FCPA Participants: When You Know the Payments From the Inside

FCPA individual voluntary self-disclosure can lead to a non-prosecution agreement under the Justice Department’s individual disclosure program. If you worked on payments that may violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, your knowledge may reach well beyond the invoice. You may have approved the consultant or dealt with the customer official. Your own role belongs in the conversation with our whistleblower experts, alongside what you know about the scheme and the people directing it.

Individual Self-Disclosure NPA Versus Whistleblower Award

An individual self-disclosure NPA concerns the government’s agreement not to prosecute specified conduct under the agreement’s terms. A whistleblower award is money paid for qualifying information and assistance. They answer different questions for the person who knows how a bribe reached its recipient.

The Justice Department’s individual disclosure policy, dated April 15, 2024, covers foreign corruption involving public and private companies. We work through the personal terms with you and FCPA whistleblower lawyers who understand individual cooperation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program offers awards for original information that leads to successful enforcement. The Justice Department’s Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program offers a separate, discretionary award tied to qualifying recoveries of assets. Despite the word corporate in its name, that award program is for individuals.

Can a Bribe Participant Receive a Whistleblower Award?

A bribe participant’s award eligibility calls for an individual review under the relevant program. The Justice Department’s July 30, 2026 award terms address meaningful participation, minimal participation and consideration for an individual NPA. The Securities and Exchange Commission has its own rules concerning a person’s involvement. If your concern is something you approved, arranged or received, we address it with you and the right whistleblower lawyers.

The commercial story is where we begin that conversation. A consulting agreement, an instruction to pay and a customer’s purchase can connect the same people in different company records. You may know why the consultant appeared during negotiations, who chose the payment description or what happened when someone questioned the invoice. Those are concrete facts we can work with.

Can Compliance or Audit Staff Qualify?

Yes, compliance or audit staff can qualify under exceptions in the SEC’s whistleblower rules. The rules address information acquired through compliance, internal audit and certain investigative or accounting work. We examine the work you actually did and how the concern reached you with FCPA whistleblower counsel.

What Cooperation Can Add to an Investigation

An insider can connect a payment to its purpose and identify the people who understood that purpose. The individual disclosure policy calls for truthful evidence and substantial assistance concerning equally or more responsible individuals or companies. An invoice tells an investigator what the business called a payment. Someone involved in the transaction may know why the business made it.

Information can also add to an investigation already under way. The Justice Department’s award terms recognize original information that materially adds to what investigators already know. The Securities and Exchange Commission likewise considers information that significantly contributes to a successful action.

In its May 2023 award announcement, the SEC described a whistleblower whose information expanded the misconduct charged in an existing investigation. Multiple interviews and written submissions helped the agency develop the case. The useful contribution was the additional conduct the insider could explain.

Balt’s Consulting Payments Led Back to Hospital Purchases

Balt shows why the company’s disclosure and the individual’s position are separate questions. In its March 2026 announcement, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Balt SAS and separately announced an indictment against a healthcare executive and a sales consultant.

The indictment alleged that the executive caused Balt to pay the consultant fees and bonuses, knowing that part of the money would go to a physician at a French public hospital as bribes. The alleged purpose was to secure hospital purchases of endovascular embolization coils and ancillary products. Prosecutors alleged that sham consulting agreements, fake invoices and personal email accounts concealed the arrangement.

The hospital purchase supplies the point of the alleged payment. The executive’s instructions, the consultant’s invoices and the physician’s purchasing influence connect the commercial transaction to the alleged bribe. For an insider, knowing what the consultant actually did can change the meaning of paperwork that otherwise looks routine.

Panasonic Avionics Paid for Work It Had Never Requested

Panasonic Avionics supplies in-flight entertainment and communications systems to airlines and airplane manufacturers. Under its 2018 deferred prosecution agreement, the company admitted offering a consulting position to a contracts official while he was negotiating on behalf of a government-owned airline. The person influencing the customer’s contract was also discussing a paid position with the supplier.

The admitted statement of facts describes $875,000 paid through a service provider and recorded as consulting payments, although none or very few of the payments bought actual consulting services. Its account of the internal audit makes the arrangement especially plain:

We would call that an extraordinary consulting business: payment kept moving even when nobody had asked for work. The company’s admissions connect the invoices to an executive-controlled budget and a service provider that passed the payments along. The ledger carried an expense label. The consultancy negotiations tied the payment to someone influencing the customer’s contract.

The same admitted statement describes an abbreviated audit report that omitted a recommendation to review the payments in light of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It also omitted a recommendation to involve procurement before hiring consultants or vendors. Both versions circulated, and the company failed to make a significant follow-up on the issues the audit raised.

That gives an insider more to explain than a suspicious bill. The budget, the route through the service provider, the absence of requested work and the changing audit report show decisions made in different parts of the business. We look at those connections with the people who understand them.

The Industry Gives the Payment Its Meaning

In pharmaceutical and medical-device sales, the person choosing a product may work for a public hospital. In 2015 remarks on the pharmaceutical industry, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement director described representatives’ regular contact with doctors, pharmacists and administrators who influence public-hospital purchasing. The remarks also described payments aimed at prescriptions and inclusion on approved drug lists.

The same speech explained how a distributor’s margin can supply a cash fund for bribes, while the company records the spending as ordinary business expenses. A sales employee may understand the purchasing decision while someone in finance may understand the distributor payment. Putting those accounts together helps explain what the apparent service expense was buying. That is the connection the Balt allegations make visible through a consultant and a hospital order.

An Internal Report and a Company Disclosure Are Different Events

A company can learn about a payment problem without passing it to the government. Panasonic Avionics’ deferred prosecution agreement says the company investigated allegations from a whistleblower complaint and civil lawsuit but chose not to report them voluntarily. Its disclosures followed a Securities and Exchange Commission request for documents.

That distinction makes the history of an internal concern useful evidence. Who received the report, what the company investigated and what it subsequently disclosed are separate parts of the story. Reporting dates and the choice of program belong in our review with you.

What Money Supports a Whistleblower Award?

The Securities and Exchange Commission bases awards on money collected in qualifying enforcement actions. Its program provides a combined 10% to 30% for eligible whistleblowers when the action’s monetary sanctions exceed $1 million. The Justice Department’s corporate award pilot pays from qualifying asset recoveries.

A company’s announced resolution and a whistleblower’s award are separate decisions. We examine the applicable program, your information and the recovery it can support.

The False Claims Act supplies a separate framework for fraud against government funds. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

Why the Person Inside the Transaction Matters

Whistleblower incentives can change what companies think they can get away with. The 2019 working paper Do Corporate Whistleblower Laws Deter Accounting Fraud?, hosted by MIT Sloan, examined accounting-fraud indicators at companies exposed to state False Claims Acts through state pension-fund ownership:

Panasonic Avionics admitted that payments for little or no work entered its ledger as consulting expenses. That is where inside knowledge can expose the gap between the books and the business: someone knows what the consultant actually supplied and why the company kept paying.

You Know What the Invoice Leaves Out

If you know who arranged the payment, what the consultant supplied or why an audit concern disappeared, speak with our whistleblower experts about the transaction and your role. We build your strongest case around those facts and bring in FCPA whistleblower lawyers who know individual cooperation and award programs. From the first conversation through the case, we stay beside you to address your role and make the payment trail understood.