On February 10, 2011, Tyson Foods announced a settlement of outstanding violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As reported by the FCPA Blog, the Tyson Foods agreed to pay a $4 million criminal penalty and $1.2 million in disgorgement and pre-judgment interest to resolve charges related to illegal payments by company representatives to government-employed inspection veterinarians in Mexico and a cover-up of the payments. This settlement had several interesting elements which should be noted by the FCPA practitioner. We will explore these developments in our next two articles. Today’s article will focus on the detailed discussion of the reasons for the settlement and the specifics of the monetary penalty assessed against Tyson Foods.
Initially we would note that in this settlement, the DOJ continues its recent course of action in providing greater specificity in the basis upon which the final settlement was concluded. We applaud the DOJ for this course of action and hope they will continue to do so. By providing such transparency, the DOJ affords greater information on its procedures to the compliance community.
Please see full publication below for more information.
