Archer Daniels Midland, Violating Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Illinois 2013

Springfield, Ill. – Archer Daniels Midland Company’s subsidiary, Alfred C. Toepfer International Ukraine Ltd., paid $17 million in criminal fines to resolve charges that it paid bribes through vendors to Ukrainian government officials to obtain value-added tax refunds. The company entered a plea of guilty in the Central District of Illinois to one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in December 2013.

U.S. Attorney Jim Lewis announced that the Central District of Illinois collected $30 million for taxpayers in criminal and civil actions in fiscal year 2014. Of this amount, $20,418,986 was collected in criminal actions by the Central District; an additional $13,456 was collected in criminal actions by the District with other entities. In civil actions, the District collected $8,049,414, and another $1,595,242 with other entities.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that the Justice Department collected $24.7 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2014. The more than $24 billion in collections in FY 2014 represents nearly eight and a half times the appropriated $2.91 billion budget for the 94 U.S. Attorney’s offices and the main litigating divisions in that same period.

“Every day, the Justice Department’s federal prosecutors and trial attorneys work hard to protect our citizens, to safeguard precious taxpayer resources, and to provide a valuable return on investment to the American people,” said Attorney General Holder. “Their diligent efforts are enabling us to achieve justice and recoup losses in virtually every sector of the U.S. economy.

“We hold people accountable when the law says that they should be accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Lewis. “We collect restitution for victims of crime, we collect damages if there has been fraud in government programs, we collect debts owed to the government, and we protect federal funds and the public treasury. We do our very best to make sure that justice is done.”

The largest civil collections were from affirmative civil enforcement cases, in which the United States recovered government money lost to fraud or other misconduct or collected fines imposed on individuals and/or corporations for violations of federal health, safety, civil rights or environmental laws.

The U.S. Attorney’s office also collected civil debts on behalf of several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Internal Revenue Service, Small Business Administration and Department of Education.

Related Federal Cases