Heads I'm Corrupt, Tails You're Poor

The FCPA matters because public corruption and poverty walk hand-in-hand. The point is illustrated too well by conditions in Bangladesh, a perennial basket case in the world economy. Here are some facts:

• Bangladesh ranked 162nd on Transparency International's 2007 Corruption Perception Index. It was tied with Cambodia, the Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
  

• This week the country's Anti-Corruption Commission said several of its own members have been taking bribes. "We have decided to take action against 28 of our officials after an internal monitoring and surveillance has found them seeking or taking bribes and breaking service rules such as secretly buying properties," a spokesman said.
  

• With more than 150,000,000 people, Bangladesh is the world's seventh most populous country. Yet its per capita GDP of just $1,374 ranks 148th, with about half the population living below the poverty line.

• A World Bank Country Director in Bangladesh, Frederick T. Temple, described the impact of public corruption this way: The poor suffer from corruption in many ways. Their access to services, such as public health and education, is reduced when drugs and textbooks are stolen from public facilities and sold privately and when doctors and teachers have high rates of absenteeism from their public jobs and sell their services privately. Corruption invariably channels public resources to the rich – the poor lack the funds to bribe or pay for the private provision of services that are supposed to be provided for free as public services. Almost everybody suffers from corruption, but the poor suffer more.

• Transparency International's 2005 household survey found that in public hospitals, 26.4% of patients had to pay bribes to doctors for receiving medical treatment; 37.5% who had surgery and 57% who had an X-ray had to pay bribes.

• Dealing with the police was worse. More than 90% of households who lodged police reports had to pay bribes and 80% who needed any type of clearance certificate had to pay bribes. Things weren't much better in court, where 71% of the accused and 66% of plaintiffs had to pay bribes.

• Of the households who took a loan from a public bank, the average waiting time was 108 days. For their loans, 61% had to pay bribes.

• A report from Bangladesh cited by the U.N. found that a cattle trader had to pay extortion money at eight different places along the way to the market, both to the police and organized criminals - which added as much as 20% to the selling price.

• Red tape -- public corruption's awful twin -- is legendary. The Bangladesh News recently reported that despite enormous demand, there's gridlock in the development of compressed natural gas delivery. "It often takes several years to launch a CNG refueling station as the government offices concerned miserably lack coordination," the report said. Over 100 applications are tied up. Approval is needed from at least nine departments and agencies, and aggrieved entrepreneurs said within one agency alone a file has "to pass through 64 tables," providing lots of opportunities for bureaucrats to extract bribes.

Bribe Takers Get A Pass Under The FCPA

With $4-a-gallon gas, disappearing honey bees and a world-wide hops shortage, there's hardly time to worry about anything else. Like why bribe-taking foreign officials are never prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Fortunately, a reader with time to ponder such things asked us that question after we reported last month (here) the FCPA-related sentencing of former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu.

Basu and his co-conspirator, Gautam Sengupta, another World Bank employee, pleaded guilty to helping a Swedish consultant make corrupt payments to government officials in Ethiopia and Kenya. At the time of their offense, Basu and Sengupta were working in the World Bank's headquarters in the District of Columbia, and both were U.S. permanent residents. Our reader wanted to know if Basu and Sengupta, who also took money from the Swedish consultants, could have been prosecuted not only as "domestic concerns" but also based on their status as employees of the World Bank, because "the Bank is a public international organization and its employees are therefore foreign officials under the FCPA." See 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a)(f)(1) et seq.

Thanks to a definitive case from 1991, the answer is clear. Only bribe-payers can be prosecuted under the FCPA or under the general conspiracy statute of the United States. Bribe-takers are excluded. References in the FCPA to "foreign officials" are always talking about those who accept bribes, not those who pay them. That means foreign officials aren't targeted for prosecution.

The case that settled the issue is U.S. v. Castle, 925 F.2d 831 (5th Cir. 1991) (per curiam). In it, the Fifth Circuit adopted the Memorandum Opinion and Order from the trial court written by Judge Barefoot Sanders. The four original defendants in the case were charged in a one-count indictment with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, 78dd-2. Two defendants, Donald Castle and Darrell W.T. Lowry, moved to dismiss the indictment against them on the grounds that as Canadian government officials, they couldn't be convicted of accepting a $50,000 bribe to steer award of a bus-service contract by the Saskatchewan provincial government.

The two other defendants who paid the bribe didn't dispute that they could be prosecuted for conspiring to violate the FCPA. Nor was there any dispute that defendants Castle and Lowry, as Canadian government officials, could not be charged with a substantive violation of the FCPA, since the statute doesn't criminalize the receipt of a bribe by a foreign official. The issue, then, was whether the U.S. could prosecute Castle and Lowry under the general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, for conspiring to violate the FCPA. "Put more simply," the district court said, "the question is whether foreign officials, whom the Government concedes it cannot prosecute under the FCPA itself, may be prosecuted under the general conspiracy statute for conspiring to violate the Act."

The trial court's memorandum opinion of June 4, 1990 was adopted by the appellate court. It traces the FCPA's legislative history relevant to whether foreign officials who take bribes can be prosecuted under the FCPA or the general conspiracy statute or both, and it sets out a comprehensive policy analysis behind Congress' intent to exclude foreign officials from prosecution. As far as we know, the 1991 case persuaded the Justice Department to end all further attempts to make conspiracy to violate the FCPA a chargeable offense against bribe-taking foreign officials.

Happily, Judge Barefoot Sanders' opinion lives up to its author's great moniker. It's a terrific read for FCPA lawyers, policy wonks, and policy-wonking lawyers. Here are just a few paragraphs from the 2,500-word decision:

"Yet the very individuals whose participation was required in every case--the foreign officials accepting the bribe--were excluded from prosecution for the substantive offense. Given that Congress included virtually every possible person connected to the payments except foreign officials, it is only logical to conclude that Congress affirmatively chose to exempt this small class of persons from prosecution.

"Most likely Congress made this choice because U.S. businesses were perceived to be the aggressors, and the efforts expended in resolving the diplomatic, jurisdictional, and enforcement difficulties that would arise upon the prosecution of foreign officials was not worth the minimal deterrent value of such prosecutions. Further minimizing the deterrent value of a U.S. prosecution was the fact that many foreign nations already prohibited the receipt of a bribe by an official. See S.Rep. No. 114 at 4, 1977 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News at 4101 (testimony of Treasury Secretary Blumenthal that in many nations such payments are illegal). In fact, whenever a nation permitted such payments, Congress allowed them as well. See 15 U.S.C. Sec. 78dd-2(c)(1).

"Based upon the language of the statute and the legislative history, this Court finds in the FCPA what the Supreme Court in [Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112, 53 S.Ct. 35, 77 L.Ed. 206 (1932)] found in the Mann Act: an affirmative legislative policy to leave unpunished a well-defined group of persons who were necessary parties to the acts constituting a violation of the substantive law. The Government has presented no reason why the prosecution of Defendants Castle and Lowry should go forward in the face of the congressional intent not to prosecute foreign officials. If anything, the facts of this case support Congress' decision to forego such prosecutions since foreign nations could and should prosecute their own officials for accepting bribes. Under the revised statutes of Canada the receipt of bribes by officials is a crime, with a prison term not to exceed five years, see Criminal Code, R.S.C. c. C-46, s.121 (pp. 81-84) (1985), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been actively investigating the case, apparently even before any arrests by U.S. officials. Defendant Castle's and Lowry's Supplemental Memorandum In Support of Motion to Dismiss, filed May 14, 1990, at 10. In fact, the Canadian police have informed Defendant Castle's counsel that charges will likely be brought against Defendants Castle and Lowry in Canada. Id. at 10 & nn. 3-4. Thus, prosecution and punishment will be accomplished by the government which most directly suffered the abuses allegedly perpetrated by its own officials, and there is no need to contravene Congress' desire to avoid such prosecutions by the United States."

Download U.S. v. Castle, 925 F.2d 831 (5th Cir. 1991) (per curiam) here.
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Ex-World Bank Manager Sentenced For FCPA Offense

The Justice Department has announced the April 22, 2008 sentencing of former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu. The Indian national and U.S. permanent resident received 15 months in prison for conspiring to award World Bank contracts to consultants in exchange for kickbacks and for helping a contractor bribe a foreign official in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In addition to the 15- month prison term, Basu was sentenced to two years supervised release and 50 hours of community service. U.S. v. Basu, (Cr. No. 02-475) D.D.C., November 2002.

Basu pleaded guilty on Dec. 17, 2002 to conspiring to commit wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §371 and to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §78dd-3. Under his 2002 plea agreement he cooperated with U.S. authorities. In 2006, however, he moved unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea. During his cooperation, he admitted that between 1997 and 2000, as a World Bank Trust Funds Manager, he conspired with a Swedish consultant and others to steer World Bank contracts in Ethiopia and Kenya to certain Swedish companies in exchange for kickbacks amounting to $127,000. He also helped the Swedish consultants bribe a Kenyan government official by, among other things, arranging for $50,000 to be wire transferred to an account outside the United States for the benefit of the Kenyan official.

In September 1997, Basu left his job at the World Bank and joined the Swedish consulting firm. He also arranged jobs there for his father, brother-in-law, and a close friend. He took a commission of ten percent of the value of all contracts he worked on for the Swedish consultant. In December 1997, Basu returned to the World Bank but continued to receive commissions from the Swedish consultant. By January 1998, the consultant had been awarded three contracts by Basu's co-conspirator, Gautam Sengupta, a World Bank Task Manager.

Sengupta, also an Indian national and U.S. permanent resident, pleaded guilty in February 2002 to the same charges as Basu. He was sentenced in February 2006 to two months in prison and fined $6,000. U.S. v. Sengupta, (Cr. No. 02-40) D.D.C., January 2002. Separately, the Swedish consultants were prosecuted and convicted of bribery by a court in Sweden. In February 2004, they were sentenced to 18 months and 12 months in prison respectively .

The Sengupta and Basu cases were the first criminal referrals to national prosecutors from the World Bank (or apparently from any international financial institution). The plea agreements with the DOJ required the defendants to cooperate with the World Bank's investigation and with Swedish and Kenyan authorities, as well as the DOJ. The plea agreements said: The defendant agrees to disclose completely and truthfully all information regarding his activities and those of others in all matters about which he has knowledge or hereafter acquires knowledge concerning any matter about which the United States, The World Bank, or the Government[s] of Sweden [or Kenya] may inquire. Defendant agrees to accompany agents of the United States, The World Bank, or the Government[s] of Sweden [or Kenya] to any location in order to accomplish that purpose ... Defendant agrees to answer all questions completely and truthfully and must not withhold any information.

Despite his initial cooperation with prosecutors, Basu tried four years later in 2006 to withdraw his guilty plea. The court wouldn't allow it. We don't know why he wanted to withdraw his plea -- after he had already provided evidence about the corruption -- or if his change of heart influenced the court's decision in his sentencing.

View the DOJ's April 25, 2008 news release here.