As was initially reported by the FCPA Professor, lawyers for four of the individual defendants who are former executives of the Orange County, California-based valve company, Control Components Inc. have filed a Motion to Dismiss the DOJ’s case. The basis of this defense, that their actions of participating in a scheme to bribe employees of several state-owned companies in China, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to secure contracts, does not fall within the FCPA. This argument is based the definition of foreign official under the FCPA. The DOJ has long taken the position that any employee of a foreign government owned or back enterprise falls within the definition of a foreign governmental official under the omnibus “instrumentality thereof” clause. However, as reported by Joe Palazzolo, in the Wall Street Journal, Federal courts have never squarely considered this issue previously. The defense lawyer have winnowed the case to a single legal question: Are state-owned companies instrumentalities of foreign governments?
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