The London lawyer accused by the U.S. of being a middleman in KBR's bribery of Nigerian officials appeared in court last week to fight extradition. Jeffrey Tesler, 61, a U.K. citizen, was indicted in February by a federal grand jury in Houston. He was charged with one count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and ten substantive FCPA offenses. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 55 years in prison. U.K. police, acting at the request of U.S. authorities, arrested Tesler in March. . . .

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Virginia-based DynCorp International said payments by its subcontractors to speed up visas and permits may have caused the company to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In its November 12, 2009 quarterly report (Form 10-Q), it said it found about $300,000 in payments by subcontractors to "expedite the issuance of a limited number of visas and licenses from foreign government agencies." The company didn't include any details about the project involved or the subcontractors referred to in the disclosure. It said it had self-reported the payments to the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission a week earlier and hired outside counsel to conduct an investigation. . . .

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You wouldn't expect a country with 240 million people and 17,000 islands strung along the equator from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to be neat and orderly. Still, the public death match between Indonesia's national police and its popular Corruption Eradication Commission known as the KPK is particularly messy, even by local standards. That's because there's so much at stake. Corruption has long been Indonesia's biggest problem. And after plenty of broken promises from post-Suharto leaders, ordinary citizens had given up hoping for reform. Until the KPK came along. . . .

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The New York Times alleged yesterday that executives at the private military security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The payments were "intended to silence [the officials'] criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad," the Times said. . . .

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Last week, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, made a very strange announcement. He confirmed on his Twitter page that the U.S. government had denied a visa to Kenya's attorney general Amos Wako. What's strange is that as far as we know, it's the first time an American official has ever revealed a visa determination under Presidential Proclamation 7750. That's the executive order giving the State Department the power to exclude foreign kleptocrats, their families and friends. Before now, those decisions had always been made -- and kept -- in complete secrecy. . .

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On the subject of Frederic Bourke -- the wealthy entrepreneur convicted in July of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and lying to FBI agents -- we now know what issues his lawyers plan to raise on appeal. Most relate to what Bourke knew and intended -- his mens rea. In a recent pleading arguing for his release pending the appeal, his lawyers said: . . .

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