Top Ten International Anti-Corruption Developments For March 2015

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 in the past month with links to primary resources. Here is our March 2015 Top Ten list:

Senior DOJ White Collar Prosecutor James Koukios Joins Morrison & Foerster. James Koukios, who served in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), most recently as Senior Deputy Chief, has joined MoFo's Washington, D.C. office as a partner in the Securities Litigation, Enforcement & White Collar Criminal Defense Practice Group. Read the press release here. Mr. Koukios is the second high-ranking DOJ prosecutor to join MoFo in the past year, following the 2014 arrival of former Fraud Section Deputy Chief Charles Duross, who served as head of the DOJ's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit. In his most recent position, Mr. Koukios oversaw the FCPA, Health Care Fraud, and Securities and Financial Fraud Units. With the addition of Mr. Koukios, who previously served as an Assistant Chief in the FCPA Unit and tried two of the most significant FCPA-related cases in the past decade, MoFo is the only law firm in the world with two former FCPA Unit managers. Indeed, Mr. Koukios' arrival comes just two months after Amanda Aikman, another former FCPA Unit prosecutor, joined MoFo's New York office as a senior associate. Besides handling a variety of significant cases, Ms. Aikman played a central role in the initial drafting of the DOJ's and SEC's FCPA Resource Guide. Mr. Koukios began his career as a federal prosecutor in Miami, where he investigated and prosecuted a wide variety of cases during his four and a half years. Mr. Koukios was named one of the Miami U.S. Attorney's Office's top prosecutors in 2008. He was then recruited to join the Fraud Section at Main Justice in Washington, D.C. There, he rose to be Assistant Chief of the FCPA Unit and then Senior Deputy Chief of the Fraud Section, the third-ranking official of the 100-attorney section. During his tenure at DOJ, Mr. Koukios worked with domestic and foreign law enforcement authorities around the globe. He tried nearly two dozen jury cases, serving as a lead trial attorney in two landmark FCPA-related enforcement trials: Esquenazi and Duperval. In addition to his service at DOJ, Mr. Koukios served as Special Counsel to the FBI Director, advising the Bureau's leadership on criminal enforcement policy, congressional testimony, and interagency issues. Former Senior Executives of Broker-Dealer Receive Four-Year Sentences for FCPA Violations. On March 27, 2015, Benito Chinea, the former chief executive officer of broker-dealer Direct Access Partners, and Joseph DeMeneses, the former managing director, were each sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Travel Act. The matter involved a scheme to bribe a senior official in Venezuela's...