On 16 January 2017, Rolls-Royce plc announced that it had reached resolutions with the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”), U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), and Brazil’s Ministério Público Federal, ending long-running investigations of corruption and bribery involving nine countries over nearly a quarter-century.
The resolutions are an important example of coordinated international investigations of bribery and corruption, and are notable for the size of the financial penalty imposed by the SFO.