新闻集团在美遭受行贿指控机率几何？

    现在美国司法部（the U.S. Justice Department）、美国证监会（SEC）和联邦调查局（FBI）都已确认，他们正在对新闻集团（the News Corp.）的电话窃听案和政治贿赂丑闻进行初步侦讯。与此同时，新闻集团这边也聘请了一位熟知《美国反海外腐败法》（the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act）的专家给自己撑腰。因此很多人都想知道，默多克的新闻集团到底有多大可能会被判定违反了该法案的规定。【新闻集团已经聘请了来自宝维斯律师事务所（Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison）的《美国反海外腐败法》专家马克•蒙代尔索恩，以及威廉康纳利律师事务所（Williams & Connolly）的知名刑辩律师布兰登•沙利文作为本案的代理律师。此外，新闻集团的独立董事们还聘请了前美国司法部长迈克尔•穆凯西和前曼哈顿联邦检察官玛莉•乔•怀特来帮助他们协助调查。这二位律师都来自德普律师事务所（Debevoise & Plimpton）】。

    上周二，两位前司法部检察官在《华尔街日报》（the Wall Street Journal）上撰文称，“在新闻采访事件上应用《反海外腐败法》，这让所有美国媒体都担心美国的新闻自由会受到影响。”《反海外腐败法》的初衷是要“清除政府合同”，但是目前新闻集团的丑闻根本没有涉及到任何与政府合同有关的行为。这两位前检察官认为，《世界新闻报》（News of the World）以及其他几家可能卷入丑闻的报纸之所以会贿赂伦敦警方，目的只是为了获得新闻线索，而不是要从伦敦警方或其他英国政府机构那里获得政府合同。

    虽说此文作者大卫•利弗金和李•凯西二人都是广受信任的法律工作者，但是他们的观点在有些人眼中却不值一哂。因为他们俩都是出了名的政治保守派，而且他俩都曾吃过“朝廷俸禄”，在里根和老布什政府里效过力。况且他们的这篇文章还是在新闻集团自己的刊物上发表的。

    将《反海外腐败法》运用在新闻集团丑闻案上是否合适？带着这个问题，《财富》杂志（Fortune）联系了谢尔曼-思特灵律师事务所（Shearman & Sterling）的丹•纽康姆（他创办了该所的反腐败业务），以及科瓦斯-斯怀恩-摩尔律师事务所（Cravath, Swaine & Moore）的证券诉讼合伙人丹尼尔•斯利弗金，以听取他们对此案的不同见解。

    《反海外腐败法》是否只针对政府合同行为，因此无法适用于所谓的为求泄露信息而贿赂警方的行为？

    这个法案有两个主要部分。第一部分是反腐败条款。这些条款究竟是否可以应用于此案？或者即便它能够应用于此案，但它的初衷是否是为了约束此类案件？据两位专家的回答来看，这两个问题的答案其实是模棱两可的。该法的第二部分是要求企业精确记录账目，这一部分则很有可能对新闻集团丑闻具有约束性。

    该法的反腐败条款禁止美国企业“出于帮助公司获得或维持与任何人的商业关系”之目的，而向外国政府官员提供金钱的行为。

    纽康姆表示：“问题是，这个法案并不是一个一般意义上的海外贿赂法案，”而是著重针对“美国企业的海外收购业务”的问题。当然，一桩典型的《反海外腐败法》诉讼的确包含了被告向政府官员行贿的行为，但这种行贿的目的是要使企业获得某种形式的商业合同。“所以我必须要问，他们这种获取报纸信息的行为，是不是也是出于这个目的。”

    斯利弗金则认为，据他的研究来看，新闻集团这种通过贿赂警察来使警方泄露消息，从而获得独家新闻的行为“有可能会被纳入”《反海外腐败法》的管辖范畴。他也同意大多数的《反海外腐败法》诉讼的确包含了“为获得商业业务而向政府行贿”的行为。而且他认为，新闻集团旗下的报纸贿赂英国警方的初衷就是为了获得独家新闻，以提高报纸销量。这种动机也满足该法的反腐败条款的字面规定。

    《反海外腐败法》的第二部分旨在要求企业精确记录账目，这部分条款是否适用于此案？

    纽康姆和斯利弗金表示，如果经查证，新闻集团员工贿赂英国警方的行为确然属实，那么新闻集团恐怕难逃《反海外腐败法》第二部分条款的制裁。因为如果检方根据“精确账目”条款提起诉讼，那么贿赂行为是否有“商业动机”就无足轻重了，因为“精确账目”条款中并不包含这种限定性的语言。纽康姆补充道，以前美国曾经有过这样的先例：检方在很难或者几乎无法根据该法的反腐败条款提起诉讼的情况下，强势地采用了该法的“精确账目条款”进行诉讼。

    纽康姆表示，“精确账目”条款的目的旨在防止“行贿小金库”，因为“行贿的钱都是从账目中非法抽取出来的现金”。根据这部分条款，如果经查证，这部分贿赂的确是交给了伦敦警方，那么除非新闻集团的账目中清清楚楚地写明了这笔钱的用途是用来“贿赂伦敦警方”，或是类似名目，否则新闻集团就有大麻烦了。

    此外斯利弗金还指出，这些条款不仅要求企业必须精确记录账目，还规定了企业必须进行“适当的内部控制”，以确保精确记账。如果贿赂警察这件事在新闻集团不是个案，而是十分泛滥，那么新闻集团可能也违反了这项条款。

    假设最终调查结果显示，新闻集团的某家报纸一年间共向伦敦警方行贿了10万美元，这个金额是否足以启用《反海外腐败法》，还是会被当作一个微不足道的小案子来处理？

    纽康姆表示：“那就是一大笔钱了。”他说他曾经见过有人只行贿了400美元就被按《反海外腐败法》提起了诉讼。这个法律适用的贿赂额可以是“任何金额”。

    斯利弗金也同意这种说法。“在某些国家，要贿赂一个政府官员，可能并不需要多少钱。而这些地方恰恰是贿赂最高发的地方。”

    再说说检方自由裁量权的问题，你是否真的认为美国检察官会对新闻集团提起《反海外腐败法》诉讼？

    纽康姆表示不一定。他说：“除非我们找到了新闻集团在美国国内也违反了该法的证据。”——比方说新闻集团为获取9•11受害者的信息而贿赂了纽约警察。否则，纽康姆认为，美国检方可能只是“敲敲边鼓”，把问题丢给英国当局去处理。他预言道，为了安抚美国政客，“只要英国不在他们自己的侦讯中出岔子，我不确定美国会在新闻集团英国丑闻案的诉讼程序中会有什么动作。”

    斯利弗金指出，《反海外腐败法》诉讼在此案中之所以显得不同寻常，其中的一个原因是由于该法“往往适用于那些自身缺乏严格的反贿赂法的欠发达国家，”他说：“《反海外腐败法》在涉英案件中比较少见，因为英国的大环境和那些欠发达国家很不一样。而且在英国，贿赂警察显然是违法的。因此美国在本案中可能会谨慎应用该法案。”

    译者：朴成奎

    With the U.S. Justice Department, SEC, and FBI having acknowledged that they are all making preliminary inquiries into the News Corp.'s phone-hacking and police-bribery scandal, and with the company having retained one of America's leading experts on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, many are wondering how much Rupert Murdoch's company has to fear from that law's provisions. (News Corp. has hired FCPA expert Mark Mendelsohn of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, as well as famed criminal defense attorney Brendan Sullivan of Williams & Connolly to represent it in the inquires. In addition, News Corp's independent directors have hired former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, both of Debevoise & Plimpton, to assist them in their investigation.)

    On Tuesday, two former Justice Department attorneys argued in the Wall Street Journal that applying the FCPA "to news-gathering raises very significant First Amendment concerns for all U.S. media." The FCPA was really intended "to clean up government contracting," they contend, which is not implicated at all in the current scandals. The payments that News of the World and, perhaps, other papers are suspected of having made to London police officials are thought to have been made to obtain story leads, and not to obtain government contracts from the police or other English governmental bodies, they argue.

    Though the authors, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, are very well-credentialed, their arguments are undercut in the eyes of some by the fact that they are noted political conservatives, that they were political appointees during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and that their commentary was appearing in a News Corp. (NWS) publication.

    Fortune contacted Dan Newcomb, who founded the anti-corruption practice at Shearman & Sterling, and Daniel Slifkin, a securities litigation partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, to obtain a second- and third-opinion on the applicability of the FCPA to the conduct that is now under scrutiny.

    Is the FCPA targeted only at government contracting, and therefore inapplicable to alleged payments to police for leaking information?

    The law has two main parts. With respect to one part—the anti-corruption provisions—there is real ambiguity about whether the law applies and, if it does, whether it was intended to, according to the experts we contacted. The other part of the law, on the other hand—which requires keeping accurate books and records—seems likely to encompass the conduct being alleged.

    The anti-corruption provisions forbid an American corporation from making payments to a foreign official in order to help the company "in obtaining or retaining business for or with . . . any person."

    "The point is," Newcomb says, "that the statute is not a general foreign bribery statute," but is aimed, rather, at the problem of "American companies buying business overseas." Certainly, the classic FCPA bribery prosecution does involve a payment to a government official so that a company can land a business contract of some kind. "So I have to question whether obtaining newspaper information and stuff to publish is for that purpose."

    Slifkin, on the other hand, thinks bribing a police officer for leads or leaks "would probably be covered" even by this prong of the FCPA. While he does agree that most FCPA prosecutions involve "bribing the government to get business from the government," he thinks the purpose that would have motivated the tabloids' conduct here—to get scoops in order to sell more newspapers—still satisfies the literal requirements of the this section of the law.

    What about the other part of the FCPA—the provisions requiring accurate books and record-keeping?

    Here there appears to be no easy out for News Corp. if its employees are, in fact, found to have been bribing police officers, according to both Newcomb and Slifkin. Whether the bribes had a "business purpose" is irrelevant to a charge brought under the books and records provisions, they say, which contain no such limiting language. Newcomb adds that there is precedent for prosecutors aggressively using the books-and-records provisions of the FCPA when it would have been difficult or impossible for them to prosecute a bribe under the law's anti-corruption provisions.

    The books-and-records section was aimed at forbidding "slush funds," Newcomb says, because, "bribes are usually paid with cash siphoned off the books illegally." Under this section of the law, if it turns out that payments were in fact made to the police, the company would have a problem unless its books and records described those payments as "bribes for Scotland Yard" or something else "about that explicit."

    Furthermore, these provisions require not just keeping accurate books and records but also instituting "proper internal controls" to ensure accurate record keeping, Cravath's Slifkin notes. If there were widespread paying of bribes to police officers, this provision might also have been violated.

    Suppose it were eventually shown that some News tabloid had paid officers of Scotland Yard, say, $100,000 a year in bribes. Would that be enough to implicate the FCPA, or would that be considered small potatoes?

    "That's plenty," says Newcomb, who notes that he's seen FCPA prosecutions for a bribe as small as $400. The statute applies to payments of "anything of value."

    Slifkin agrees. "In some countries, it doesn't take a lot" to bribe a foreign official, he says, and those are the "same places where most of this stuff goes on."

    As a matter of prosecutorial discretion, do you really think U.S. prosecutors would pursue a FCPA prosecution against News Corp.?

    Newscomb doubts it. "Unless we find domestic violations," he says—for instance, that News Corp. reporters bribed New York City police officers to provide information about 9/11 victims—Newcomb thinks U.S. prosecutors will leave these matters to the British authorities. While there will be some "thumping around" by U.S. authorities, he predicts—in order to placate U.S. politicians—"as long as the British don't fall down" in their own inquiries, "I'm not sure what the U.S. adds to the process—to prosecute conduct that occurred in England."

    In fact, one of the factors that would make a FCPA prosecution in this situation so unusual, Slifkin notes, is that the FCPA "tends to be used in less developed countries that don't have rigorous antibribery statutes" of their own. "What you don't often see is the FCPA being used for conduct in countries like the U.K., where the world doesn't work this way and it's obviously illegal to bribe police officers. So there may be a little bit of getting in on the act."