Insights & Case studies

Allegations continue regarding Carlsberg and facilitation payments in India. This is not a first in the Indian alcoholic beverages market. For example, US-Japanese Beam Suntory was charged with similar offences in the country and fined over $8 million as part of an SEC settlement in 2018. FP has been mapping out past corruption and facilitation payments schemes involving third parties to identify commons traits & lessons for the future.

DISTRIBUTORS have not received the same attention from compliance teams as agents, yet there are many examples of distributors being used for similar purposes. Several FCPA investigations have centred upon companies granting disproportionate discounts to certain distributors, which have then used the funds to pay bribes. An example of this is Smith & Nephew in Greece. Since the 1970s the pharmaceutical giant had been selling its orthopaedic equipment to a local distributor with a standard discount. In 1997 however, the two parties devised a scheme whereby Smith & Nephew granted [...]

Many firms have been investigated and penalised for directly engaging in bribery schemes. But did you know that merely having unsatisfactory international controls can constitute a breach of the FCPA, even in cases where corruption may not have taken place? An example of this is med-tech firm Stryker, fined nearly $8 million by the SEC in 2017 following discoveries about inadequate internal controls at multiple subsidiaries. In China, Stryker was selling ultrasonic equipment that was passed down through a chain of sub-distributors, several of which were unauthorised as per the [...]