Tag Archives: bribery

London Calling – The case of Skansen and UK Jurisdictional Reach for Corporate Bribery

The is a guest blog post by Nick Johnson, Q.C., from Exchange Chambers & Bright Line Law, London.

Southwark Crown Court is a designated centre for many of the UK’s serious fraud and white-collar crime jury trials. It is a drab building in a stunning location. There’s a spectacular view of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London over the river, obscured only by HMS Belfast, a WWII cruiser permanently moored as a museum and which, last Christmas, flew the Canadian flag in tribute to the participation of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Battle of North Cape. Hundreds of Canadian sailors served on British ships in the north, including eighty on the Belfast.

As the Maple Leaf flew, I acted for the MD of Skansen Interiors Ltd, a London based fit-out and refurbishment contractor, in a bribery case which concluded last April. The company itself and two of its directors faced charges under the Bribery Act 2010 (“UKBA”), relating to making improper payments in order to secure contracts for two City of London office refurbishments worth about £6m.

The case was a legal first in the UK in that the company, despite having carried out an internal investigation and self-reported to the UK National Crime Agency, then faced a Section 7 UKBA prosecution before a jury in the Crown Court. Section 7 has an unusually wide reach. A company itself is guilty of a criminal offence where a person associated with it bribed another, even where management might be completely unaware of the bribe. It is a rare form of corporate criminal strict liability, subject to a defence where the company can prove, on a balance of probabilities, that it had in place adequate procedures to prevent such conduct. Of course, the legislation is aimed at compelling a change in corporate culture when it comes to effective anti-bribery measures. Quite apart from the interesting questions the case posed as to what may amount to “adequate procedures” and why it was that an entirely co-operative company was not offered a UK Deferred Prosecution Agreement, the focus upon the Section 7 requirements was a clear reminder of how even a non-UK corporate could well end up in a UK criminal dock.

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Corruption Prosecution Collapses After Wiretap Evidence Excluded

The high-profile corruption prosecution of two executives and the alleged intermediary to a foreign government has ended dramatically after a judge excluded the wiretap evidence collected by the RCMP. The defendants – Kevin Wallace & Ramesh Shah, both former Vice-Presidents at SNC-Lavalin, and Zulfiquar Bhuiyan, a dual Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen – were charged under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act for bribes allegedly paid by SNC-Lavalin to secure a contract to supervise construction in Bangladesh.

The construction project was to build a multipurpose bridge connecting the southwestern region to the rest of Bangladesh. [1]  It was intended to stimulate economic growth by allowing transport of passengers, freight, natural gas, telecommunications and electricity.[2]  The project was forecast to cost approximately $2.9 billion and was funded, in part, by a $1.2 billion credit from the World Bank.

The Canadian investigation started after a World Bank investigator provided information obtained from four tipsters to the RCMP.  The tipsters alleged SNC-Lavalin was in the process of bribing Bangladeshi officials to secure the contract to supervise construction.  The RCMP never met any of the tipsters, but spoke with one by telephone.  The information provided by three of the four tipsters was obtained from other sources, but the RCMP never spoke with the tipsters’ other sources where identified.  The RCMP used information from the tipsters to obtain authorization to wiretap the private communications of the three defendants.  The information gathered on the wiretap led to the charges being laid.

Intending to challenge the wiretaps, the defence applied for a third party production order to compel senior investigators of the World Bank to appear before a Canadian court and produce documents.  The trial judge granted the applications.  The decision was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.[3]   The Court overturned the trial judge’s decision.  The Court held that the World Bank did not waive its immunity by voluntarily providing information to Canadian law enforcement officials accordingly, its documents were immune from production.  Further, the Court found the documents requested were not relevant to the challenge of the wiretaps.

The defence subsequently brought a successful application to exclude the wiretap evidence.  Justice Nordheimer found that the two preconditions for a wiretap – (i) reasonable and probable grounds to believe an offence is or has been committed and (ii) investigative necessity – were not met and the wiretap should never have been granted.  On the first criterion, Justice Nordheimer noted that the RCMP relied almost entirely on information provided by the tipsters.  In his view, that information was not sufficient to provide reasonable and probable grounds because it was not compelling, credible or corroborated.  He was particularly critical of the reliability of the information.  He wrote:

The fact that a particular investigation may be difficult, does not lower the standard that must be met in order to obtain a [wiretap] authorization. Reduced to its essentials, the information provided in the ITO was nothing more than speculation, gossip, and rumour. Nothing that could fairly be referred to as direct factual evidence, to support the rumour and speculation, was provided or investigated. The information provided by the tipsters was hearsay (or worse) added to other hearsay.[4]

On the second criterion for a wiretap, Justice Nordheimer found that the RCMP failed to establish there were no other reasonable ways to investigate the allegations.

Justice Nordheimer concluded that the wiretap should not have been issued, and the evidence gathered by wiretap violated the defendants’ Charter rights to be free of unreasonable search.  Accordingly, he excluded all of the private communications intercepted from the evidence at trial. The Crown admitted that it had no reasonable prospect of conviction without the wiretap evidence.  The prosecutor decided not to call any evidence, and all three defendants were acquitted.

This was certainly not the end that Canadian prosecutors envisioned to a case the World Bank described as “a high-level corruption conspiracy among Bangladeshi government officials, SNC-Lavalin executives, and private individuals” that was proven by “credible evidence corroborated by a variety of sources.”[5]  The collapse of the Canadian case was caused, in large part, by deficiencies in the RCMP’s preliminary investigation.  Investigators appear to have taken insufficient steps to vet tipster information before seeking authorization for wiretaps.  This failure rendered the wiretap evidence inadmissible.  This case underscores the importance of the preliminary stages of the investigation and highlights opportunities for defence counsel seeking to exclude evidence obtained by wiretaps authorized primarily on the basis of tipster information.

[1] World Bank “Bangladesh Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project”, online: http://projects.worldbank.org/P111017/bangladesh-padma-multipurpose-bridge-project?lang=en

[2] Ibid.

[3] World Bank Group v. Wallace, 2016 SCC 15

[4] R. v. Wallace. 2017 ONSC 132 at para 71

[5] World Bank, “World Bank Statement on Padman Bridge” (29 June 2012) online: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2012/06/29/world-bank-statement-padma-bridge

Corruption in the Aviation Industry? “Please Say it Isn’t So!”

The international aviation industry is highly competitive, international, and yes, known for allegations of corruption. Whether buying, selling, maintaining, servicing or supplying an aircraft, an airport, or the supply chain or related needs, corruption risks associated with the aviation industry is well documented. Companies and individuals involved in the industry face pressures and temptations to flout the law to gain business advantage. However, the legal and business consequences of airline corruption includes, but is not limited to, criminal investigations, prosecutions, convictions, penalties, reputations being destroyed, disgorgement of profits, shareholder losses from the drop of share price, careers ruined, civil law suits launched by investors, loss of confidence by the investment community, legal fees, fines, and jail terms for individuals involved.  Several examples illustrate the serious risks and consequences of corruption in the global aviation industry.

In June 2012, Brazil-based Embraer S.A., the world’s third largest commercial aircraft manufacturer, indicated in its Form 6-K (Report of Foreign Private Issuer) filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), that the company had received a subpoena from the SEC inquiring into certain operations concerning sales of aircraft. In response to this SEC-issued subpoena and associated inquiries into the possibility of non-compliance with the U. S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), Embraer retained outside legal counsel to conduct an internal investigation on transactions carried out in three specific countries.

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New era of White Collar Crime enforcement in Canada

Recent trends have seen legislative penalties increase, prosecutors cracking down, and more individuals going to jail.  We have entered a new era of white collar crime enforcement in Canada.

In mid-2013, the Corruption Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA) was amended by the Federal Government.  It introduced a “new books and records” offence, increased the maximum jail time to 14 years for individuals, and promised to phase out the legality of facilitation payments.  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was assigned the exclusive jurisdiction over investigation and laying charges under the CFPOA and given an enhanced increase in their mandate to investigate and prosecute more corporations and individuals, which it is doing.

Following this, the RCMP prosecuted Nazir Karigar, a Canadian-Indian business man, under the CFPOA. At his lengthy trial it was never proven that he gave a bribe to an Air India (foreign) official, as alleged; the Crown did prove, to the court’s satisfaction, that he intended to pay a bribe to secure business with Air India for an American company. That was enough to convict and send him inside for 3 years.

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Enforcement activity by U.S. FCPA Regulators

There were three FCPA enforcement actions brought or announced in August 2015.

BNY Mellon became the first – of what is expected to be several financial services companies – to pay millions ($14.8 million to be precise) in an SEC enforcement action based on its alleged internship practices.  This flagged various issues to consider from the enforcement action including that it was the first SEC FCPA enforcement ever not to include allegations or findings of books and records violations.  This recent BNY Mellon enforcement action highlight why the meaning of “foreign official” matters.

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