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On December 22, 2023, President Biden signed the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) into law. The FEPA makes it a crime for foreign officials to demand or accept bribes within the territory of the United States or from United States persons anywhere in the world. The FEPA amends an existing federal statute governing domestic bribery, but it is modeled after and intended to extend the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), an influential tool of the Department of Justice increasingly used to combat bribery of foreign officials by U.S. persons. The penalties under the FEPA are much steeper than under the FCPA, including a fine of three times the amount of the bribe or a fine of up to $250,000 (whichever is greater) and up to 15 years in prison. Also, in contrast to the one division of the U.S. Department of Justice that prosecutes FCPA cases, FEPA cases may be prosecuted by any regional U.S. Attorney’s Office.
These differences from the FCPA are promising for civil asset recovery and cross-border insolvency practitioners because the expanded prosecution of foreign and domestic bribery by the Department of Justice is likely to shine a light on more fraud schemes active in the United States. The FEPA also requires the U.S. Attorney General to publish an annual report highlighting prominent cases prosecuted under FEPA that year. Additionally, the broad definition of a “foreign official” under FEPA casts a wider net than the FCPA and offers the possibility that more foreign fraudsters operating in the United States will be identified and publicly prosecuted.
To read the Act in its entirety, click here.
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