The Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari that asked the court to restrict the application of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act’s “instrumentality” provision.  Under the FCPA, companies or individuals can be liable for making payments to foreign officials, including those that work for an instrumentality of a foreign government.  The Department of Justice has argued that the instrumentality provision applies to state-owned enterprises and, in a May 2014 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.  The 11th Circuit held that an instrumentality is “an entity controlled by the government of a foreign country that performs a function the controlling government treats as its own.”  Defendants, the president and vice president of a telecommunications company doing business in Haiti, appealed, arguing that the Haiti-owned telecommunications company whose employees they were convicted of bribing was not an “instrumentality” of a government under the FCPA.  The Supreme Court today declined to take up the defendants’ appeal.

Read the Law360 article (subscription required), “Supreme Court Punts On Bombshell FCPA Case”