In the middle of the 1970′s the United States Securities and Exchange Commission was conducting more than four hundred investigations on alleged cases of bribery concerning American corporations. These payments totaled more than three hundred million dollars in all. Payments made by the companies to foreign politicians, political parties, and government officials. One of the most notorious and widely recognized cases during this time was the Lockheed scandals of bribery. They were charged with paying official members of foreign countries to get their contracts.
It was during this time that the United States Congress conceived of the FCPA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Act specifically targets those who are committing the criminal act of bribery. They were intent on ensuring the confidence of the public, in the integrity and the morality of the American businesses and corporations. The US President who signed the Act into law was Jimmy Carter. He did so on the 19th of December, 1977. The FCPA was then amended eleven years later when in 1998, the International Anti-Bribery Act was created. This amendment was conceived as a means to implement and supplement the conventions surround the anti-bribery laws set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Any citizen and/or corporation of the United States will be held accountable in a court of law in the event that they are found to be making payments in order to establish or continue practicing business. Anyone holding government positions, such as doctors working in a government managed or owned facility, is considered a foreign official. One who owns a bank is considered a minister of finance, and too would fall into the category of foreign official. Any international organizations, such as the Red Cross or the United Nations, will too be held to the rules, regulations and laws decreed in the tenants of the FCPA. Ending bribery, ends one very detrimental form of corruption, and the officers of the FCPA set out to do just that.