After Winning, the DOJ Walked Away: What the FIFA Case Dismissal Means for Foreign Commercial Bribery Enforcement

In July, federal prosecutors secured a significant appellate victory affirming their power to prosecute foreign commercial bribery worldwide. Yet when defendants Hernán Lopez and Full Play Group petitioned for Supreme Court review, the DOJ reversed course, abandoning both the case and the precedent it had just won.

The extraordinary reversal creates uncertainty not only for related FIFA corruption cases, but for the enforcement of overseas private-sector bribery more broadly.

Honest Services Fraud Reaches Overseas

At the heart of the Lopez case lay a fundamental question: Could U.S. prosecutors charge foreign soccer executives with depriving their employers of “honest services”? The honest services wire fraud statute is typically used to prosecute U.S. government officials for accepting bribes. Lopez, however, involved private-sector employees of foreign organizations.

The Second Circuit emphatically said yes, holding that U.S. prosecutors could charge bribery anywhere in the world through the honest services fraud statute, provided that U.S. banking systems or telecommunications carried out the scheme.

The implications threatened to reshape international enforcement. Foreign banks routinely depend on U.S. correspondent banks to transfer funds; emails often route through American servers even when both parties are overseas. This technical reality gave U.S. prosecutors extraordinary extraterritorial reach over private-sector corruption.

The DOJ’s Dismissal Raises Questions

Yet when the defendants escalated the stakes by filing for Supreme Court review, the DOJ responded unexpectedly: it asked the Court to void the Second Circuit ruling.

The DOJ perhaps feared an unfavorable ruling that would exclude overseas bribery from the statute’s scope entirely. The Supreme Court has narrowed fraud and bribery statutes in recent years, limiting honest services fraud to clear-cut bribes and kickbacks. Perhaps rather than risk dismantling the prosecutorial tool, the DOJ instead chose to sacrifice the FIFA precedent.

Regardless, the timeline raised eyebrows. On December 9, Brooklyn prosecutors filed to dismiss the charges, just four days after Trump received the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize on December 5. On December 19, Bloomberg Law revealed that Solicitor General John Sauer had directed Brooklyn chief prosecutor Joseph Nocella to file the dismissal, in spite of Nocella’s objections. Publicly, the DOJ cited the administration’s shift in enforcement priorities.

For Lopez and Full Play, the dismissal erased convictions that threatened decades in prison and millions in penalties. But the relief may ripple through other FIFA-related cases, triggering a cascade of appeals from defendants seeking to overturn their own convictions and recover millions in penalties.

The Enforcement Gap: Implications for Private Companies Operating Overseas

The broader question remains: what happens to future cases? Will the Second Circuit’s reasoning be revived, or has this enforcement approach been abandoned?

Honest services fraud was the only federal law that could reach foreign commercial bribery based solely on an employment relationship and the use of U.S. wires. The other tools that enable the DOJ to prosecute bribery cases have significant limitations:

• The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act targets only foreign government officials, leaving purely private-sector bribery beyond its scope.

• The Travel Act demands an underlying violation of state commercial bribery law.

• Money laundering statutes require a predicate offense.

• Securities laws reach only public companies and their officers.

Where no relevant state or foreign law criminalizes commercial bribery committed by a private company’s foreign employee, the honest services fraud statute filled the gap. That prosecutorial avenue is now uncertain.

Unless Congress explicitly confirms the law’s extraterritorial reach or the DOJ reprioritizes this enforcement area, the enforcement landscape will remain murky for private companies operating internationally. Despite this uncertainty, the underlying risks and harms of foreign commercial bribery remain very real.

The bribery of soccer officials cost soccer confederations millions in lost revenue due to the lack of competition these bribes were designed to ensure. To avoid similar harms, companies need to train their employees on the complex patchwork of state and foreign, civil and criminal laws regulating commercial bribery, and ensure that their codes of conduct explicitly prohibit corrupt practices both domestically and abroad.

In surrendering the signature precedent established by Lopez, the DOJ invoked only “the interests of justice” as its justification. The irony is difficult to ignore.

If these words signal to corporate wrongdoers worldwide that foreign commercial bribery enforcement has collapsed, the cost will not be measured in legal precedents alone, but also in the millions siphoned from legitimate business competition, the erosion of trust in business relationships, and the loss of faith in the rule of law.

Amaris Keys

Legal Research Associate, TRACE