The Daily Populous Tuesday February 11st, 2025 morning edition
Authored by cnbc.com and submitted by Temp89

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to pause enforcing a nearly half-century-old law that prohibits American companies and foreign firms from bribing officials of foreign governments to obtain or retain business.

"It sounds good, but it hurts the country," Trump said of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as he signed the order at the White House.

"Many, many deals are unable to be made because nobody wants to do business, because they don't want to feel like every time they pick up the phone, they're going to jail," Trump said, referring to U.S. anti-corruption efforts.

A White House official told CNBC, "A pause in enforcement to better understand how to streamline the FCPA to make sure it's in line with economic interests and national security."

The pause in criminal prosecutions under the FCPA is being implemented to avoid putting U.S. businesses at an economic disadvantage to foreign competitors.

The FCPA's intent is in part to prevent American firms from fueling rampant public corruption that undermines the rule of law in many parts of the world. Over time, the FCPA's rules have grown into bedrock principles of how American businesses operate overseas.

The FCPA became law in 1977, barring all Americans and certain foreign issuers of securities from paying bribes to foreign officials. The law was amended in 1998 to apply to foreign firms and people who caused such bribes to take place within the United States.

The broadly written law applies not only to direct bribes that are paid, but also to bribes that are offered or planned or authorized by a company's management.

K3yb0r3d on February 10th, 2025 at 19:32 UTC »

Definitely bringing this up at the next company meeting. They're gonna have to redo the HR training videos.

TParis00ap on February 10th, 2025 at 19:25 UTC »

Didn't these gents scream and whine for nearly a decade about Hunter Biden and bribes?

Edit: spelling. Though I'm sure Republicans had wine with their whining.

mental_monkey on February 10th, 2025 at 19:23 UTC »

It’s like they want to rub our faces in how corrupt they are and going to be. I feel sick.