Oracle to Pay $23 Million Foreign Corrupt Practices Charge (1)

Oracle Corp. has agreed to pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission $23 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In a securities filing on Tuesday, the SEC said Oracle subsidiaries in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and India used slush funds to bribe foreign officials in exchange for business from 2016 to 2019.

According to the SEC, Oracle subsidiaries in Turkey and the UAE also paid for foreign officials to attend technology conferences, violating the company’s policies. In some instances, employees of the Turkey subsidiary used the funds for the officials’ families to go along on international conferences or take side excursions to California.

The fine on Oracle is fairly small compared with past bribery charges against other companies. The Brazilian construction company Odebrecht SA, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Airbus SE have each been fined more than $2 billion, according to research by the Stanford Law School.

The SEC had already sanctioned Oracle previously in connection with the creation of slush funds. In 2012, Oracle resolved charges relating to the creation of millions of dollars of side funds by Oracle India, creating a risk that those funds could be used for illicit purposes.

(Updates with context in the fourth paragraph.)

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Molly Schuetz in New York at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net

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Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.net

Amy Thomson

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