For the third time in weeks, a federal judge has thrown out in whole or part a prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), this year’s booming subject of white-collar law enforcement. What’s more, judges in more than one of the cases have criticized the tactics of the U.S. Department of Justice in truly scathing terms, just as they have criticized DoJ tactics in environmental and other white-collar prosecutions over the past year. Isn’t it time — I ask at Cato at Liberty — for Congress to investigate? [earlier; related, Nathan Vardi/Forbes] (& welcome Instapundit, Damon Root/Reason, Memeorandum, Samuel Rubinfeld/WSJ “Corruption Currents”, Radley Balko readers).
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[…] it here first: “Courts push back on bribery prosecutions” […]
[…] Defenders of the government’s aggressive prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act are finding more and more to be defensive about. The latest in the string of setbacks for the Department of Justice came Monday, when a jury acquitted two defendants in the Justice Department’s 2009 Gabon “sting” operation and the case against three others ended in a mistrial. Alison Frankel: “So far, the Justice Department has not managed to convict a single Gabon sting defendant who contested its charges.” [WaPo, WSJ blog and related, earlier] […]