Oil Executives Plead Guilty to FCPA Violations

Two oil executives pleaded guilty to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after trying to use bribes to secure oil and gas contracts, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 30 press release. Cyrus Ahsani and Saman Ahsani, the CEO and COO of a Monaco-based intermediary company, tried to bribe officials in multiple countries with millions of dollars, the press release said.

Their company provided services for multinational companies in the energy sector, the Justice Department said, and worked in Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya and Syria. From 1999 to 2016, the Ahsanis allegedly conspired with others to bribe government officials in each country. The two also laundered the funds from their business “to promote and conceal the schemes and to cause the destruction of evidence” to hamper investigations.