Blackwater In Hot Water

The New York Times (here) reports that the DOJ "is investigating whether officials of Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm's security work in Iraq."

According to the Times, the DOJ's fraud section open an investigation "late last year" to determine whether Blackwater employees violated the FCPA. The investigation follows a November 2009 times article (here) which first raised questions about Blackwater's (now known as Xe Services) conduct in Iraq. That article suggested that the alleged payments at issue were made to Iraqi "foreign officials" to help secure an operating license the company needed to continue doing business in Iraq.

As noted in a prior post (here), this case is interesting on several levels.

First, the case (from an FCPA antibribery perspective) would seem to hinge on the FCPA's "obtain or retain" business element, and is another example of the post-Kay explosion in enforcement actions in which alleged improper payments were made to help secure foreign government licenses, permits, etc. An interesting wrinkle to this analysis is that the Iraqi license was apparently needed so that Blackwater could retain its contract with the U.S. State Department - not with a foreign entity as is usually the case.

Second, rarely if perhaps ever, has an FCPA inquiry focused on the conduct of a company so intertwined with U.S. government agencies (State Department and CIA) operating in a war zone.