Top 10 International Anti-Corruption Developments For October 2018 Mr Charles Duross, James M. Koukios, Mingda Hang, Gerado Gomez Galvis and Harriet Sassoon

In order to provide an overview for busy in-house counsel and compliance professionals, we summarize below some of the most important international anti-corruption developments from the past month, with links to primary resources. This month we ask: What changes did the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Criminal Division make in how monitors are selected and imposed in corporate criminal resolutions? Who was the target of the UK's first unexplained wealth order? What did the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have to say about Mexico's foreign bribery enforcement efforts? Which leader of an international law enforcement organization was arrested by Chinese authorities for alleged bribery? The answers to these questions and more are here in our October 2018 Top 10 list.

1. DOJ Criminal Division Announces Updated Guidance on Monitorships and the End of the Compliance Counsel Position.

   DOJ Criminal Division Provides Updated Guidance on Monitorships. On October 12, 2018, Brian Benczkowski, the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for DOJ's Criminal Division, announced a new memorandum regarding the imposition and selection of monitors for business organizations involved in Criminal Division cases (the "Benczkowski Memo"). The Benczkowski Memo closely tracks the Criminal Division's previous guidance memorandum from 2009, including the basic structure for selecting a monitor, but also expressly incorporates certain practices developed by the Criminal Division's Fraud Section since 2009 and includes some important changes and clarifications. Of note, the Benczkowski Memo explicitly directs Criminal Division attorneyswhich includes the FCPA unitto consider whether the scope of the monitor's role is "appropriately tailored to avoid unnecessary burdens to the business's operations" when determining whether to impose a monitor. In cases where a monitor is imposed, the resolution agreement must now include an explanation of "the monitorship's scope." As discussed in our recent Client Alert, these and other aspects of the Benczkowski Memo are welcome additions because they help address the issue of "scope creep" and provide more transparency in the monitorship selection process. DOJ Criminal Division Will Not Replace Compliance Counsel. In his October 12, 2018 remarks, Benczkowski also announced that the Criminal Division would not hire a "single compliance counsel" to replace Hui Chen, who resigned from the Fraud Section in June 2017. According to Benczkowski, "While this approach [of hiring a single compliance counsel housed in the Fraud Section] had its benefits, there are inherent limitations in having the locus of our compliance expertise consolidated in a single person in a single litigating section." Benczkowski also expressed concern that a person holding this position "will inevitably and quickly feel a strong pull to the private sector." Instead, Benczkowski said that the Criminal Division would build upon the achievements of the former compliance counsel "through a combination of diverse hiring and the development of targeted training programs" in both the Fraud Section and the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS). 2. United States and Malaysia Bring Charges in Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund Scandal. Over the last two years, we have reported several times on developments related to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, including the parallel investigations being conducted by authorities in Malaysia, the United States, Singapore, and Switzerland into alleged bribery and embezzlement...