Issue link: https://digital.shearman.com/i/1265921
ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS AND STRATEGIES FCPA DIGEST July 2020 13 Another noteworthy aspect of the U.S. enforcement action is that the State Department joined the DOJ to resolve alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and its implementing regulations, the ITAR. The involvement of the State Department in an enforcement action against a foreign corporation for corruption-related offenses is quite rare, but as reported in previous Trends & Patterns, recently there has been an increasing overlap between the FCPA and the U.S. economic sanctions regime—including the Quad-Graphics enforcement action in 2019 and recent U.S. sanctions targeting individuals allegedly involved in corrupt activities. Given the broader extraterritorial reach of sanctions, such overlap may allow the U.S. to tackle corrupt conduct beyond the reach of the FCPA. When Airbus initially was announced, we hypothesized that it represented the next major step for France progressing to being a major anti-corruption enforcer. At the time, we could not have predicted the virus outbreak that disrupted the globe a few months later, which undoubtedly affected enforcement efforts. France's recently issued guidance (described below) suggests that it intends to continue enforcing its anti-corruption laws, but we can only guess what will happen in a post-COVID world. Overall, Airbus could represent a quintessential example of anti- corruption enforcement in 2020—large-scale investigations run by coordination between numerous authorities from multiple countries—but this year has been so unusual that we are hesitant to make any predictions about whether we will see another such example before 2021.