreign government, and thus who may be considered a "foreign official" under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"). In U.S. v. Esquenazi , Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez, executives of Terra Telecommunications Corp., a Florida-based company that purchased phone time from foreign vendors, were convicted of conspiracy, violations of the FCPA and money-laundering for taking part in a multi-year scheme to bribe

On May 23, 2014, the Ontario Superior Court in Ottawa imposed the first jail sentence under Canada's Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA). Defendant Nazir Karigar, who was convicted in August 2013, was sentenced to three years imprisonment for conspiring to bribe foreign public officials. While working as an agent for Cryptometrics Canada, Karigar attempted to bribe an Indian Cabinet Minister and officials of Air India (a state-owned airline) to win a contract to supply facial recognition software. Karigar was the first individual prosecuted under the CFPOA, which applies to

The SEC announced that former Noble CEO Mark A. Jackson and former Director and Division Manager of Noble's Nigeria subsidiary James J. Ruehlen, who remains an executive at the company, agreed to settle the SEC's pending civil actions against them. The SEC filed its complaint in February 2012 , in which it alleged that Jackson and Ruehlen had authorized the payment of bribes to customs officials to process false paperwork purporting to show the export and re-import of oil rigs, when in fact the rigs never moved. To settle the action, Jackson consented to the entry of a final judgment enjoining

O n July 7, 2014, just days before the SEC's first-ever FCPA trial was to begin, the parties announced a settlement that closed one of the remaining chapters of the Panalpina -related cases brought by the SEC and DOJ. The resolution, which has been characterized in the media as a defeat for the government, ended a case filed by the SEC against Mark A. Jackson (former Noble Corp. CEO) and James J. Ruehlen (former director of Noble's subsidiary in Nigeria, and current head of Noble's operations in Mexico). No fines or administrative penalties were imposed beyond the defendants' consent to

On July 28, 2014, the Smith Wesson Holding Corporation ("Smith Wesson") agreed to pay $2 million to settle civil Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). In what was described by the SEC as a "systemic pattern of making, authorizing and offering bribes while seeking to expand the company's overseas business," the company undertook actions in Pakistan, Indonesia and other emerging markets that led to charges under each of the FCPA's anti-bribery, books and records, and internal controls provisions. The SEC's charges described