Former Alstom executive Frédéric Pierucci published

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Book called " The American Trap " to denounce the international corruption trial faced by the French company at the Department of Justice. He claims that Alstom was deliberately harmed in order to facilitate ongoing negotiations for the sale of its electrical division to the American General Electric (GE), which included nuclear plants in American territory. The DoJ set Alstom the largest penalty ever applied by the FCPA in history up until then, US$772 million, in a process conducted simultaneously with negotiations between GE and Alstom, between 2013 and 2014. The Senate and the FCPA Research published in December 2021 by economists Lauren Cohen, from Harvard University, and Bo Li, from Tsinghua University, in China, concluded that anti-corruption action against foreign companies with a local presence in the USA increases by 23% in the periods prior to Senate elections. Anti-corruption processes are of interest to senators, says the research, not only because of pressure from private lobbies, but because they have public support.

The processes focus on the proximity of elections, in more prominent industries in the senators' states, causing an increase in media attention and an increase in voter capture," says the article. A case cited as an example of private lobbies acting in the Senate is the case against the French energy multinational Total, which resulted in a penalty of US$398 million . The research links the case against Total to the actions of Texas senator John Cornyn, from the Republican Party, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The action against the French company was formalized in 2013, shortly before the launch of the sen Special Phone Number Data ator's re-election campaign in 2014. The parliamentarian's actions, says the study by Cohen and Li, are related to the influence of the oil company Exxon-Mobil, an oil multinational based in Texas. It competes with Total in several international and national markets, including Texas itself, where the American branch of the French oil company is located. The study highlights that the pressure from private lobbies has as its backdrop the high internationalization of large American companies.



Among the 500 largest US companies listed by Standard&Poor's (2019), around 50% of revenue originates abroad. In other words, interfering in the application of the FCPA to foreign companies is a way not only to protect the domestic market, but to open foreign markets. 'Lava Jato' and the FCPA One of the relevant works on the topic in Brazil was published last year by USP professor Maria Paula Bertran and infrastructure specialist Maria Virginia Mesquita Nasser. Analyzing the profile of FCPA actions, they identified that application tends to focus on economically strategic sectors for the United States, such as energy, technology and raw materials. The FCPA also targets international markets relevant to American capital, which includes Brazil, characteristics that, taken together, make Petrobras a typical target for American anti-corruption authorities. In the case of Odebrecht, however, the research concludes that the process was an "outlier", as the company does not operate in a strategic sector subject to the FCPA.