Of the myriad laws imperiled by Donald Trump’s election, few keep lawyers busier than the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. For more than a dozen years, since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ramped up disclosure and the U.S. Department of Justice staffed up its fraud section, the U.S. has vigorously played the role of global corruption cop. Can America remain an apostle of integrity under Trump? Opinion is divided.
Trump’s most direct signal (he doesn’t really do indirect) was to call FCPA a “horrible law” on CNBC in 2012. That should come as little surprise given his obsession with U.S. companies “winning,” and his disdain for moral niceties. In a much-remarked post on the Global Anticorruption Blog, Matthew Stephenson of Harvard Law School proclaimed that “the era of vigorous FCPA enforcement … is over.” Professor Stephenson sees a grave risk that U.S. prosecution will become more politicized for both global and domestic bribery. “I’d be shocked if the US maintained anything like its current level of FCPA enforcement,” he wrote.
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