Contrary to some expectations, the Trump Administration Department of Justice imposed record penalties under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from 2017 through 2020. But in each of those years, fewer and fewer new FCPA investigations were initiated. We expect the Biden Administration to continue the trend of increasing FCPA enforcement settlement values, while also increasing the pace of initiating new FCPA investigations. Anticorruption matters present some of the most severe threats to a company’s organizational integrity. Understanding the changing enforcement culture is an important component to addressing those threats.
Continue Reading The Next Four Years of FCPA Enforcement: What to Expect From the Biden Administration

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a five-part series on how U.S. district courts and courts of appeal have applied the materiality standard set forth in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989 (2016).

In the context of implied certification cases brought under the False Claims Act (FCA), materiality is simply whether an alleged statutory, regulatory, or contractual violation has some bearing on the government’s decision to pay claims. It follows that when the government knows of an alleged statutory, regulatory, or contractual violation and pays a claim anyway, then that violation could not possibly have been material to the government’s payment decision. For this reason, the government’s knowledge of alleged violations and its subsequent behavior in the face of that knowledge have tremendous implications for false certification defendants.
Continue Reading Materiality Part II: Government Knowledge