Former President of Maryland Transportation Company Pleads Guilty to FCPA Violations
The former president of a Maryland transportation company was found guilty of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after bribing an official at Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, the Justice Department said Nov. 22. Mark Lambert, former president of Transportation Logistics Inc. (TLI), was found guilty of four counts of violating the FCPA, one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and other fraud-related charges.
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Lambert schemed to bribe Vadim Mikerin, a Russian official at JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX), a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and “sole supplier and exporter” of Russian uranium to global nuclear power companies. Lambert used the bribes to secure contracts with TENEX, the Justice Department said, working with others at TLI to facilitate bribes and kickbacks through offshore bank accounts associated with shell companies. To hide the payments, Lambert and others prepared “fake invoices” from TENEX to TLI describing services “that were never provided,” the Justice Department said. Lambert and others allegedly wired the payments to shell companies in Latvia, Cyprus and Switzerland.
Lambert also used code words to hide the payments, such as “lucky figures,” “LF,” “lucky numbers” and “cake” to describe payments in emails to the Russian official under an alias email account, the Justice Department said. TENEX overpaid for TLI’s services to fund the bribes paid to the Russian officials, the agency said.