Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 relies heavily on whistleblowers, both in America and abroad. If you have information about a potential violation of the law and want to report it to the authorities, there are some things that you should know about the law and the process of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) whistleblowing.

Here are the six most important things to understand, according to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act whistleblower attorney Dr. Nick Oberheiden.

1. The FCPA Prohibits Bribes to Foreign Government Officials and Requires Corporate Record-keeping

Most people focus on the FCPA’s prohibition against corporations that are publicly traded in the U.S. from using corruption to influence foreign officials. That is the statute’s name, after all. This part of the law has anti-bribery provisions and covers bribing foreign government officials, whether directly or indirectly, in order to secure or retain business. Those illegal bribes can be made by any publicly traded company or its:

• Officers
• Directors
• Employees
• Stockholders
• Agents

Bribing foreign officials violates the FCPA and can lead to law enforcement action, even if they happen outside the United States. In fact, most FCPA whistleblower claims involve corrupt conduct involving foreign officials outside of the U.S., typically in developing countries where to bribe foreign officials is more common, frequent, or even expected.

However, the FCPA requires companies to keep adequate records and accounting books, as well. The reason for this provision in the FCPA is fairly clear: If proper internal accounting controls were not mandated by the law then corruption and foreign bribery could easily be papered over and hidden with improper accounting techniques or bad record-keeping. Violations of this additional requirement under the FCPA can also lead to whistleblower claims – and can be signs of corruption, themselves.

2. What FCPA Violations Can Look Like

As with any other form of fraud or corruption, there are as many ways to violate the FCPA’s rules as there are bad actors who want to get ahead of their competition and make money. A few broad examples of FCPA violations are:

• Paying cash, goods, or services straight to a foreign official in exchange for favorable business actions, also known as a direct bribe
• Making those same payments to a family member or close associate of the foreign official, also known as an indirect bribe
• Overpaying for goods or services that were actually provided to the company by the official’s associates
• Paying the official or his or her associates for goods or services that were not actually provided
• Hiring a company owned by the foreign official or someone close to them, regardless of whether that company or vendor is equipped to perform on the purported contract for work
• Offering steep discounts to the foreign official and his or her associated network of people and companies

These nefarious business schemes are often done through the use of:

• Shell companies, often located in offshore jurisdictions with low tax rates, which move money around in ways that are purposefully difficult to trace
• Accounting fraud, such as by vaguely labeling bribes and other payments as travel or entertainment expenses
• Bookkeeping procedures that are either inadequate, nonexistent, or not followed

If you have evidence of any of these things happening, you can become an FCPA whistleblower.

3. Many FCPA Violations Happen Abroad

Precisely because FCPA violations involve foreign officials, it is not uncommon for them to occur overseas. In fact, the majority of major FCPA enforcement actions involve a publicly traded company’s corrupt conduct in one or several countries other than the United States.

This is one of the most unique aspects of the FCPA: Its jurisdiction knows no bounds.

Even the company doing the bribery can be a foreign one. So long as its securities are traded on a U.S. stock exchange, it can face FCPA liability.

4. You Do Not Need to Be a U.S. Citizen to Become a Whistleblower

Because the FCPA covers corruption that occurs outside the United States, many of the people who obtain evidence of corruption or bribery are not U.S. citizens, have little connection to the U.S., or have never even set foot in the country.

They can become whistleblowers, regardless of their nationality or citizenship.

“Foreign FCPA whistleblowers are common, but can still face an uphill battle. There are cultural differences as well as a language barrier. Even the different time zones can be an inconvenience. This makes it extremely important for non-U.S. citizens who want to use the FCPA to blow the whistle on corruption or bribery to hire a law firm with lots of international experience. Ideally, you would want to work with a whistleblower lawyer who understands your ethnic background and can speak your native language.” – Dr. Nick Oberheiden, founding partner of the national FCPA whistleblower law firm Oberheiden P.C.

5. Whistleblower Rewards Can Be Massive

Like many other federal whistleblower statutes, the FCPA provides whistleblowers with a share of the proceeds of whatever case stems from their disclosure. Unlike most other whistleblower laws, the FCPA lets whistleblowers recover a share of any “related actions,” as well.

This is important because the FCPA is enforced by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). If the SEC conducts an investigation, finds more evidence of corrupt conduct, and imposes sanctions against the defendant corporation, it may pass the case on to the DOJ for criminal prosecution as well. If both the SEC and the DOJ obtain financial settlements, the whistleblower could recover a share of both of them.

That share is generally between 10 and 30 percent of what gets recovered in the case. While the percentage seems small, these cases have a tendency to recover tens of millions of dollars.

6. The Protections from Workplace Retaliation are Complex

One downside of the FCPA is that it does not explicitly protect whistleblowers from workplace retaliation. However, the circumstances of many FCPA disclosures could trigger one of two other U.S. federal whistleblower statutes: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Dodd-Frank Act.

In order to make use of the protections offered by these other federal statutes, though, whistleblowers have to disclose the incriminating information of corruption in very particular ways. Failing to report it correctly can mean that you are left exposed to workplace retaliation, up to and including termination.