The Justice Department has a long and rich history of targeting dominant companies using antitrust monopolization tools — looking back to the 1980s, it was AT&T; in the 1990s, it was Microsoft; and in 2023, DOJ has brought a monopolization case against Google; and meanwhile the FTC filed monopolization cases against Facebook and Amazon. DOJ has now turned to Apple and its dominance in the smartphone market.  DOJ’s action follows explicit warnings to the tech industry on exclusionary conduct.  Apple’s conduct, according to DOJ, is a textbook example of a monopolist, Apple, levera ..read more

As DOJ, OFAC and BIS ramp up sanctions and export controls enforcement, they have continued to provide important compliance guidance.  You have to give the enforcement agencies credit — on the one hand, they regularly warn of the coming enforcement storm and aggressive push against companies and individuals; and on the other hand, they provide significant compliance guidance.  Over the last five years, DOJ, OFAC and BIS have steadily increased the amount and quality of sanctions and export controls guidance. To this end, the three agencies have issued several Joint Compliance Notice ..read more

On the heels of the Gunvor FCPA settlement for $661 million, DOJ announced its settlement with Trafigura, the latest commodities trading company to fall under DOJ’s FCPA Sweep against the industry.  Trafigura joined the list of international commodity trading companies to suffer FCPA enforcement actions — Vitol, Sargeant Marine, Glencore, Freepoint, and Gunvor. DOJ’s corporate resolutions are connected to individual prosecutions and guilty pleas of 19 individuals, including six government officials, eight corrupt intermediaries and five trading companies.  Trafigura Beheer B.V. (“Tr ..read more

Trafigura’s bribery scheme resembles the same schemes implemented by its significant competitors — Vitol, Glencore, Gunvor.  At the core of the conduct, Petrobras and Brazilian government officials collected bribes in exchange for valuable contracts for Petrobras oil.  The factual statement reflects DOJ’s extensive knowledge base in the international commodity trading industry — DOJ had access to several significant cooperating witnesses, including Petrobras officials and trader based on Houston, Texas. According to the statement of facts, between 2003 and 2014, Trafigura and its co ..read more

On the heels of the Gunvor FCPA settlement for $661 million, DOJ announced its settlement with Trafigura, the latest commodities trading company to fall under DOJ’s FCPA Sweep against the industry.  Trafigura joined the list of international commodity trading companies to suffer FCPA enforcement actions — Vitol, Sargeant Marine, Glencore, Freepoint, and Gunvor. DOJ’s corporate resolutions are connected to individual prosecutions and guilty pleas of 19 individuals, including six government officials, eight corrupt intermediaries and five trading companies.  Trafigura Beheer B.V. (“Tr ..read more

In a recent speech, on March 7, 2024, Deputy Attorney General Monaco announced that DOJ would be implementing in the next 90 days a new whistleblower program to reward reporting of criminal misconduct at both public and private companies.  In particular DOJ will encourage reporting of potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) and the recently-enacted  Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (“FEPA”). AAG Monaco noted that DOJ will be particularly interested in “foreign corruption cases” involving “non-issuers and violations of the recently enacted FEPA,” along with ..read more

Daniela Melendez, an Associate at The Volkov Law Group, rejoins us for a posting on the SEC’s new climate disclosure rules. Daniela can be reached at dmelendez@volkovlaw.com. After months and months of deliberations and negotiations, the SEC finally issued its final rules for climate disclosures. The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investor (“the final rule”).   The SEC navigated a series of political landmines and finally adopted the new rules.  Before doing so, the SEC eliminated climate disclosure requests for small businesses – Tier III co ..read more

DOJ has been on a public relations campaign to push a simple message for corporations: if companies learn of misconduct, companies should disclose such misconduct to earn valuable benefits.  The quintessential question remains — should companies disclose misconduct to the Department of Justice or should the company remediate the misconduct and maintain its silence? DOJ’s campaign is intended to push companies to reconsider this balance by offering new and significant benefits from self-disclosure and cooperation.  At the same time, DOJ is articulating a new, refocused vision of its ..read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission has gained well-publicized traction through its formal whistleblower bounty program.  Only a small portion of these whistleblower reports involve FCPA, anti-bribery allegations.  Notwithstanding this fact, the SEC whistleblower program has been an unquestioned success.  Given this example, it is not surprising that the Department of Justice recently announced its plan to create its own whistleblower bounty program. In a recent speech, on March 7, 2024, Deputy Attorney General Monaco announced that DOJ would be implementing in the next 90 d ..read more

Regulators with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) have fined JP Morgan Chase & Co. a combined total of $348.2 million over the bank’s failure to monitor client trading activities between 2014 and 2023. The enforcement action is a testament to regulators’ emphasis on the importance of sound market conduct risk controls, to which diligent record-keeping remains paramount. According to OCC, an investigation into JP Morgan’s trade surveillance practices revealed that the bank “failed to surveil billions of instances of trading activity on at least 3 ..read more