Category: Anti-Corruption Laws

“I should have refused to draft the contract that we used for paying bribes.” – Former Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd., In-House Counsel Jeffery Chow.

The respected anti-corruption organization, Transparency International, released its 2017 ranking of countries based on perceived levels of public sector corruption. The TPI employs a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

There has been considerable speculation about how vigorously the Trump administration will enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) given Trump’s past criticism of this law. In 2012, Trump famously called the FCPA a “horrible law”.

On 15 May 2017 the Legal Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand (AMCHAM) will welcome U.S. Department of Justice Attaché Catharine Hartzenbusch, who will deliver remarks on current trends in the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The former Governor-General of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Ms. Juthimas Siriwan, and her daughter, Jittisopha Siriwan, were given lengthy prison sentences on 29 March 2017 in connection with kickbacks paid to procure contracts from Bangkok Film Festival from 2003 to 2006. The Thai English language newspapers, the Bangkok Post and The Nation, report that Juthamas Siriwan and her daughter, Jittisopha Siriwan, were found guilty on corruption charges by Thailand’s new Anti-Corruption Court, and that Juthamas Siriwan received a 50-year sentence while her daughter received a 44-year sentence.

According to the Bangkok Post Thai officials convicted in corruption cases involving more than one billion baht could face the death penalty. Previous Thai legislation provided for the death penalty for officials convicted of bribery, but the Bangkok Post reports that no official has ever been executed. There is a serious talk now of drastically increasing the penalties for corruption.

A recent U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) administrative proceeding against California based Health Net illustrates a challenge when documenting settlements with exiting employees in Thailand. Heath Net used severance agreements that required employees to waive their rights to obtain monetary awards from the SEC’s whistleblower program.

Corruption has much the same effect on the development of a nation that cancer has on the life of a biological organism. Recognizing this, Thailand has various laws criminalizing corruption, recently enacted new anti-corruption laws and plans to expand the scope of its anti-corruption laws. Thai laws aimed at combating corruption include the following

The Bangkok Post reported on 9 November 2015 that: “[f]ormer Tourism Authority of Thailand governor Juthamas Siriwan and her daughter on Monday plead innocent at the Criminal Court to bribery charges in the Bangkok International Film Festival scandal.” Over five years ago, in September of 2009, two Americans, Gerald Green and Patricia Green, were found guilty of paying bribes to a senior Thai Tourism official to obtain lucrative contracts.

Recent amendments to the Organic Act on Counter Corruption, B.E. 2542 (the “Organic Act”) have expanded the scope of Thai anti-corruption laws (the “Amendments”). The provisions of the Amendments that are most important or have received the most press concern: (1) application of the Organic Act to “Foreign Officials” (a defined term); (2) provisions that essentially impose strict liability on companies for corrupt acts of “associated persons” of that company; and (3) the expansion of the death penalty as a sanction for participating in corrupt acts.