The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported that Royal Philips NV will pay more than $62 million in connection with “irregularities in the medical device industry” related to its Chinese subsidiaries. The charges arise from actions that occurred between 2014 and 2019 from sales of medical diagnostic equipment in China.
U.S. federal government enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) might not draw the attention that other matters draw, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made extensive use of the FCPA in 2020. SEC actions related to the FCPA may have accounted for only about 2% of the agency’s actions over the past year, but nonetheless accounted for nearly 80% of the penalties collected by the agency, and health care was second only to the oil and gas industries as the targets of FCPA action by the agency.
