How to Begin Your FCPA Due Diligence

The task of where to begin a full compliance and ethics program can often times appear quite daunting. Most US companies fully understand the need to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). However most companies are not created out of new cloth but are ongoing enterprises with a fully up and running business in place. They need to bring resources to bear to comply with the FCPA while continuing to do business. This can be particularly true in the area of performing due diligence on foreign business partners or vendors in the supply chain. Many companies understand the need for a robust due diligence program to investigation third parties, but have struggled with how to create an inventory to define the basis of risk of each foreign business partner and thereby perform the requisite due diligence required under the FCPA.

At the SCCE 2010 Annual Conference, Ken Kurtz, Chairman and CEO of the Steele Foundation presented some ideas in a session entitled “Getting Unstuck, Tactics for Defining and Executing Systematic, Risk-Based Third Party Due Diligence for FCPA Compliance”. In this presentation he discussed some tools and tactics for ensuring third party due diligence compliance on foreign business partners such as agents, resellers, distributors, joint venture partners and any other such entities which might represent a US based company internationally. He gave the audience some ‘nuts and bolts’ guidance on cost-effective, risk based approaches to defining and vetting of foreign business partners.