Legal Remedies for Victims of Bribery under United States Law

By making it illegal for those subject to American law to bribe a “foreign official,” the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) created a new class of claimants—foreign governments injured when their employees were bribed. It has also prompted a wave of suits by the shareholders, business partners, and competitors of those who bribed an employee of a foreign government.  

Most of this "follow on" litigation is quite recent, brought since the surge in FCPA enforcement actions in the mid-2000s; most cases have either been settled out of court or await final disposition. Many questions about the legal remedies available when a foreign official is bribed thus remain to be decided.

In this paper, Rick Messick, a legal consultant specializing in anticorruption law, considers how such cases are faring as of early 2016, and how remedies for bribery victims are likely to evolve in the future.

This is the latest paper in a series developed from a day of discussions on the worldwide legal fight against high-level corruption organized by the Justice Initiative and Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, held in June 2014.