This paper discusses the lack of transparency in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act’s accounting provisions. Transparency, especially for public companies, is essential in reporting financial information. Users rely on company financial information to make investment and other financial decisions. Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977 following the Watergate scandal. The act addressed a growing trend among companies to hide their illegal acts of bribery by not accurately reporting transactions in their books. The act intended to enhance the value of the auditing process over financial information (U.S. Department of Justice et al., 2012).
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) contains two accounting provisions:
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Department of Justice et al., 2012). In the FCPA Resource Guide, the DOJ and SEC provide guidance on internal controls system best practices. This standard includes understanding a company’s work force and regulatory environment. The Guide encourages companies to factor in corruption risk when establishing its internal controls system (U.S. Department of Justice et al., 2012). Despite the recommendations provided in the Guide, companies continue to face regulatory pressure in creating a strong internal controls system (Trace International Inc, 2016).
Despite the aforementioned efforts to strengthen the internal controls provision, violations persist. In 2008, BHP Billiton failed to implement a thorough internal controls system. The SEC report noted BHP Billiton did not prepare or train its employees to handle riskier situations. However, the SEC acknowledged BHP Billiton implemented a few internal controls (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2015a). This case reflects an uncertainty over the SEC’s inconsistent interpretation of the internal controls
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However, they are also its greatest risk. Additional surveillance over employees is essential when it comes to engaging in risky activities. BHP Billiton’s employees did not receive proper training. Training is a preventive control to combat high-level inherent risk activities such as bribery. Employees should be well-versed in company policy because their actions may incur liability under the FCPA (U.S. Department of Justice et al., 2012). The hospitality applications in the BHP case highlight this issue. BHP Billiton’s failure to properly account for these applications helped facilitate a bribery scheme. As a consequence, the company faced repercussions in the form of a large monetary fine and mandatory anti-corruption training (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
According to Benston (1977) an unaware public pays for government-required accounting disclosure. Sunstein (1999) claims that disclosure of information allows the federal government to control public and private conduct. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Over the decades accounting regulations have come from various sources. The Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Internal Revenue Service and Interstate Commerce Commission are examples of regulatory bodies that promulgate accounting regulations. A more recent example occurred during the 1970s. During the Watergate era there were a number of investigations, some of which affected American business. One of the investigations, conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1975, revealed that 19 publiclyheld corporations had made illegal campaign contributions and that these contributions were made from cash accounts that had not been recorded on the corporation’s books. (Heldack, 1977) This prompted the SEC to launch an investigation into what were considered ―questionable payments.‖ What came out of the investigation was that many U.S. multinational corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars in ―questionable payments‖ to foreign officials to obtain business. As a result, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was unanimously adopted by Congress in 1977. Bribery of foreign officials to obtain business for the corporation
In addition, associated with the misapplication of accounting methods, the financial industry has been plagued with one disaster after another involving numerous scandals from top leading American companies. Consequently, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 compromising eleven sections that are generated to insure the responsibilities of the company’s managers and executives. This act identifies criminal penalties for particular unethical practices and currently has new policies that a corporation must follow in their financial reporting. The following examples describe some of biggest accounting methods as a result of the greed and the outrage of the ethical and financial misconduct by the senior management of public corporations.
During the years 2001 through 2005 According to the information and plea document, three Miami-Dade County telecommunications companies executed a series of contracts with Telecommunications D’Haiti that allowed the companies’ customers to place telephone calls to Haiti. Joel Esquenazi, an executive of one of the companies, was charged with making illegal payments to officials at Telecommunications D’Haiti. In exchange, the foreign officials presented business advantages on the Miami-Dade County companies, including issuing preferred telecommunication rates the number of minutes for which payments was owed, and giving a variety of credit to owed sums. A shell company, owed by alleged co-conspirator Juan Diaz, and co-defendant Marguerite
Fraudulent financial reporting is one form of corporate corruption and may involve the manipulation of the documents used to record accounting transactions, the misrepresentation of accounting events or transactions, or the intentional misapplication of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Crumbley, Heitger, and Smith, 2013). Examples of fraudulent schemes befitting of this category abound and usually involve financial statement items that have been misclassified, omitted, overstated, undervalued, or prematurely recognized. One case involving CEO Bill Smith of Moonstay
Many companies are trying to expand economically in the market by doing business with an individual or another company in foreign countries. These businesses are engaging in into using improper ways of payments that are leading to secret bribes to the foreign public officials. Foreign countries are not always in compliance with the laws and they tend not to follow them. Having these problems with the US and all the millions of dollars that have been passed they wanted to take a more affirmative approach and be able to correct the problem. That is when congress decided to introduce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to prosecute foreign companies for corrupt payments within the United States. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is a federal
Internal controls represent an organization’s processes and procedures used to meet its goals and objectives and serve as a defense in safeguarding assets and preventing and detecting errors, fraud, and abuse. Effective internal controls provide reasonable assurance that an organization’s objectives are achieved through (1) reliable financial reporting, (2) compliance with laws and regulations, and (3) effective and efficient operations. The passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as well as the numerous corporate frauds and bankruptcies over the past decade—including some
1. Describe the economic and social impact of bribes and other similar payments in emerging economics.
To find (event(s) or object(s) that prove something) of increased Government enforcement against (related to jobs where people mostly use an education and brains to earn money) crimes one needs only to look the Government's enforcement under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) have really increased its enforcement of the FCPA over the past few years. In the past four years DOJ has brought 44 corporation FCPA enforcement actions and collected nearly $1.8 billion in criminal fines. But FCPA violations is not the only type of (related to jobs where people mostly use an education and brains to earn money) crime. The list is long and complex, but includes crimes
Evidence of bribery or erroneous accounting is enough proof for the government to file a case against an individual or company regardless of intent, under the FCPA laws (Clayton, 2011). There are three types of improper violations for the anti-bribery provision and they include: the issuer, domestic concern, the foreign national and businesses. The issuers are the ones that are registered in the US or are required to file Security and Exchange Commission. Domestic concern is any person or business that has their place of business in the US or is under the US law. Lastly, the foreign nationals and business in which deals with corrupt payments that are made in the United States, there are also the third parties and agents that are as well included and have the same conditions apply to them as they do to the issuer, domestic concern, and the foreign national and businesses. The second provision that is involved with the FCPA is the Accounting provision and that consist of contracts enforcing Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC enforces the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by bringing the civil actions against the issuers and their officers, directors, employees, and agents. FCPA has two accounting requirements that are recordkeeping and internal controls. The recordkeeping is there to ensure that the books, records, and accounts are held at the standards of what the company should be at. This is designed to cover business
Fraudulent activities and embezzlement are more prevalent in organizations than most people think. Because of the multitude of previous scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has required all publicly traded U.S. companies to have internal auditing and internal controls to check for fraudulent activity and embezzlement. While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act only applies to public businesses, the requirements of it should be applied to all types of businesses, even universities. In the Case of the City University of New York, having internal controls and auditing would have halted the embezzlement occurring there.
During the 1970s the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) commenced numerous investigations of American businesses and their questionable payments to foreign governmental officials. As a result of these investigations, the Foreign Corrupt Policy Act was proposed. The SEC is the equivalent to police departments, but for corporations.
In today’s ever changing and competitive modern world of business, it is critical for the companies to have activities internationally. In order to prohibit frauds and illegal activities, several acts and documents have been elaborated. One of the documents is Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that has been enacted in the 1970’s, as a result of SEC investigation of several U.S. companies that made illegal payments to foreign governmental officials, politicians, and political parties (Barnes 73). The FCPA had a critical impact on the way U.S. firms do business. Companies that did not comply with FCPA have been subject of criminal and civil enforcement actions that later resulted in huge fines and sentences for
due diligence spending by US multinational it raises the cost of investing in the foreign
The final responsibility for the integrity of an SEC registrant’s internal controls lies on the management team. U.S. companies need to refer to a comprehensive framework of internal control when assessing the quality of financial reporting to determine that financial statements are being presented under General Accepted Accounting Principles, GAAP. The widely used framework is referred as COSO, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, sponsored by the following organizations American Accounting Association, the American Institute of CPA’s, Financial Executives International, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and the Institute of Management Accountants. COSO’s defines internal control as:
Effective internal controls protect a company’s assets, maintain compliance, improve operations, prevent fraud, and promote accuracy in financial reporting. In 1992 the