With the Foreign Corruption Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act and a plethora of other anticorruption laws, enforcement actions are becoming extraterritorial (as opposed to extraterrestrial … ), according to Michael Volkov on his blog. And extraterritorial enforcement “can be mind-numbing in complications,” says Volkov. The multitude of acts, coupled with the jurisdictions of many companies, makes it, well, complicated.
Volkov (an occasional contributor to CorpCounsel.com) uses the example of the United Kingdom’s recent Deferred Prosecution Agreements program to illustrate how confusing enforcement will be. The DPA was created to align the FCPA and the UK Bribery Act investigations and it authorizes a resolution by agreement (as opposed to a guilty plea) for allegations of a failure to prevent bribery.
