The Department of Justice announced on May 11, 2011 that Lindsey Manufacturing Company, a privately-held Azusa, CA emergency systems manufacturer, its executives Keith Lindsey and Steve Lee, and a Mexican intermediary were convicted by a federal jury on all counts for their roles in a scheme to pay bribes to Mexican government officials at the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), a state-owned utility, to win $19 million in contracts.
According to court documents, between February 2002 and March 2009, Lindsey Manufacturing, Keith Lindsey, Steve Lee and others used the company’s Mexican agent, Enrique Aguilar, to funnel bribe payments to officials of the CFE. (See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/May/11-crm-596.html for further details about the case.)
Although individuals have gone to trial and been convicted of violating the FCPA, this is a first such conviction for a company, as companies previously have opted to settle or plead guilty. The FCPA is expected to be an important enforcement tool under the new Dodd-Frank law as similar cases are likely to end up in court.