From Scandal to Statute: What the Origins of the FCPA Teach Today’s Investigators and Compliance Leaders

Modern compliance and investigations programs often focus on controls, reporting, and enforcement, but the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was born from something deeper: systemic corporate misconduct, investigative failures, whistleblowers, and public loss of trust. In this webinar, we will examine the origins of the FCPA through the lens of real-world scandals and investigations that reshaped global anticorruption enforcement. Drawing on his book Bribery Beyond Borders: The Story of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (CCI Press, 2025), Severin Wirz, joined by Case IQ's EVP of Risk and Compliance Transformation, Parth Chanda, will trace how internal corporate misconduct, investigative journalism, and government inquiries exposed widespread foreign bribery—and forced organizations and regulators to rethink accountability, transparency, and ethics. This session connects regulatory history directly to today’s challenges facing investigation and compliance teams, including: • How early corporate failures in oversight and transparency fueled dramatic regulatory intervention • The role of whistleblowers, investigative reporting, and government inquiries in uncovering systemic bribery • Why the FCPA’s original moral and investigative foundations still matter for modern compliance programs • What today’s investigators and compliance leaders can learn about risk detection, escalation, and organizational response when pervasive non-compliance arises As enforcement priorities evolve and global anticorruption norms face renewed pressure, understanding why the FCPA exists, and how it came to be, are critical for building resilient, credible compliance and investigations programs today. This webinar is ideal for compliance officers, investigators, ethics & integrity leaders, legal teams, and risk professionals seeking a deeper, investigative-driven perspective on anticorruption and corporate accountability.