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The Use of the Travel Act to Prosecute Foreign Commercial Bribery
On Sept. 20, 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California denied another round of defense motions in United States v. Carson, a case arising out of alleged bribes paid or authorized by employees of Control Components Inc. (CCI), a California manufacturer of control valves that pleaded guilty to FCPA violations in 2009. See DOJ Press Rel. No. 09-754, Control Components Inc. Pleads Guilty to Foreign Bribery Charges and Agrees to Pay $18.2 Million Criminal Fine (July 31, 2009), www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/July/09-crm-754.html. The latest motions had challenged the government's indictments under the Travel Act. The court also denied motions that contended that California's commercial bribery statute does not reach defendants' conduct, that the relevant statutes invoked in the indictment are unconstitutionally vague, and that several of the government's counts are defective because they omitted allegations pertaining to essential elements of the Travel Act.
The Carson case, which is not scheduled to go to trial until mid-2012, has already featured several challenges to the U.S. government's prosecution of foreign bribery. The Travel Act motion comes on the heels of the defendants' objection to the government's interpretation of the term “foreign official” in the FCPA. Previously, the district court had rejected the defendants challenge based on the definition of “foreign official” that asserted that payments to employees of state instrumentalities that do not perform traditional government functions are not encompassed by the FCPA, and that specific individuals employed by a Mexican state-owned public utility Comisi'n Federal de Electricidad did not fall within the parameters of this definition. See Sean Hecker, Philip Rohlik & Michael A. Janson, Carson Ruling on Defendants' Challenge to the DOJ's Definition of “Foreign Official”: A Fact-Based Approach, FCPA Update, Vol. 2, No. 10 (May 2011). For further coverage on Carson, see Sean Hecker, Bruce E. Yannett & Michael A. Janson, Defendants Contest DOJ's Definition of “Foreign Official,” FCPA Update, Vol. 2, No. 9 (Apr. 2011).
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