Speaker 1: The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are
Speaker 1: investigating China Petroleum and Chemical over allegations at the state
Speaker 1: controlled oil producer paid Nigerian officials about a one million
Speaker 1: dollars in bribes to resolve a business dispute. According to
Speaker 1: people familiar with the probe, the alleged payments by outside
Speaker 1: lawyers acting as middlemen for the company known as sine Peck,
Speaker 1: were intended to resolve a four billion dollar dispute between
Speaker 1: the Chinese Oil Companies petroleum unit in Geneva and the
Speaker 1: Nigerian government. Here to help us explain this probe are
Speaker 1: Peter Henning, professor at Wayne State University Law School, and
Speaker 1: Robert Hockett, professor at Cornell University Law School. Bob tell
Speaker 1: us more about the allegations. All right, So the allegation
Speaker 1: is that China Peck, through its ads, got into a
Speaker 1: dispute with the Nigerian government over a financial deal that
Speaker 1: was meant to be consummated over in Niger area. Um.
Speaker 1: Ultimately this became more and more complicated. The litigation got
Speaker 1: kind of harry or I should not litigation, but the
Speaker 1: negotiation around possibilitation got sufficiently Harry UH that SINO picked
Speaker 1: through a X decided sort of resolve the dispute with
Speaker 1: the sort of side payment to the Nigerian government officials involved.
Speaker 1: UM this particular, these payments were said are said to
Speaker 1: have end are alleged to have been funneled through US
Speaker 1: banks UH. And that's of course with the U S
Speaker 1: juristiction sort of comes into into the story. Um. So
Speaker 1: what we have now is the possibility of charges being
Speaker 1: brought by the SEC, perhaps by the d J against
Speaker 1: UM SINOPEC for essentially misusing UH its American bank accounts
Speaker 1: in conducting these payments. That would have been violation or
Speaker 1: Practices Act and violations of other nations statutes as well. Peter,
Speaker 1: is it unusual for U S officials to be interested
Speaker 1: in a transaction like this? So, so Bob did mention
Speaker 1: the American banks and so that's a legal jurisdictional element there.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're talking about stuff in Europe, were
Speaker 1: talking about stuff in in Asia, We're talking about stuff
Speaker 1: in Africa. It seems like most of the activity is
Speaker 1: going on in places other than the US. Well, welcome
Speaker 1: to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is, Uh, the
Speaker 1: law is so broad that if there have been cases
Speaker 1: in which emails were sent through Yahoo accounts, UH and
Speaker 1: servers in Silicon Valley, and that was the basis for
Speaker 1: the US to get involved. So it's not a surprise,
Speaker 1: um in a sense the Justice Department in sec have
Speaker 1: become something of the top cop for overseas bribery payments.
Speaker 1: And of course, when you overlay this the fact that
Speaker 1: Sinopeck is um a Chinese controlled oil company and the
Speaker 1: US is raising issues about Chinese trade practices, you can
Speaker 1: certainly see this says part of an effort to use
Speaker 1: American laws to police Chinese company and potentially embarrass the
Speaker 1: Chinese government. Bob, the Swiss had looked into this matter
Speaker 1: and closed the book on it after a short inquiry.
Speaker 1: They required sign a pack to pay thirty two million
Speaker 1: dollars in damages after admitting to organizational deficiencies. So is
Speaker 1: it is it? Should that have been the end of it?
Speaker 1: Is the US going a little too far in pursuing
Speaker 1: it further? Well, it sort of depends. I mean, Peter
Speaker 1: is exactly right that the Foreign Practices Act, which I
Speaker 1: also mentioned before, you know, affords a great abroad sort
Speaker 1: of jurisdiction, Right, to US authorities. Um, Basically, they can
Speaker 1: exercise jurisdiction anytime some American institution or firm has been
Speaker 1: used in the perpetration of some active corruption. Um. The
Speaker 1: reasons I mean, the fact that we're able to do that,
Speaker 1: of course, is one thing. Whether we would want to
Speaker 1: do that or want to act on that jurisdiction is another,
Speaker 1: And that raises the questionable why would we want to?
Speaker 1: Peter identified one reason? Right, we are engaged in the
Speaker 1: kind of across the board sort of trade a competition
Speaker 1: with China, and there is some concern about Chinese business
Speaker 1: practices more broadly. The other thing may be worth noting
Speaker 1: in this connection, though, is that US companies are routinely
Speaker 1: prosecuted under the Foreign corupt Practices acting are held to
Speaker 1: a pretty high standard by American law enforcement agencies, and
Speaker 1: so if they didn't do likewise with respect to foreign companies,
Speaker 1: that might in effect give foreign companies and advantage over
Speaker 1: American companies, right, they would be an effect subject to
Speaker 1: less to more lacks regulation. So my guess is that
Speaker 1: that might be playing a role here as well, that
Speaker 1: basically we don't want to be sort of treating our
Speaker 1: own firms more harshly than we treat foreign firms if
Speaker 1: they're violating the same laws.