On August 6, a jury in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) found a former director of an investment bank guilty of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with an alleged conspiracy to bribe Ghanian officials for a power plant contract in the mid-2010s. The conviction, which could carry a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, is notable given the “pause” on FCPA enforcement President Donald Trump announced in February 2025 and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) subsequent statements that could be read as narrowing enforcement of the statute.

The Statute and Its History

The FCPA, 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1, makes it unlawful for issuers of securities and their agents to corruptly offer anything of value to a foreign official for purposes of influencing government decisions so the issuer can obtain or retain business. In 15 U.S.C. § 78m, it also requires corporations to make and keep accurate books and records and maintain internal accounting controls. Enacted in 1977 in response to revelations of widespread bribery of foreign officials by U.S. companies, the FCPA has resulted in hundreds of subsequent enforcement actions against corporations and individuals. Violations of the FCPA carry stiff potential penalties, including corporate criminal fines of up to $2 million per violation of the anti-bribery provisions and $25 million per violation of the books and records provisions. In addition, companies that violate the FCPA can be barred from doing business with the federal government, lose their export licenses, or be subjected to the appointment of an independent corporate monitor. In light of all of this, over time the FCPA came to be viewed as one of the world’s most feared enforcement tools.

That changed on February 10, 2025, when President Trump issued an executive order pausing enforcement of the FCPA, stating that it has been “systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States.” The order further stated that “overexpansive and unpredictable FCPA enforcement against American citizens and businesses—by our own Government—for routine business practices in other nations not only wastes limited prosecutorial resources that could be dedicated to preserving American freedoms, but actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.” It ordered the attorney general to issue updated guidelines or policies for FCPA prosecutions.

Those guidelines emerged in June 2025, in a memorandum authored by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. That document listed non-exhaustive factors to be considered in deciding whether to investigate or prosecute under the FCPA:

• Whether the alleged misconduct is associated with the criminal operations of a cartel or transnational criminal organization.
• Whether the alleged misconduct deprived specific and identifiable U.S. entities of fair access to compete and/or resulted in economic injury to specific and identifiable American companies or individuals.
• Whether an urgent threat to U.S. national security resulted from the bribery or it involved key infrastructure or assets.
• Whether the alleged misconduct bears strong indicia of corrupt intent tied to particular individuals, such as bribe payments, proven and sophisticated efforts to conceal them, fraudulent conduct in furtherance of the bribery scheme, or efforts to obstruct justice.
• Whether an appropriate foreign law enforcement authority is willing and able to investigate and prosecute the same alleged misconduct.

Following the enforcement pause and the release of these guidelines, both the number of corporate FCPA resolutions and the total penalties paid in these cases significantly dropped for the year 2025. Some commentators debated if the FCPA was dead or if those reports were merely exaggerated.  

The EDNY Conviction

This month’s jury verdict against Asante Kawku Berko, a former director of an investment bank, on FCPA charges constitutes some proof of life for that statute. Of course, the charges in the Berko matter were brought long before the FCPA pause, in August 2020. But the fact that the United States Attorney’s Office continued to vigorously pursue the prosecution and obtained a conviction after the new FCPA guidelines were issued should be encouraging for fans of the statute. The government’s theory of the case was that Berko and co-conspirators paid bribes to individuals at numerous levels of the Ghanaian government to obtain a contract to build and operate a power plant for a Turkish energy company. For example, in April 2015, Berko and the conspirators discussed paying $1 million to the Ghanaian Minister of Power who was responsible for securing key approvals enabling the project to progress and $250,000 to his senior adviser. Bribes were also paid to five Ghanaian officials during an all-expenses-paid trip to Turkey to view equipment for the power plant. The government also alleged that Berko lied to the compliance team at his investment bank (which eventually withdrew from the deal) to conceal the bribe payments and laundered the money involved through shell companies and sham invoices. The defense, for its part, argued that the government had failed to show any specific bribe: no alleged recipient testified, no eyewitness described a bribe, and no bank record showed money reaching a public official.

The jury sided with the government, returning a guilty verdict after about three hours of deliberation. Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva of the DOJ Criminal Division celebrated the verdict, stating “we live in a global economy that American companies must be able to compete in fairly. This defendant corrupted that fair competition. He abused his position at a world-renowned American investment bank by helping bribe Ghanaian officials, so he and his co-conspirators, including senior executives at a Turkish company, could make money. Today’s conviction makes clear that criminals who undermine our country’s interests by corrupting foreign governments and cutting off fair competition will face the full force of the Department of Justice.”

Takeaways

This FCPA verdict serves as an important reminder that, though the Trump administration’s announcements may have created some changes in the way enforcement under the FCPA is approached, the statute remains the law of the land and carries significant penalties. Indeed, the Berko matter was not the only FCPA resolution this year (DOJ announced a $1.2 million FCPA resolution in March) and there were several FCPA enforcement actions in 2025. Moreover, just as this administration announced a new approach to the FCPA, so may a future administration potentially announce more aggressive enforcement. Actions taken by a company’s overseas employees or third-party agents today may be the subject of government scrutiny years down the road. In addition, other countries have anti-corruption statutes that bar similar conduct to that covered by the FCPA, including the UK Bribery Act 2010, France’s Sapin II, and Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act. So companies need to remain vigilant for bribery risks overseas. This can include:

• Implementing robust and effective compliance programs tailored to their specific industries, business practices and unique risks. DOJ has made clear that it will consider the strength or weakness of a compliance program in making charging and penalty decisions.
• Documenting the robustness of the compliance program, including its staffing, funding, policies and procedures, training and internal audit or investigation practices.
• Monitoring for (and training employees on) corruption red flags like the involvement in a proposed transaction of third parties with inadequate facilities or staff, requests for cash payment or payments to multiple accounts, or a lack of transparency.
• Treating third-party due diligence as ongoing, as opposed to just an onboard event.
• Providing for legal oversight and internal audits of controls on an ongoing basis, not just when a potential compliance risk is detected.

Of course, qualified counsel can help both with the fashioning of an effective compliance program and the response to perceived risks of corruption in overseas transactions. Although the landscape of FCPA enforcement may have at least temporarily shifted in the Trump administration, the legal and reputational threats posed by bribery remain much the same, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.