Page 49 - CCCA63_2009

CCCA_V3No3_Corruption-FIN.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_DriversSeat-FIN.qxd 9/16/09 9:48 PM Page 49 Feature Continued from page 38 “ It is our view that to have a credible deterrent effect, people have to go ” to jail. Mark Mendelsohn Chief prosecutor of foreign bribery U.S. Department of Justice And as further evidence that Canada is getting serious about combating corruption, this past January Niko Resources, a petro- leum exploration company, revealed that Canadian authorities were looking into allegations of improper payments to govern- ment authorities in Bangladesh under the CFPOA. More individual prosecutions Perhaps the most compelling reason for lawyers to be cautious is the risk of jail. In February, Halliburton Co. and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root,resolved FCPA charges by handing over a total of $579 million to the SEC and the DoJ. Even so, KBR’s lawyer, JeffreyTesler, was indicted over the matter, based on alle- gations that he was a middleman who handled corrupt payments to Nigerian officials. British police arrested Tesler in London in March and American authorities are trying to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial. According to Kent,the SEC is taking a closer look at the behav- iour of in-house counsel.“Last year the SEC took 76 actions last year against solicitors in cases where counsel failed to report incon- sistencies to their board, under [the Sarbanes-Oxley Act].” More to the point, Mark Mendelsohn, the DoJ’s chief prosecu- tor of foreign bribery stated clearly in 2007 that the surge of indi- vidual prosecutions under the FCPA is no accident.“It is our view that to have a credible deterrent effect, people have to go to jail. People have to be prosecuted where appropriate.” Yves Faguy is the senior editor of National and CCCA Magazine. AUTOMNE 2009 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association 49