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Business Crimes Hotline
Former Keppel Lawyer Who Cooperated with U.S. Government Fined and Sentenced to Probation for His Role in Petrobras Bribery Scheme
Jeffrey Chow, 61, a former in-house attorney at Singapore-based shipyard operator Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd (Keppel) was sentenced on November 15 to one year of probation and a US$75,000 fine in a U.S. District Court for his role in the company's overseas bribery in connection with the Petrobras scandal. Chow, a former Keppel legal department director, entered into a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2017 and plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). As part of his plea deal, Chow agreed to cooperate with the government in its prosecution of his former employer, its U.S. subsidiary, Keppel Offshore & Marine USA, and joint venture partner, Technip FMC for FCPA violations in Brazil.
Chow's sentencing also followed the December 2017 agreement by Keppel to pay combined penalties of over $422 million to resolve enforcement actions in the U.S., Brazil, and Singapore in connection with bribes paid to executives at Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras and a Workers' Party of Brazil official. The majority of these penalties were ordered to be paid overseas: approximately 50% to Brazilian and 25% to Singaporean authorities; and marked the first coordinated anti-bribery action between the DOJ and its Singaporean counterpart. The bribes, paid to assist Keppel to secure rig-building work, had been disguised as legitimate consulting fees paid to third-party intermediaries. In a separate related settlement, oil and gas services company Technip FMC agreed to pay criminal penalties of $296 million to resolve FCPA violations in both Brazil and Iraq.
On the same day that the Keppel settlement was announced, a federal judge issued an unsealing order revealing Chow's identity, which had been suppressed to that point as a "John Doe" cooperator in the enforcement action. According to the Information document filed with the court, Chow had engaged in a number of "overt acts" in furtherance of conspiracy to violate the FCPA. These included coordinating the execution of questionable consulting agreements and corresponding with a Keppel executive about the structure of commission payments to an agent accused of bribing foreign officials. In one email to his secretary in September 2011, extracted in the Information document, Chow had stated:
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