Rayne Today

I had a moment of deja vu when I read this bit at White Collar Crime Prof's blog : Yet Another FCPA Case - Individual Pleads Guilty On the heels of a Fifth Circuit Appellate decision affirming a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) conviction ( here ), the DOJ reports on a plea to a FCPA charge. The press release states that "[a] former executive of a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc. (WGI) has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe officials of the government of Nigeria with more than $6 million in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)." The press release notes that this former executive admitted that "[t]hese payments were offered and made to officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (the Nigerian state-owned oil company) and its subsidiary, National Petroleum Investment Management Services, a Nigerian political party, and a senior official in the executive branch of the Nigerian federal government, in order to assist in...

I got this from my brokerage firm this morning: MarketWatch News Google Inc GOOG:NASDAQ Lawmakers want closer look at Google, DoubleClick merger MarketWatch 4:22 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives called Tuesday for a hearing on Google Inc.'s planned merger with DoubleClick, to extend a public inquiry that has included a related Senate committee hearing in September. A dozen House members including Rep. Dennis Hastert, Rep. Charles Pickering and Rep. Cliff Stearns sent a letter to Bobby Rush, a Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection, calling for a "rigorous examination" of privacy issues related to the planned merger, "as soon as practicable." Rush had originally called for such a hearing in July. The Republican House members said the hearing is needed to examine the " enormous privacy implications" related to combining Google's database of ...