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Former CEO of Miami telecommunications company pleads guilty to FCPA charge

by Complinet | Thomson Reuters Accelus
Friday, 20 May 2011 10:08 GMT

* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The former chief executive of Miami telecommunications company LatiNode Inc has pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing government officials in Honduras. Jorge Granados, 54, admitted that he authorized the bribe payments. "CEOs and other corporate executives should know that now, more than ever, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will lead to criminal prosecution," said Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general. According to court documents, LatiNode provided wholesale telecommunications services, which used internet protocol software, to countries throughout the world, including Honduras. It needed an "interconnection agreement" with Empresa Hondureña de Telecomunicaciones (Hondutel), the wholly state-owned telecommunications authority in Honduras. Granados and other LatiNode executives, including Manuel Salvoch, the chief financial officer, Manuel Caceres, the vice president for business development, and Juan Pablo Vasquez, the chief commercial officer, agreed to a secret deal to bribe Hondutel officials. Between September 2006 and June 2007, LatiNode executives paid more than $500,000 in bribes to the Honduran officials, concealing many of the payments by funneling the money through LatiNode subsidiaries in Guatemala. In April 2009, LatiNode pleaded guilty to violating the FCPA and agreed to pay a $2m fine. Salvoch, Vasquez and Caceres previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the FCPA and await sentencing. According to the Justice Department, LatiNode's FCPA transgressions were reported by eLandia International Inc, which acquired LatiNode in 2007. This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Miami field office and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's foreign corruption investigations group in Miami.  
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