WALLSTREETJOURNAL.COM + March 15, 2012 + By Samuel Rubenfeld
GE'S GC: SEC'S FUZZY ON FCPA SENTENCING GUIDELINES
The Securities and Exchange Commission is unclear about how much credit a company gets for voluntarily disclosing a foreign bribery problem, said a top executive of General Electric Co.
“The problem is more fuzziness around how much [sentencing] credit you get when you go in [to report a problem],” said Brackett Denniston, senior vice president and general counsel of GE, speaking Thursday morning at the Global Ethics Summit conference in New York. “There’s less fuzziness at the Justice Department; there’s a lot of fuzziness at the SEC.”
He made the remarks during a keynote interview with Mark Mendelsohn, the former top prosecutor of the FCPA who now is a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss. The discussion didn’t address a whistleblower lawsuit over alleged FCPA violations that GE is fighting.
During the interview, Denniston said Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement overall hasn’t gone overboard, which has been a recent criticism lodged by the business community as it lobbies to amend the law. Rather, he said the ratcheted-up enforcement in recent years caused companies to address exposed weaknesses in their anti-bribery compliance programs, and for other countries to slowly begin enforcing their anti-bribery laws.
“I think there’s been an evolution in the way governments think about it, and in the way businesses in tough places think about it,” he said.
