Donald Trump to halt enforcement of law banning bribery of foreign officials

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Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to halt the enforcement of a US anti-corruption law that bars Americans from bribing foreign government officials to win business.

“It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” the president said in the Oval Office after signing an executive order on Monday directing Pam Bondi, the US attorney-general, to pause enforcement of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

“It sounds good on paper, but in [practice] it’s a disaster,” Trump said. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there legally, legitimately or otherwise, it’s almost a guaranteed investigation, indictment and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.”

A White House official said that the country’s “national security depends on America and its companies gaining strategic commercial advantages around the world”.

The official added: “President Trump is stopping excessive, unpredictable FCPA enforcement that makes American companies less competitive.”

The order marks one of the boldest enforcement policies issued by the Trump administration, potentially undermining a critical tool in cracking down on individual as well as corporate misconduct.

The FCPA has underpinned some of the DoJ’s most high-profile cases, including a plea agreement it reached last year with Trafigura over bribes the commodities trading house made in Brazil to retain business with state-controlled oil company Petrobras.

In 2022, one of McKinsey’s former senior partners pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to violate the FCPA in relation to a sprawling corruption scandal during the administration of former South African president Jacob Zuma.

And last October, US defence contractor RTX agreed to pay more than $950mn over claims it bribed a Qatari official to facilitate arms sales to the Middle Eastern country and defrauded the Pentagon into overpaying for weapons, including Patriot missile systems.

The White House official said Bondi would issue new enforcement guidance that “promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources”, adding that previous and existing FCPA actions would be reviewed. 

US companies were damaged by “over-enforcement” of the act since “they are prohibited from engaging in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field”, the official added.

The White House said US national security required strategic advantages in various infrastructure assets, such as critical minerals and deep-water ports. 

FCPA prosecutions had imposed “a growing cost on our nation’s economy”, said the official, citing the 26 enforcement actions related to the law filed by the justice department and Securities and Exchange Commission last year.

Having dozens of enforcement actions each year drained resources from companies and law enforcement, the official said. Thirty-one companies were under FCPA-related investigations at the end of 2024, they added.

The SEC set up a specialised unit in 2010 to strengthen its FCPA enforcement, which it had described as a “high-priority area”.

Last year, the regulator charged a former executive at Azure Power Global, a renewables company at the heart of a case accusing Indian billionaire Gautam Adani of perpetrating a bribery scheme. The DoJ also brought a criminal indictment.

Azure said the former employees referenced in the charges had been “separated” from it for more than a year. Adani Group called the accusations “baseless”.

Legal experts have argued the case, which was filed before Trump’s return to the White House, could hinge upon his presidency.

The DoJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.