With their clients facing a combined 22 years in prison, lawyers at Perkins Coie and Foley & Lardner are urging the U.S. Supreme to shed light on what it means to bribe a foreign official in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
In a petition filed on Monday, Florida businessmen Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez asked the high court to review a determination that they violated the U.S. antibribery law by making kickbacks to employees of a state-owned Haitian telecommunications company. The duo argues that their convictions were premised on a flawed decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which agreed with prosecutors that the Haitian company is an “instrumentality” of the government, and therefore its employees qualify as foreign officials under the FCPA.
