Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. And today we're looking back at another seminal FCPA case, Esquinazi. My guest is longtime friend of trace and senior partner at Steinman and Rogers. Bill Steinman is going to be taking us through the key

elements of this 2014 case. Bill, thank you so much for joining us.

Alexandra, thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Why should we care about

this case? What did this case tell us about the FCPA or what new development did it bring

that made you want to speak to our listeners

specifically about Esquadazi?

Really, it's important to talk about Esplanazi for two reasons.

The first, it's only one of 15 or so federal court cases that actually interpret language

in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

We have well over 500

settlements with the enforcement agencies, but very few of these cases go to court. So when we get a

federal court that looks at the provisions of the FCPA, no matter what they say or what it pertains

to, it's noteworthy. But there's also a very practical reason for why Esquinazi is noteworthy,

and that's because it wrestles with and interprets the term instrumentality as it shows up in the

Foreign Crout Practices Act. So we all know, presumably, that the FCPA prohibits

bribing foreign officials. And the statute includes in the definition

of foreign officials, somebody who is an employee of a, quote, instrumentality of a foreign government.

But what exactly is an instrumentality? The FCPA doesn't tell us, and the legislative history

doesn't really shed any light on this either.

We all intuitively know that it includes state-owned entities.

Does it include all state-owned entities, regardless of the percentage of government ownership

or their relationship to the government?

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