FCPA’s New Enforcement Focus Shifts to U.S. National Interests

In an interview with Commercial Dispute Resolution, Pillsbury partner Rich Donoghue said that “a lot of people thought that when the president’s executive order came out some time ago imposing this FCPA pause, [they] thought that the department was simply going to abandon FCPA and [its] enforcement. I didn’t think that was the case. I thought they would come out with a narrower approach to FCPA, and that’s what this is. It means the FCPA is not dead, but it’s certainly looking at this through a somewhat different lens.”

He told Global Investigations Review that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) intent to crack down on conduct that “directly undermines U.S. national interests” is consistent with the Trump administration’s America First agenda.

From the administration's standpoint, taxpayer money should not be spent investigating a foreign company for engaging in corruption in a foreign country, which should be that government's problem to fix, Donoghue, a former acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General, told The National Law Journal.

“There's a good counter argument –which gets back to prior administrations’ view– that if you allow that to happen and you don't step in and enforce international norms and anti-corruption standards, then it's going to hurt the U.S. eventually,” he added. "But if you take this ... America First view of policy and overlay it onto the DOJ and its mission, you see things like this. So in that sense, I think there is consistency to it.”