Welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast covering the top regulatory stories of the week.

James Panicki is my name and it's great to see you again.

Now, not a week goes by without a story of China's

growing vigor in regulatory enforcement targeting local tech giants, be it the massive antitrust

fine imposed on Alibaba or the probe launched just this week against Maitwan, the online

food delivery giant. Our reporting is pointing

to greater levels of coordination among Chinese regulators, and that multi-pronged approach has

significant implications for business. Our reporter Yonix Lee will be joining us in just over 10

minutes time. First up, though, to the Petro-Ecuador bribery scandal now unfolding

in U.S. courts. The Ecuadorian state-run oil company is in the midst of a U.S. bribery investigation,

but there have been some interesting sidebar issues emerging as well, including the question

of whether under U.S. law, someone who paid bribes to the

company should be required to hand back the cash. The question isn't as straightforward as you

might think. M-lex's man in New York is Richard Vanderford. He has published an analysis of the

case, and I'm pleased to say that he joins me now. So Richard, let's start from

the beginning. What broadly speaking is the Petro Ecuador prosecution about? And maybe tell us

something about the specific case that you've covered most recently. Well, there's a, there's sort of a

U.S. criminal investigation into Petro, Ecuador,

generally. There's kind of a broad crackdown by American authorities on corruption in Latin

America and are just pulling at threads and finding more and more cases or instances of

corruption. And the cases are

centered in Miami and some of them are in New York as well. The one I covered most recently,

...