Koehler on the FCPA

Mike Koehler has posted Why You Should Be Alarmed by the ADM FCPA Enforcement Action on SSRN with the following abstract:

Like all statutes, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has specific elements that must be met in order for there to be a violation. However, with increasing frequency in this new era of FCPA enforcement, it appears that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have transformed FCPA enforcement into a free-for-all in which any conduct the enforcement agencies find objectionable is fair game to extract a multimillion-dollar settlement from a risk-averse corporation. A case in point is the recent $54 million FCPA enforcement action against Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) and related entities.

After discussing the principal features of this enforcement action - namely that ADM and its shareholders were victims of a corrupt Ukraine government - this article highlights why anyone who values the rule of law should be alarmed by the ADM enforcement action.