A provision of the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act allows U.S. authorities to prosecute officials from other countries who engage in demanding or accepting bribes from Americans or U.S. companies trying to secure business interests.
The new provision, called the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, complements the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law already in place that bans paying bribes to foreign officials to keep or win businesses in other countries, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Under the new provision, violators face fines of no more than $250,000 or three times the value of the attempted bribe, can be put in prison for up to 15 years, or both, and comes after efforts from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a bipartisan commission of government watchdogs and anti-corruption groups.
"Without this, the U.S. legal arsenal for combating international corruption was incomplete" said Tom Firestone, a partner at law firm Squire Patton Boggs who specializes in white-collar crime.
The Corrupt Practices Act handles the supply side of the issue, while the new law addresses the demand side, and if it is "enforced effectively, it would hopefully protect U.S. companies operating abroad so they won’t be subject to these demands," Firestone said.
Transparency International U.S., which helped craft the legislation, said FEPA will root out foreign corruption at its source.
"This, without question, is the most consequential anti-foreign-bribery law passed in almost 50 years," said Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for Transparency International.
The Justice Department has been bringing bribery charges against foreign officials for years, using statutes on money laundering or wire fraud, but under the new law, foreign officials facing bribery charges can be arrested if they enter U.S. territory, live in a country that has an extradition agreement with the United States, or travel to another country with an extradition treaty, said Greytak.
And even if such officials can't be brought to trial, they can still be charged, as they can be arrested if they travel or while remaining in their own country because they are afraid to travel, said Firestone, a former federal prosecutor.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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