Bribers Beware! Company Agent Sentenced to 24 Months for Obstructing Federal FCPA Investigation

A former agent for mining company BSG Resources Ltd., Frederic Cilins, was sentenced Friday to 24 months in prison for obstructing a federal investigation into an alleged bribery and money laundering scheme.  

The charges against Cilins stem from an FBI investigation into efforts to secure lucrative mining concessions in the Republic of Guinea.  According to prosecutors, the investigation focused on whether the mining company enlisted the help of Mamadie Toure, the former wife of a now-deceased Guinean government official with influence over the concession-granting process, and promised her millions of dollars in exchange for her assistance in securing the awards.  BSG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. As part of the investigation, a grand jury subpoenaed Toure to turn over documents related to BSG.  During monitored and recorded phone calls and face-to-face meetings, Cilins offered to pay Toure—who was acting as a cooperating witness—substantial sums of money to destroy documents evidencing the corrupt payments, and to leave the United States to avoid questioning by the FBI.  Cilins also sought to induce Toure to sign an affidavit containing false statements regarding matters under investigation by the grand jury. The Cilins prosecution sits at the crossroads of two significant enforcement trends: the DOJ's commitment to bringing cases against individuals, and its increasing use of aggressive investigative techniques in anti-bribery cases.  Speaking at the Global Anti-corruption Compliance Congress in March, then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman noted that "[t]he evidence against Cilins was, in large part, obtained through the use of a cooperating witness, a wiretap, body wires and surveillance."  By using "all of the law enforcement techniques … at [their] disposal," authorities were able to tape and record Cilins's efforts to thwart the grand jury investigation, allowing them to "work[] in real time to find and stop ongoing corrupt activity."  Raman warned that those committing acts of foreign bribery "should be acutely aware that the middleman they are engaging could be an undercover agent, that the telephone calls they are making may be being recorded pursuant to a court order, and that the public official they are bribing may be cooperating with U.S. law enforcement."