Source: https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/tag/conspiracy/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 19:48:22+00:00

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Much has been written about the long-awaited decision in US v. Hoskins, on this blog (see here and here) and elsewhere. In Hoskins, a US federal appeals court held that the U.S. cannot charge a foreign national acting abroad (and who therefore couldn’t be charged directly with violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)) by alleging vicarious liability under either the aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C § 2, or the conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371. Judge Pooler’s opinion for the court relied on two justifications: First, under the principle established by a Supreme Court cased called Gebardi v. United States and its progeny, Congress clearly indicated an affirmative legislative policy to exclude from complicity or conspiracy liability parties like Mr. Hoskins (foreign nationals acting abroad). Second, the FCPA lacks the requisite affirmative indication of congressional intent, demanded in cases like Morrison v. National Australia Bank, that Congress intended the FCPA to apply extraterritorially to the kind of conduct in question. (Analytically, these two tests are very similar, as they both ask, “What did Congress intend?” The principal difference is the burden of persuasion: The Gebardi line of cases, while not always entirely consistent, seem to indicate that prosecutors can generally invoke complicity or conspiracy liability even of someone who could not be prosecuted as a principal unless there’s a strong showing that this is contrary to congressional intent, while the extraterritoriality analysis, on the other hand, typically puts the burden on the prosecutor to show that a statute was intended to apply extraterritorially in the circumstances raised by a specific indictment.) The court dismissed the conspiracy and complicity charges against Hopkins, but remanded the case on the assumption that Mr. Hoskins might still be directly liable under the FCPA if the government could prove that he was acting as an agent of Alstom’s US subsidiary.
Given everything else that’s happening related to corruption right now (much of it awful), perhaps it’s a mistake for me to be spending so much time thinking about fairly narrow doctrinal issues related to applications of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). But my reflections on the recent court of appeals decision in US v. Hoskins (which held that a foreign national could not be charged as an accomplice or co-conspirator in an FCPA violation based on conduct occurring abroad) have gotten me thinking about—and questioning—what I had assumed was a well-settled and straightforward conclusion that the foreign official who takes a bribe from a person or entity covered by the FCPA cannot be charged with aiding and abetting, or conspiring to commit, that FCPA violation.
That conclusion—that bribe-taking foreign officials may not be charged as accomplices or co-conspirators in FCPA cases—was announced by a US court of appeals in 1991 in a case called United States v. Castle. In Castle, according to the allegations (which for present purposes I’ll assume to be true), two private US businessmen paid a $50,000 bribe to two Canadian government officials in order to win a contract to provide public buses to the provincial government. The US government charged the American citizens with violating the FCPA—which, if the facts are as alleged, they clearly did. The Canadian officials cannot directly violate the FCPA, which by its terms prohibits only covered entities from giving (or promising or offering) bribes to foreign public officials; the FCPA does not criminalize the act of taking a bribe. But in the Castle case, the US government tried to get around this problem by charging the Canadian officials with conspiracy to violate the FCPA, pursuant to the federal conspiracy statute, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 371. That section makes it a separate crime (“conspiracy”) for “two or more persons [to] conspire … to commit any [federal] offense,” as long as “one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy.” According to the U.S. government’s theory of the case, once the Canadian officials agreed with the US businessmen to accept money in exchange for a public contract, they had all conspired to commit a federal crime, and once the US businessmen took action in furtherance of this conspiracy (by paying the money), all the parties, including the Canadian officials, were liable as co-conspirators. The US district judge rejected that theory, and the court of appeals affirmed, simply endorsing and reprinting (with one minor correction) the district judge’s ruling.
My post last week discussed the recent U.S. Court of Appeals decision in United States v. Hoskins, which held that a foreign national cannot be charged with aiding and abetting a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), or with conspiracy to violate the FCPA, unless that foreign national either took some action connected to the violation within US territory, or else acted as an agent of a US domestic concern or an issuer of securities in the US. That’s a bit of a mouthful. To put this another way: The FCPA itself says that it applies extraterritorially to US nationals (including US firms), to non-US firms that issue securities on US markets, and to the officers, employees, directors, and to agents of firms in either of the preceding categories. The FCPA also applies to foreign individuals or firms (other than issuers) if but only if they engage in some part of the wrongful conduct while in US territory. The question is whether such foreign individuals (including non-issuer firms), who act outside of US territory, and so cannot be charged directly with violating the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, can nevertheless be charged with aiding and abetting, and/or conspiring with, some other actor’s FCPA violation. In Hoskins, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said no: Not only can a foreign national (other than an issuer or an agent of a US domestic concern or issuer) not be charged with FCPA violations based on conduct abroad, but such a defendant’s conduct abroad also cannot support a charge of aiding, abetting, or conspiring in an FCPA violation.
Perhaps because appellate court decisions on legal issues related to the FCPA are so rare, Hoskins has attracted considerable commentary. Most of this discussion, including my post last week, focuses on summarizing the court’s holding, considering its implications for future cases, and assessing whether Hoskins’ limitation of complicity and conspiracy liability is likely to improve or worsen FCPA enforcement overall. However, I haven’t seen very much commentary on the question whether, as a matter of legal doctrine and legal interpretation, Hoskins was decided correctly—that is, whether it is consistent with precedent, statutory text, and generally-accepted jurisprudential principals. That’s entirely understandable—most of the initial wave of commentary is coming either from law firms that want to explain to their clients what this decision means for them, or from those interested more in the policy issues than in parsing the doctrine. Nevertheless, I do think it’s worth getting a conversation going about whether Hoskins’ reasoning is (legally and doctrinally) sound. I may not be the best person to do this, as I’m not a criminal law specialist, but I figured I might as well take a crack at it, if only in the hopes that doing so might prompt some of the real experts to weigh in.
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is aggressively enforced but rarely litigated—most actions are brought against corporate entities that settle with the government. For that reason, any judicial opinion on the FCPA’s meaning, especially one from an appellate court, will attract a great deal of attention.
Can the U.S. government prosecute an individual for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations if that individual is not a U.S. citizen or resident, and committed no unlawful act in U.S. territory? An important case posing that question is now before a U.S. appeals court. The decision may have important implications on the territorial reach of the FCPA.
The facts and relevant statutory provisions are straightforward, although the analysis is not. The defendant, Lawrence Hoskins, is a British national who at all relevant times was an officer of a British subsidiary of French manufacturing giant Alstom. Alstom and several of its subsidiaries were investigated by the US Department of Justice for alleged illicit payments in Indonesia, and ultimately reached a global corporate settlement that included several corporate guilty pleas and Deferred Prosecution Agreements, pursuant to which the corporate entities paid US fines of over US$750 million. The DOJ also pursued several individuals, including Mr. Hoskins, who was ultimately arrested when he arrived in the United States on vacation. His attorneys moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the US prosecutor lacked power to prosecute him. After energetic procedural activity by both sides, the District Court granted his motion in significant part. Unusually, the prosecutor appealed, and oral argument was heard on March 2, 2017.

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