The FCPA Report interviewed Manatt's Jacqueline Wolff, co-chair of the firm's Corporate Investigations and White Collar Defense practice, for an article on Hitachi's settlement with the SEC. The Japanese conglomerate has agreed to pay $19 million to resolve the SEC's claims that it violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing foreign officials to obtain contracts related to two multibillion dollar construction projects in South Africa.
"This is not a case where the red flags were hidden and the company would have had to perform deep due diligence to uncover the issues," said Wolff, "because the possibility of corruption was publicly known and the subject of news reports."