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Agribusiness company Scoular has agreed to pay $10.2 million to resolve a Justice Department investigation into a bribery scheme in which the company paid off Mexican border officials to get grain trains into Mexico and unknowingly ended up benefiting people tied to a cartel, according to the Justice Department.
The company has entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement to settle charges of conspiracy to violate antibribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after using customs brokers to pay more than $400,000 in bribes to Mexican officials to ensure shipments of corn and other products crossed successfully, according to the press release. Some of those bribes benefited “people who helped operate a cartel, even though Scoular did not know about it,” said A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of DOJ’s Criminal Division, in the DOJ's news release.
"This resolution shows that bribery and corruption not only undermine fair play and competition for Americans, but also hurt our national security interests in stopping the scourge of dangerous cartel activity,” Duva said.
The release said brokers paid bribes of around $2,000 per Scoular train, and invoiced the bribes back to the company for reimbursement of reinspection fees. Scoular employees used WhatsApp to communicate about shipments and bribes, it said.
Overall, Scoular avoided more than $6.5 million in fees and costs through the bribes, the release said.
In a statement, Scoular Chief Legal Officer Tim Manning said the payments were made in connection with inspections of agricultural goods entering Mexico between 2013 and 2019 and involved “a business unit that authorized payments to customs brokers while knowing those payments would be used, at least in part, to make improper payments to Mexican government officials." However, he said Scoular has since built a “first-in-class compliance program to prevent future issues” and that it "is a different company today than when the conduct at issue took place years ago."
According to the DOJ release, Scoular conducted its own internal investigation into the bribing and offered evidence and documents for federal investigators. The company has since adjusted its compliance policies and “engaged in timely remedial measures” to prevent similar situations in the future, the release said.
Under the DPA, Scoular agreed to pay a $9,769,521 criminal penalty and $414,351 in forfeiture and "will also continue cooperating with the department in any ongoing or future criminal investigation" that arises while the agreement is active, according to DOJ's release.
"Scoular cooperated fully with the investigation and took immediate, comprehensive steps to remediate, including terminating the customs broker relationships involved, reorganizing its business teams, completing an external compliance program assessment, strengthening internal controls and monitoring, updating its compliance policies, and expanding anticorruption training,” Manning said. “These significant remediation efforts and full cooperation led to the resolution of this matter.”
