| | DoJ's white collar crime settlements raising questions
 Lawyers who represent corporations before the Justice Department have recently noticed a surge in business-related settlements, starting just after the November election. According to the Washington Post, there have been 19 such settlements in the last two months, compared with 16 during the same period a year ago and just five in 2006.
Many of the agreements involve misconduct that goes back five years or more, raising suspicions that corporations are settling now in the expectation of receiving more favorable terms than they might get from the Obama administration.
In the largest of these deals, the German engineering and telecommunications conglomerate Siemens agreed to pay $450 million in criminal fines, resulting from a probe by the German and US governments that uncovered $1.36 billion in bribes to officials in numerous countries and other corrupt payments.
However, Siemens was let off the hook by being allowed to plead guilty to violating accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, rather than bribery provisions, thereby remaining eligible to bid on US government contracts.
The White Collar Crime Prof Blog paid tribute to the deal by giving Siemens its 2008 White Collar Crime Award for "Best Timing."
The New York Times reports that Siemens' bribery in countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria, Argentina, Israel, Venezuela, China, and even Saddam Hussein's Iraq, "left behind angry competitors who were shut out of contracts and local residents in poor countries who, because of rigged deals, paid too much for necessities like roads, power plants and hospitals."
In Greece, investigators found that Siemens had used a complex netork of offshore companies to launder 25 million euros of cash that were used to pay off officials, especially in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games.
The Siemens case, although unprecedented in its scope, is not alone. The Times notes that the former chief executive of the KBR subsidiary of Halliburton recently pleaded guilty to both paying bribes and skimming off millions for himself, and more charges are anticipated in that case. Daimler, Johnson & Johnson, and other major firms are also under investigation for similar violations.
When asked about the wave of settlements since November, a former head of the IRS office of professional responsibility told the Post, "What they obviously are trying to do is take advantage of an administration that's deemed to be more friendly to business. I know of no tax reason for doing it now."
A spokeperson for the whistleblower group Taxpayers Against Fraud agreed that "this is traditionally the time to ram a settlement through because no one notices."
However, a Justice Department spokesperson insisted, "The department makes its enforcement decisions based solely on the facts and the law, after conducting a thorough investigation. ... It's not unusual for parties to resolve enforcement matters by the end of the calendar year."
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