Comments made by Kara N. Brockmeyer, the Securities Exchange Commission's chief of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) unit, and Charles E. Duross, deputy chief of the Department of Justice's FCPA unit, at the recent International Conference on the FCPA suggest that both agencies are increasing their scrutiny of possible FCPA violations for the next year. Both units have increased their resources for tackling investigations of possible FCPA violations. Additionally, both agencies have increased awareness among other U.S. and international government agencies so that those agencies could also be on the lookout for possible FCPA violations. Having strengthened their relationships with overseas regulators, both agencies are optimistic that they are in the position to bring significant FCPA cases in the following year.
According to Andrew Ceresney, co-director of the SEC's enforcement division, the SEC also expects that FCPA violations will be "increasingly fertile ground" for the Dodd-Frank whistle-blower program. The SEC received 149 FCPA violation tips from whistle-blowers in just the last year and the SEC expects more enforcement cases to arise from whistle-blowers.
Both the SEC and the DOJ emphasized that importance of self-reporting possible FCPA violations by companies and restated their willingness to show leniency where companies quickly self-report potential violations and work with the agencies to come to a resolution.
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