On September 26, 2012, I wrote here that within two weeks, the Department of Justice was expected to release its long-awaited guidance on the the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Leading anti-corruption experts believed that this guidance -- which the business community has been waiting on since it was promised in a speech by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer in November 8, 2011-- would be issued prior to an October 10, 2012 meeting of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's anti-bribery working group. 

October 10 has now come and gone, and the DOJ has still not issued any FCPA guidance. So what happened?

The DOJ never promised that the guidance would come on any particular date, and has been pretty quiet about it since the November 2011 speech, so I certainly wouldn't expect it to be issuing any explanations, apologies, or revised timelines. Mike Koehler (aka "The FCPA Professor"), who was among the experts who expected the guidance to come this week, told me yesterday that he has no idea why it is taking the DOJ so long to issue its FCPA guidance, which has supposedly been "forthcoming" for almost a full year. 

Prof. Koehler adds that despite promises from the DOJ and the SEC, both of which have dedicated FCPA units, to provide guidance, "both enforcement agencies have indicated, in various ways and in various settings, that the FCPA is a clear and unambiguous statute. Against this backdrop, it is simply amazing that it has taken this long and it is reasonable and warranted to question the credibility of the enforcement agencies on this issue."

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