FCPA: Justice sends corrupt corporate employees to jail because they cannot send corporations

From Dan Levine of The Recorder:

"By entering a plea last week for his role in bribing a British defense official, Martin Self joined a growing line of individual defendants awaiting sentencing in one of the Justice Department's major jihads.

Self is one of seven defendants across the country who have pleaded guilty and await sentencing for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to data recently compiled by Shearman & Sterling. The last individual defendant to be sentenced was Steven Lynwood Head in California's Southern District last September; he got six months in prison. In Self's case, the government agreed to a guideline range that would put his prison sentence at eight months.

The government's FCPA unit began by targeting companies, and now has focused on individuals to obtain tougher penalties, said Shearman partner Patrick Robbins. He compared it to the way the DOJ's antitrust division handled price fixing.

"It raises the profile of the enforcement program, and it's the kind of thing that executives around the world read about, and react to," said Robbins, a former prosecutor in the Northern District. The Justice Department brought 10 actions against individuals last year, which is the same number it brought in 2005 and 2006 combined, Shearman found. "