Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Ragi.

My guest today is Sam Eversman.

For almost three decades, Sam's practice has focused on international transactions in or involving Saudi Arabia.

He's a frequent speaker on Saudi legal topics and works with

Trace's partner firm in Riyadh, KSA, USA Legal. Sam, thanks for joining me. Thank you.

I've just returned from Riyadh, and there seems to be a lot going on there on the anti-bribery front.

Can you just describe some of the recent developments for us? And I think it's actually broader than just the anti-bribery front. Can you just describe some of the recent developments for us?

And I think it's actually broader than just the anti-bribery front, as you probably could tell

from your meetings in Saudi. There's a lot going on just generally in the legal sector, as well as

a country that's trying to reform its economy in all ways, in particular with respect to defense

and some of the areas where anti-bribery is usually at the forefront.

And to make that point, I guess, really firm, it's important to recognize that while the Saudi

anti-bribery law goes back to before the FCPA as a domestic anti-bribery law, it did nothing for a period of several years, as in to, you know, maybe into the early 90s before it had its first amendments.

And those amendments were only to increase the penalties so that they made more sense in a 1990s situation compared to the 1970s.

And then, fairly suddenly, in the past two or three years, we've seen almost every year

at least some tweaks and some amendments that are potentially significant in the

anti-bribery law, as well as overhauls of a

number of other statutes that are important in Saudi and are either new or being restated

and amended.

Those would include things like the competition law.

And more importantly, one that we won't be able to talk about in detail today because it's

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