(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that Legg Mason Inc. will pay over $34 million to resolve an SEC charge that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in a scheme to bribe Libyan government officials. According to the SEC\u2019s order, between 2004 and 2010, a former Legg Mason asset management subsidiary, Permal Group Inc., partnered with a French financial services company to solicit investment business from Libyan state-owned financial institutions. These entities engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to Libyan government officials through a Libyan middleman in order to secure investments. As a result of the corrupt scheme, Legg Mason, through its Permal subsidiary, was awarded business tied to $1 billion of investments for the Libyan financial institutions, earning net revenues of approximately $31.6 million. According to the SEC\u2019s order, the middleman used the term \u201ccooking\u201d to describe his ability to cause Libyan government officials to invest by any means necessary, including bribes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompanies must take adequate steps to identify and mitigate the risks of bribery and corruption present in their global business. Those risks are particularly acute when, as here, agents and middlemen are used as part of a company\u2019s efforts to obtain business with government clients,\u201d said Charles Cain, Chief of the Enforcement Division\u2019s FCPA Unit.<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s order finds that Legg Mason violated the internal accounting controls provision of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Legg Mason agreed to disgorge approximately $27.6 million of ill-gotten gains plus $6.9 million in prejudgment interest to settle the SEC\u2019s case. Legg Mason had also previously agreed to pay $33 million to the U.S. Department of Justice in sanctions resulting from the firm\u2019s involvement in the Libyan bribery scheme. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that Legg Mason Inc. will pay over $34 million to resolve an SEC charge that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in a scheme to bribe Libyan government officials. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,16048,16047],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-networks-press-releases","category-hedgeco-news","category-hedgecovest-news","category-insider-trading-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65560,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65559\/revisions\/65560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}