ANTICORRUPTION DEVELOPMENTS –

Olympus to Pay $646 Million for Anti­Kickback and FCPA Violations -

Early this month, Olympus Corp. of the Americas (OCA) settled government investigations related to violations of the U.S. Anti­Kickback Statute (AKS) and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). OCA will pay $623 million to settle criminal and civil allegations of AKS violations, and the company’s Latin American subsidiary (OLA) will pay $22.8 million to settle allegations of FCPA violations. OLA entered into a three ­year Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Fraud Section under which it agreed to hire a compliance monitor and to implement various compliance enhancements. OCA entered into a separate DPA related to the AKS violations and agreed to hire the same monitor. According to the DOJ, OCA obtained more than $600 million in sales as a result of kickbacks paid to doctors and hospitals in the United States and more than $7 million in sales from bribes that OLA paid to health care practitioners at government­-owned facilities in Central and South America. In addition to cash payments, OLA also paid for personal travel and provided heavily discounted equipment to physicians working for government facilities.