The U.S. Department of Justice has appointed David Last chief of a high-profile unit that investigates and prosecutes companies for paying bribes to public officials overseas.
Mr. Last, who was made acting chief of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit in April, was recently given the job on a permanent basis, a Justice Department spokesman said Thursday.
The unit’s former chief, Christopher Cestaro, left the Justice Department in April to join law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.
The high-profile FCPA unit enforces an antibribery law that remains a key compliance concern for the corporate sector. Enacted in 1977, the statute prohibits companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges or with other ties to the country from giving bribes to foreign officials to gain a business advantage.
The law is typically enforced through multimillion-dollar settlements with companies, as well as the occasional criminal charges against the executives, intermediaries and officials who pay and accept bribes.
The unit last year reached a $2.9 billion settlement with investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc. over FCPA violations related to Malaysia’s development bank 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, and a $128 million FCPA settlement with Brazil’s J&F Investimentos, which controls the world’s largest meatpacking company, JBS SA .
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can also enforce the FCPA and can bring civil claims related to the law’s provisions. The Justice Department pursues criminal charges related to the statute.
Mr. Last is a five-year veteran of the FCPA unit, serving as a trial attorney, assistant chief and principal assistant chief before being appointed unit head. Before joining the DOJ’s fraud section, which houses the foreign bribery team, he was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.
His appointment was reported earlier by Global Investigations Review, a legal trade publication.
Mr. Last was part of a team of prosecutors that investigated Brazilian petrochemicals company Braskem SA and its parent company, Odebrecht SA, which changed its name to Novonor last year. The companies in 2016 pleaded guilty to FCPA violations and agreed to pay a combined penalty of $3.5 billion to authorities in the U.S., Brazil and Switzerland.