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OFAC sanctions Indonesian NGO
On February 3, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions pursuant to Executive Order 13224 against a non-governmental organization established by an Indonesia-based designated terrorist group for the purpose of providing financial support to extremists in Syria under the cover of humanitarian aid. According to Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian E. Nelson, “[t]he United States is taking this action to expose and disrupt [the terrorist group’s] deceptive efforts to use a purported ‘humanitarian organization’ for illicit purposes as a front for collecting and transferring funds.” Nelson added that “Treasury will continue to work with foreign partners to protect the non-profit sector from abuse by terrorist groups that disguise illicit finance flows as humanitarian activity.” As a result of the sanctions, all property and interests in property of the sanctioned entity subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any dealings involving the property or interests in property of blocked or designated persons, unless exempt or authorized by a general or specific OFAC license. OFAC further warned that the agency “can prohibit or impose strict conditions on the opening or maintaining in the United States of a correspondent account or a payable-through account of a foreign financial institution that knowingly conducted or facilitated any significant transaction on behalf of a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”
Court overturns foreign bribery conviction of former transportation and energy industry executive
On February 26, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut acquitted a British national and former executive of a French multinational transportation and energy company who had been convicted by a jury of FCPA violations, citing the government’s failure to prove at trial that the defendant was an “agent” of a domestic concern. The court left intact the jury’s money laundering verdicts against the defendant.
At trial in November 2019, the jury found the defendant guilty of one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, and six counts of substantive FCPA violations, as well as several money laundering counts, for his alleged involvement in a scheme by the company’s U.S. subsidiary, a power generation equipment manufacturer, to bribe Indonesian officials to obtain a power plant construction contract. The defendant filed a Rule 29(a) motion for a judgment of acquittal on all of the counts, arguing as to the FCPA counts that the government “failed to prove that he was an agent of [the subsidiary], the relevant domestic concern,” as required pursuant to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s earlier decision in the matter (covered by InfoBytes here). The trial court agreed, ruling that the evidence adduced at trial did not established that the subsidiary exercised “control over [the defendant’s] actions sufficient to demonstrate agency.” The court also granted the defendant’s in-the-alternative request for a new trial on the FCPA counts, in the event that court’s acquittal is later disturbed on appeal.