> you can't get away with it just because it was done through a third party.

To get away you probably need a third party plus good lawyers. Which your training was successfully in teaching you that lowly programmers can't afford, so they should not take bribes.

The standard for culpability under the FCPA is perception. If there is a hint, then you're probably going to face some action. If I sound paranoid, sorry - that's my basic reading of it - it is paranoid.

It's interesting because I have some exposure to law-firm ethics ( I wrote software for law firms for a while decades ago ) and they're like this. Their admins ( who really run law firms ) are past masters at dealing with it. Since it's lawyers writing that law, we should not be surprised.

You get a (distorted for the purposes of plot-conflict) view of that in "Better Call Saul."

It's one thing to do something, it's another to prove in court that they did it. And you can bet they'll have an army of lawyers trying to get the whole thing dismissed.

I would assume it to be near untraceable if these third parties used shell companies in various offshore jurisdictions to make these payments. Good luck putting that together again, if you try to get data from an unwilling to cooperate jurisdiction.

Rolls Royce and Samsung are not American corporations? Or does the law penalize American subsidiaries of them?

The UK Bribery Act is actually much more severe/punitive that then US version.

The american justice system can judge wether or not they're allowed to continue to operate in america.

The American justice system that hasn't punished Wall Street?

But let's assume American justice system works. But still it seems arbitrary and not clear cut.

If Rolls-Royce is banned from operating in US, does that mean Boeing won't install Rolls-Royce engines on airliners they make for their customers?

Samsung is composed of many subsidiaries that do not look out for each other and it may be that just one or few of the Samsung subsidiaries are involved in bribing. Samsung phone division buys chips from qualcomm instead of Samsung chip division because qualcomm is cheaper (or whatever reason). Will US court ban Samsung from US? Then what happens to the billion dollar chip plant in Austin, Dallas that supplies CPU chips for Apple iDevices?

I don't condone bribing but to me I'm not surprised bribe was needed to get anything done in the nations listed. I'm pretty sure anyone and everyone who has any kind of influence in the said nations require bribe before doing anything. A billion + dollar from US went into Iraq that can't be traced. What's a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars? I highly doubt these companies eagerly bribed people, but they to get anything done in those so called nations, they probably had to bribe.

I was commenting on jurisdiction, not likelihood

More likely the companies will negotiate a settlement without admitting wrongdoing. The US will count it an enforcement success, the guilty parties will escape any punishment, and the loss will be borne by the shareholders, most of whom are investing via investment funds and had little or no idea where their money was going.