This year’s twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) is an opportunity for reflection. With 190 parties as of October 2023, the UNCAC is the only legally binding international anti-corruption agreement. The treaty’s framework sets forth a comprehensive set of measures to prevent and combat corruption, calls for criminalization of the most prevalent misconduct, and requires member states to return assets obtained through this crime to the country from which they were stolen. The convention further calls for sanctions to be extended to those who participate in an attempt to commit corruption.
Recovering from a relatively slow start to the year, due in no small part to the global pandemic, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) Units of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) closed the year with a bang. With 32 combined FCPA enforcement actions, 51 total cases including ancillary enforcement, and a record-setting $2.78 billion in corporate fines and penalties (plus billions more collected by foreign regulators), 2020 marks another robust year in the annals of FCPA enforcement.
This client update provides an overview of the FCPA and other domestic and international anti-corruption enforcement, litigation, and policy developments from 2020, as well as the trends we see from this activity. We at Gibson Dunn are privileged to help our clients navigate these challenges daily and are honored again to have been ranked Number 1 in the