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FCPA: Were the Sting Trials Doomed from the Start?

BY David S. Krakoff
August 29, 2012

When the jury in the second Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Sting case trial came back with two acquittals, and hung on three other defendants, the impact on the Department of Justice's (DOJ) ambitious FCPA enforcement efforts was apparent. United States v. Goncalves et al., No. 09-335 (D.D.C.). And when the DOJ made the difficult decision to dismiss all charges against the remaining defendants, including three who had previously pleaded guilty, that impact could not be mistaken.

We had a front-row seat to the challenges the government faced in the FCPA Sting trials ' we represented a client in the second trial, who obtained a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against him. We were able to follow the development and planning of the FCPA Sting through discovery and the testimony in two trials.

No doubt, the prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents assembling the case faced many complicated decisions fraught with the potential to impact the trial. Let's explore three of these issues, including the decision to venue the trials in D.C., the use of a well-connected informant with an almost unparalleled checkered past, and the shifting of the investigation midstream to an undercover sting scripted to avoid the use of the term “bribe.”

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