Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Assessing Risk and Maintaining Compliance Webcast

Lindsay Meyer, William (Widge) Devaney and Carrie Kroll will present "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Assessing Risk and Maintaining Compliance" Webcast.

The US Department of Justice ("DOJ") has spoken, and the US pharmaceutical and life sciences industries should listen. DOJ has set its sights on "the application of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to the pharmaceutical industry in the months and years ahead," said Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general for DOJ's Criminal Division. In his November 2009 address to the "Pharmaceutical Regulatory and Compliance Congress and Best Practice Forum," Breuer made clear that DOJ will focus on the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries, where non-US sales are "close to $100 billion dollars, or roughly one-third," of the total industry revenue.

The FCPA prohibits the paying, offering, promising to pay (or authorizing to pay or offer) money or "anything of value" with corrupt intent, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. In addition, the FCPA requires publicly traded companies to accurately reflect all payments in their books and records, and to maintain adequate FCPA controls.

Over the last five years, there has been a dramatic increase in FCPA enforcement activity. Breuer points out that since 2005, DOJ has brought 57 new prosecutions—more than the number of prosecutions from FCPA's enactment in 1977 to 2005. Indeed, in 2009 DOJ is conducting more than 130 active FCPA investigations. Moreover, it will combine its FCPA attorneys and FBI agents with attorneys and agents from its "health care fraud unit" to undertake a focused interdepartmental initiative to "investigate FCPA violations in the pharmaceutical and device industries." Effective deterrence, said Breuer, will warrant investigation and prosecution of corporations, as well as their senior executives.

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