Issue link: https://digital.shearman.com/i/1389983
25 ODEBRECHT 11 In January 2021, a Florida state court granted Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht's motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought by an Ecuadorian plastics company Plastiquim. In a guilty plea in 2016, Odebrecht admitted to making bribes worth $788 million across 12 countries, including in Ecuador. In 2018, the owner of Plastiquim brought suit in Florida against Odebrecht, the company's former comptroller in Ecuador, Carlos Polit, and his son, alleging that they dragged Plastiquim into a money laundering scheme to hide bribe payments paid to Carlos Polit to secure government contracts in Ecuador by loaning Plastiquim money. The court found that Plastiquim failed to plead enough facts to support its RICO claims against Odebrecht and dismissed the lawsuit. Before this decision, the court had already dismissed all the claims against Carlos Polit and his son. Carlos Polit, who was sentenced to six years in prison in absentia in Ecuador, has appealed his Ecuador conviction and denies any wrongdoing. PETROBRAS 12 As we discussed in our last issue of the Trends and Patterns, 13 the RICO case brought by the Brazilian state- controlled oil company Petrobras against Samsung continued in the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans after the lower court found Petrobras' RICO claims time-barred. The case arose out of the alleged bribery of Petrobras' officials by Samsung for a drillship charted to Petrobras, and Samsung settled the alleged conduct by paying the DOJ $75 million in penalties in 2019. The Fifth Circuit heard in March the oral argument focusing on whether certain news reports in October 2014 on Operation Car Wash, an investigation into widespread corruption scandal in Brazil, should have put Petrobras on notice, starting the clock on the RICO statute of limitations. OTHER CLAIMS ERICSSON Ericsson announced that it would pay Nokia $97.2 million to settle damages claim related to previously announced allegations that Ericsson violated the FCPA. The details of the terms of settlement are kept confidential. Ericsson settled with the SEC and the DOJ in 2019 for FCPA violations in six countries. PETROBRAS Petrobras appears again in this issue (as it has repeatedly for a number of years now) for its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling requiring the Brazilian 11 Plastiquim, S.A., et al vs. John Christopher Polit et al, No. 2018-019966- CA-01 (Fla. Cir. Ct. Jan 19, 2021). state-controlled oil company to pay $700 million to Vantage Drilling for a contract terminated by Petrobras. Petrobras alleged that Vantage Drilling procured the lucrative contract through bribery as part of the wider bribery scheme unraveled by the Operation Car Wash investigation. Vintage Drilling denied the allegation and asserted the contract was wrongfully terminated. In 2018, arbitrators in Houston ruled in favor of Vintage Drilling and the Fifth Circuit upheld the arbitration awards in July 2020. In its petition to the Supreme Court, Petrobras argued that enforcing the arbitral awards for a contract obtained through bribery of foreign officials would violate public policy. The petition remains pending. WESTERN DIGITAL On June 25, 2021, a California federal court dismissed a lawsuit brought against Western Digital Corporation, a California hard drive manufacturer, and its Brazilian subsidiary by a former employee. The employee, Airton Amorim De Almeida alleged he had been wrongfully terminated by the company after reporting internally of possible FCPA violations in Brazil. He filed his claim under the Dodd-Frank Act, alleging retaliation for his whistleblowing activities. Before reaching the merits of his claim, the court dismissed the complaint on jurisdictional ground – noting the company's Brazilian subsidiary, for which Almeida worked, did not have sufficient contact with California to support the jurisdictional reach of the court. 12 Petrobras America, Inc. v. Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., No. 4:19- cv-01410 (S.D. Tex. Apr 18, 2019). 13 The 2020 Trends and Patterns is available here.