Welcome back to the Trace podcast, Bribes, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're talking about enhancing internal controls.

We spend a lot of time talking about the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA, but much less time talking about internal controls.

And my guest today, Richard Grime, is going to remedy that for us.

Richard is a litigation partner in Gibson Dunn and Crutcher's Washington office

and a member of the firm's white-collar defense and investigations practice group.

Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Richard spent more than nine years at the SEC

where he supervised over 70 enforcement actions, including FCPA cases

and the usual array of accounting fraud and Ponzi schemes.

Richard, thanks so much for joining me.

Happy to do, Sir Alexander.

Why don't you just jump right in with an overview of the Internal Controls provision for us?

The Internal Controls provision is one of the three provisions of the FCPA,

any bribery and books and records being the other two.

And the internal controls provision was put in in 1977 and it's carried forward

through until today.

And it's regarded that certainly by the SEC and also by DOJ as being a very important

part of the FCPA.

And it is often neglected.

It's probably neglected at your peril because the government regards it as the easiest

tripwire to capture companies in an enforcement investigation and to hold on to them, even when the harder charge to prove the bribery charge sometimes falls away.

So the anti-bribery provisions are obvious, but the internal controls provisions really are an area which has not been fully defined even.

...