Washington, DC partner Philip Urofsky, a leader of Shearman & Sterling’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) practice, was one of the featured interviewees on CNBC18 in India, commenting on the effectiveness of the country’s Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), the broad reach of the US’s FCPA and the potential impact of the new UK Bribery Act, enacted in 2010 but taking effect in April 2011. Urofsky emphasized that the FCPA can impact Indian companies due to the FCPA’s extra-territorial jurisdiction over all US companies and all US persons. “It doesn't really matter whether they have done anything in the United States,” he explained. “The US would have jurisdiction over their conduct. For a foreign/non-US company, the FCPA requires that there be some act in the United States—not necessarily the payment of the bribe itself but some act in furtherance of the bribe.” Urofsky noted that Technip, a Paris-based engineering and construction company, was fined under the FCPA for a bribe paid from a Netherlands bank account to a Swiss bank account because it was denominated in US dollars. Urofsky added that, in 2010, there have been more cases brought against corporations than ever before and more of those cases than ever before have been against non-US companies. “There is a very clear effort by the US government to charge foreign companies when their own governments are not doing so and the penalties have been quite severe,” he said. “Ninety percent of penalties paid last year have been by non-US companies. So the risk to the non-US companies is growing and it could be very expensive.”