Operation Car Wash, the wide ranging graft case involving Petrobras officials and the commodity trading community snared another trophy culprit.
Stamford, Connecticut based Freepoint Commodities agreed to pay the DOJ $98 million to resolve an investigation into bribery of Brazilian government officials. The firm has also agreed to pay more than $7.6 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a related matter.
Freepoint entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement with the department
The department reached this resolution with Freepoint based on a number of factors, noting: "in the initial phases, Freepoint’s cooperation was limited in degree and impact, and largely reactive."
Freepoint also engaged in remedial measures, including:
(i) conducting an analysis of the causes of the underlying conduct and undertaking appropriate remediation to address those root causes and taking additional steps to improve its compliance program, including by retaining an advisory firm to evaluate its third-party compliance program;
(ii) overhauling its third-party compliance and risk management program, including through the implementation of enhanced risk-based due diligence, screening, ongoing monitoring and oversight procedures, and the implementation of FCPA training for third-party agents;
(iii) reducing the use of third-party intermediaries; (iv) implementing a global agent onboarding and tracking procedure;
(v) strengthening its corporate governance and risk management structures, including through the utilization of data and metrics to evaluate risk, enhancing the independence and stature of its compliance function, and hiring additional, experienced compliance personnel;
(vi) updating the company’s global anti-bribery and corruption policy to include FCPA red flags; (vii) implementing a process for reporting and investigating allegations of misconduct; and (viii) conducting testing of its third-party compliance program.
In light of these considerations, the criminal penalty calculated under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines reflects a 15% reduction off the bottom of the applicable guidelines fine range.
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