How to Report Foreign Bribery Under the FCPA: International Guide

Introduction

Individuals anywhere in the world with information about bribery of foreign government officials by U.S.-listed companies are permitted to blow the whistle to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and potentially qualify for an award under the SEC Whistleblower Program.

These awards pay between 10% and 30% of the monetary sanctions collected when original information leads to a successful enforcement action resulting in sanctions over $1 million.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is the U.S. law that makes this bribery illegal. It is not itself a whistleblower program. The FCPA defines the conduct; the SEC Whistleblower Program, created by the Dodd-Frank Act, is the vehicle that pays you for reporting it.

The SEC is actively seeking information about bribery and the improper payments to foreign officials happening outside the United States. For the SEC, whistleblowers are the number one most valuable source for such information given their firsthand exposure as employees, contractors, or associates.

A key feature of the program is that you do not need to be a U.S. citizen, live in the United States, or work at the company you are reporting. The SEC received approximately 27,000 tips in fiscal year 2025, and outside the U.S. the highest numbers came from Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and China, along with several other countries in Latin America.

Continue reading to learn how international whistleblowers can report foreign bribery under the FCPA, and what to expect before, during, and after filing.

Before You Begin: FCPA Whistleblower Self-Assessment

Important! Before taking any further steps to blow the whistle, keep the information that you have to yourself until you have retained counsel. Moreso if you live in a country with weak (or no) whistleblower protections or a history of retaliation against people who expose wrongdoing — and foreign bribery cases often involve exactly those countries.

Below are the most important components of a strong FCPA case:

• Specific, credible, and timely information about bribery of a foreign official, or about false books and records or controls failures connected to it.
• A company with a U.S. securities connection — the SEC’s FCPA jurisdiction runs to issuers. And many publicly traded U.S. companies (“issuers”) have offices outside of the U.S.
• Confidence you are reporting voluntarily and only before any government inquiry on the matter reaches you. If the government comes to you first, you will be disqualified from any awards.
• Original information from your independent knowledge or analysis, not already known to the SEC. the SEC allows whistleblower claims based on public sources, but only if your submission qualifies as independent analysis rather than a simple compilation of public facts.
• A submission made directly to the SEC on Form TCR or through its online TCR portal, declared under penalty of perjury — reporting to another agency or the media alone does not qualify.
• Information that leads to a successful enforcement action with sanctions exceeding $1 million. Anything below this amount may be investigated but will not result in an award order.
• U.S. counsel if you intend to file anonymously — mandatory under SEC rules, not optional. An experienced attorney such as IWA can provide strong guidance applicable to international context.
• Awareness of the 120-day window to file with the SEC if you first reported internally. In most cases, reporting internally first can help bolster your case and improve award percentages.
• Patience for a multi-year process from tip to investigation to award. It’s important to hire the best counsel possible, such as IWA, to ensure you have the highest chance of winning your case.

The largest single award in program history is nearly $279 million, issued in May 2023 to one whistleblower whose information led to successful SEC and related actions. The SEC did not identify the case, though press reporting at the time connected it to a foreign bribery matter. What the order does show is the structure that produced it: an investigation the whistleblower did not start but substantially expanded, plus awards across related actions brought by another authority.

Attorneys With Inside Knowledge

International Whistleblower Advocates’ network includes international SEC whistleblower attorneys who have handled significant international whistleblower matters and advocates who helped shape the modern whistleblower-reward model through international advocacy and education with foreign leaders.

For international whistleblowers, experienced U.S. counsel is paramount. If you miss one deadline, your case could be dismissed. Also, filing anonymously requires a U.S.-based attorney who can help you prepare a formal submission aimed at the highest possible award percentage within the 10–30% range.

If you’d like to come forward with information about foreign bribery, we suggest requesting consultation with our international anti-corruption attorneys.

Step 1: Understanding What the FCPA Prohibits

There are two main provisions: the Anti-Bribery Provision and Accounting Provisons.

The Anti-Bribery Provisions

The anti-bribery provision makes it illegal to offer, promise, authorize, or pay anything of value, directly or through an intermediary, to a foreign official in order to obtain or retain business or secure an improper advantage. Conduct that commonly violates these provisions includes:

• Winning contracts: payments to a government official to ensure a company is awarded a government contract or put in an advantageous position to win one.
• Securing approvals: money, travel, or other things of value given to a minister or agency official in exchange for permits, licenses, or customs clearance.
• Influencing policy: payments to political parties or officials to shape legislation or regulation in a company’s favor.
• Improper endorsements: financial incentives to a physician at a state-run hospital to prescribe or endorse a particular product or treatment.

Under the FCPA, “anything of value” is not limited to just cash — it also covers travel, entertainment, and payments routed through officials’ relatives. For example… in the Alstom case, consultants paid millions of dollars included a brother and a close relative of officials at a state electricity company, neither of whom provided services matching their fees. The company paid a then-record $772 million criminal fine to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Also, what constitutes a “foreign official” reaches beyond ministers and civil servants to include employees of state-owned and state-controlled enterprises. In many countries the counterparty at a national oil company, state bank, or public hospital is a foreign official for FCPA purposes, even though they do not appear to be government employees.

The Accounting Provisions

The accounting provisions apply to issuers and require accurate books and records and a system of internal accounting controls. The purpose of the accounting provisions is to prevent bribery from being concealed in ordinary corporate bookkeeping.

Another key feature of the FCPA is that if your evidence shows the paper trail but not the handshake, you may still have a reportable case.

For whistleblowers, the practical significance is this: the SEC can charge books-and-records and internal-controls violations without proving a bribe was paid. This may include payments recorded as consulting fees, slush funds, unexplained commissions to intermediaries, or a controls failure that let them pass unexamined can support an action on their own.

For example, in the Siemens matter, criminal information did not include anti-bribery charges at all — the case was built on books-and-records and internal-controls violations, and it produced what was then the largest FCPA penalty in history. Siemens paid over $1.4 billion in bribes across multiple continents and 77 countries, which resulted in $450 million in criminal fines paid to the U.S. DOJ, and Over $800 million paid to the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Who the FCPA Applies To

For SEC purposes, the key category is issuers — companies whose securities are registered with the SEC or traded on a U.S. exchange. It also reaches through the corporate structure: conduct by subsidiaries, joint ventures, distributors, agents, and third-party consultants can create liability for the parent.

This is why the company’s nationality is not the right first question. In the cases below, you’ll see that Ericsson is Swedish. Siemens is German. Alstom is French. What brought them within SEC jurisdiction was their connection with U.S. securities, not where headquarters sat. If you work for a foreign multinational listed in the U.S., or for its subsidiary anywhere in the world, the FCPA may reach what you have seen.

Step 2: Verifying Your Eligibility

Confirm that your information meets the SEC’s eligibility criteria. If you are unsure, consult with IWA’s experienced international whistleblower attorneys first.

The SEC allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to submit a tip.

You do not need to be a U.S. citizen, live in the U.S., or work at the company you are reporting — the SEC clearly states that you need not be an employee of the company to submit information about it.

To be eligible for an award, your information must meet the following criteria:

• Voluntary: you must come forward before a request, inquiry, or demand about the same matter reaches you or your representative from the SEC, another regulator, a self-regulatory organization, or Congress. Going to the news media does not by itself make you voluntary.
• Original: derived from your independent knowledge or research — facts not from publicly available sources — or your independent analysis, and not already known to the SEC.
• Submitted to the SEC: filing Form TCR or submitting through the SEC’s online TCR portal, declared under penalty of perjury. Reporting to your local regulator or the press alone does not preserve your award rights.
• Over the $1 million threshold: your tip must open a new investigation, reopen a closed one, push an existing one in a new direction, or significantly contribute to one underway — and sanctions must exceed $1 million.
• An individual, alone or jointly: you can file with others, but a company or organization cannot be a whistleblower. Even those involved in the bribe can come forward, at the risk of a lesser award.

These are the standard requirements; and they do not guarantee an award. The SEC weighs several other factors, discussed below.

A Note on “Independent Analysis”

Independent analysis can qualify you even where the underlying material is public, but the SEC is specific about what that requires. Pointing staff to public information and asserting it suggests fraud is not enough — you must use those materials to reveal insights not apparent at face value. For corruption cases built from public procurement records, filings, or local-language press reporting, this distinction decides eligibility.

Avoiding Eligibility “Traps”

A few situations can undermine an otherwise strong claim:

• Information subject to the attorney-client privilege is excluded from the definition of original information, so set it aside when assessing your own eligibility.
• Information learned because you hold certain titles — such as officer or director — where you learned it from another person or through the company’s internal reporting systems may be excluded. Exceptions exist, so do not write yourself off.
• If you reported internally at your company first, the clock is running: file with the SEC within 120 days and the agency treats your information as reported on the date you reported internally.

Remember: internal reporting is optional — you can come straight to the SEC at any time. For many international whistleblowers, especially in countries where internal reports leak back to the people implicated, that is the safest path.

Step 3: Understand How Awards Are Calculated

The SEC pays awards ranging from 10% to 30% of the monetary sanctions collected in a successful enforcement action. Where there is a joint filing, the award is divided among the whistleblowers.

Awards paid to whistleblowers come from the Investor Protection Fund, financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid by securities law violators. Nothing is taken from harmed investors, and nothing comes from taxpayer funds.

How Does the SEC Decide Where You Land in the 10–30% Range?

There is a presumption of the maximum 30% award when the award amount is $5 million or less and no negative factors exist. That presumption can be overcome if you provided only limited assistance, or if a maximum award would be inconsistent with the public interest or the objectives of the program.

For larger awards, the Commission weighs four factors that can increase your percentage:

• The significance of the information you provided: often the single most important driver, especially when more than one whistleblower is involved and the SEC compares whose information mattered more and who came forward first.
• The extent of the assistance you provide in the investigation and any successful proceeding: helping staff understand complex transactions, identifying key witnesses and documents, and supporting the case through its conclusion.
• Law enforcement interest in deterring violations by making awards to whistleblowers whose information leads to successful enforcement.
• Your participation in the company’s internal compliance systems: this is never required, but as we mentioned above, it can raise your award percentage.

And three factors that can decrease it:

• Culpability: whistleblowers who participated in or were culpable for the violation can have awards reduced. Culpable insiders can still receive awards, just smaller ones; in these nuanced situations it is best to speak with a whistleblower attorney first.
• Unreasonable reporting delay: waiting too long to report can cost you, so submit your tip as soon as you reasonably can.
• Interference with internal compliance: making false statements to your compliance department, or otherwise hindering its efforts to investigate, can reduce the award.

One structural point in your favor: the SEC considers the dollar amount of a potential award only to increase a percentage, never to decrease it.

Related Actions: Why They Matter Most in Corruption Cases

If your information also leads to a successful action brought by certain other authorities, such as the DOJ in foreign bribery cases, you may be eligible for an additional award. Eligibility for an award in the SEC’s own covered action is a prerequisite.

Foreign bribery generates parallel proceedings more reliably than almost any other misconduct. However, given the complexity of cases involving other authorities where there are potentially massive awards, having an experienced whistleblower attorney on your side is highly recommended.

The scale is visible in the cases themselves. Ericsson paid roughly $540 million to the SEC and a $520 million criminal penalty to the DOJ on the same conduct. Goldman Sachs resolved a coordinated action exceeding $2.9 billion. A whistleblower positioned across both sides of such a resolution is claiming against a substantially larger base than the SEC action alone.

Related Actions Caveat

If another authority has its own whistleblower award program that could pay on the related action, the SEC will not treat it as a related action unless its own program has a more direct connection — though it still counts if the other program is not comparable, or if the award would not exceed $5 million.

You cannot collect from both agencies for the same action, and any application elsewhere must be disclosed.

Step 4: Retain Experienced U.S. Counsel

If you intend to file anonymously, you must retain a U.S.-based attorney. But also, to be eligible for an award an anonymous whistleblower must be represented by an attorney who files on their behalf and completes the required attorney certification. You must also give your attorney a completed hard-copy Form TCR, signed under penalty of perjury, at the time of submission.

Even if you file under your own name, the SEC is committed to fully protecting your identity possible and will not disclose it in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

In an administrative or court proceeding the SEC may be required to produce information revealing your identity, and in some circumstances it may share information other governmental or regulatory entities.

Keep in mind that your protections as an international whistleblower under U.S. law exist but can be harder to enforce from abroad — another reason experienced counsel matters.

Get in touch with our international SEC whistleblower attorneys today for a free case evaluation.

Constructive Notice and the 30-Day Rule

Many whistleblowers reach the SEC some other way first — an email, a letter, a phone call. That contact is not a Form TCR. You must submit a Form TCR within 30 days of submitting your information to the Commission, or within 30 days of learning of the requirement — and you are on constructive notice of it the moment you are represented.

Miss that window and you may be ineligible for an award.

International Representation

Intake, document review, drafting, and filing can all be handled remotely by your attorney. You do not need to travel to the United States unless your attorney determines it is necessary.

Reputable whistleblower firms, such as IWA, work on a contingency basis, meaning no upfront fees — your attorney is paid a percentage of an award only if you win one. Retaining counsel therefore costs nothing out of pocket, regardless of where you live.

Step 5: Gathering Evidence — Lawfully

To qualify for an award you must provide credible, original, and timely information. The SEC says the best tips identify the individuals involved, give specific examples of fraudulent transactions, or point to non-public materials evidencing the misconduct. These are the whistleblower submissions most likely to reach Enforcement staff and be pursued.

How you gather that information is equally important. Whistleblowers can be disqualified — and turned down for representation — if they obtained information by hacking or by accessing materials, they had no right to access. All information must be obtained lawfully and ethically.

What Strengthens a Foreign Bribery Submission

When gathering evidence, you’ll want to provide credible and original information. This most often includes one if not several of the following:

• Agreements with agents, consultants, distributors, and other intermediaries
• Invoices and payment records for commissions, success fees, and consulting arrangements
• Due diligence files on third parties, and evidence that diligence was skipped or overridden
• Expense, travel, hospitality, and gift records tied to government counterparties
• Approval chains showing who authorized a payment and who was informed
• Ledger entries and the accounting classifications used to characterize the payments
• The identity and role of the official involved, and the decision the payment was meant to influence
• Dates and amounts of specific transactions, and where additional records are kept

Remember from Step 3 that assistance to staff — helping decipher complex transactions and identifying key witnesses and documents — can directly increase your award percentage.

What Can Hurt You

• Privileged materials: information subject to the attorney-client privilege is excluded from the definition of original information.
• Unlawful collection: accessing systems or records you have no right to access can expose you to criminal liability in your home country.
• Local data and secrecy laws: many countries restrict moving personal data or business records across borders — from the EU’s GDPR to bank-secrecy and blocking statutes elsewhere.

Protect Your Identity

Below are practices developed over decades of representing and protecting whistleblowers:

• Use a personal device: do your research on a non-work device and network. Never use your work email, phone, or company device to contact attorneys or the SEC.
• Avoid cloud and email: if the information is on company systems, do not forward it to email or the cloud. Where lawful, use a personal storage device to keep your own copies.
• Remain silent: do not tell anyone what you have found or that you plan to report it – only to counsel. Silence and patience are the most important qualities of successful whistleblowing.

Make copies of all evidence and store them somewhere safe and secure. If you have documents in other languages — and in foreign bribery cases, you almost certainly will — have them translated independently or with your legal counsel.

Avoid translating sensitive documents using AI tools!

Step 6: Submitting Your Tip to the SEC

With your evidence in hand, you are ready to submit an official tip using the SEC’s Tips, Complaints and Referrals online portal.

If you use the portal, you must answer yes to the questions about participating in the whistleblower program. You must also personally execute the declaration under penalty of perjury.

The Office of the Whistleblower encourages electronic filing. Portal filers receive an immediate acknowledgment and a confirmation number, and the tip is automatically captured for review.

Hard-copy Form TCRs sent by mail or fax receive no acknowledgment letter, so keep a copy of everything along with your mail receipt or fax confirmation. Use only one method of transmission — duplicate submissions cause confusion and delay.

And just as a reminder: anyone can submit a tip anonymously, but claiming an award anonymously requires an attorney who files on your behalf.

What Happens Next

Every tip is reviewed by the SEC’s Enforcement Division, where the Office of Market Intelligence examines each submission to identify those warranting further resources. Complaints that warrant deeper investigation are assigned to a regional office, a specialty unit, or an Enforcement group at headquarters. Tips relating to an existing investigation go to the staff already working the matter.

Then, most likely, there will be no communication for a long time. The SEC conducts investigations confidentially as a matter of policy and generally will not comment on whether it has opened an investigation or the status of one. The agency acknowledges this can be frustrating, but the silence protects the investigation and the whistleblower’s identity.

No news does not mean your tip went nowhere.

Even a tip that does not open an investigation can still lead to a successful action if it significantly contributes to one already underway.

If you later obtain new information, supplement your tip through the portal referencing your original TCR submission number — or directly to Enforcement staff if you are already working with them.

Strong cases are often built through exactly this cooperation, which per Step 3 also pushes award percentages upward.

Step 7: Monitor for a Covered Action and Apply for Your Award

The SEC does not automatically pay rewards when you win your case. You must apply for it. When an SEC action results in sanctions over $1 million (a base requirement), the agency posts a Notice of Covered Action, typically at the end of each month.

One point that matters enormously in FCPA cases: the SEC does not post actions brought by other government agencies. Monitoring for a related DOJ action, or a foreign authority’s proceeding, is entirely your responsibility.

For a whistleblower eight or nine time zones from Washington, this monitoring is one of the most concrete things U.S. counsel does, which is why we recommend contacting IWA if you’d like to proceed.

Do Not Miss the 90-Day Deadline!

Once the relevant notice is posted, you must complete and return award Form WB-APP to the Office of the Whistleblower within 90 calendar days. No exceptions or extensions. Deadlines falling on a weekend or holiday extend to the next business day.

For related actions, you claim on the same Form WB-APP if a final order imposing sanctions has already been entered. If the related action concludes later, you file within 90 days of the final order in that action.

What Happens After You Apply

The Claims Review Staff issues a preliminary determination recommending that your claim be granted or denied and, if granted, at what percentage.

You may request reconsideration within 60 days of the later of the preliminary determination or your receipt of the record it relied on, provided you requested that record within 30 days.

If the Commission ultimately denies your claim, you may appeal to a U.S. Court of Appeals within 30 days. However, if you are granted an award between 10% and 30% determined under the proper factors, that decision is not appealable.

You will not receive status updates while your application is pending, and claims may not be evaluated until all appeals in the underlying matter are resolved.

DO NOT send repeated or frivolous applications, as this may bar you from the program, and ONLY apply when your tip genuinely connects to the action; best to let counsel make that judgment with you.

Global Enforcement in Action: Landmark FCPA Cases

The FCPA’s reach is best understood through the cases it has produced against multinational corporations for conduct occurring far beyond U.S. borders.

• Goldman Sachs (Malaysia and Abu Dhabi, 2020): a coordinated DOJ and SEC resolution exceeding $2.9 billion — the largest FCPA enforcement action in history — arising from bribes paid to secure the bank’s role underwriting approximately $6.5 billion in bond offerings for the Malaysian state fund 1MDB. The SEC order required $606.3 million in disgorgement and a $400 million civil penalty, and the matter also produced parallel resolutions with authorities in Malaysia, the U.K., Singapore, and Hong Kong.
• Ericsson (Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, 2019): the Swedish telecommunications company paid more than $1 billion — roughly $540 million to the SEC and a $520 million criminal penalty to the DOJ. The SEC alleged sham consultants and slush funds were used to funnel money to officials, obtaining business valued at approximately $427 million.
• Siemens (2008): the German engineering conglomerate paid $800 million to U.S. authorities — $450 million to the DOJ and $350 million to the SEC — in a case the DOJ described as unprecedented in scale and geographic scope. Combined with penalties imposed in Germany, the total exceeded $1.6 billion.
• Alstom (Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan, the Bahamas, 2014): the French power and transportation company pleaded guilty and paid a $772 million criminal penalty, at the time the largest FCPA criminal fine on record, for a scheme using consultants to make improper payments to officials.

How Long Does the Process Take?

The SEC publishes doesn’t have an official timeline. However, the process runs through three stages, which be observed as such:

1. Investigation (often several years): after you’ve submitted your tip, the SEC investigates confidentially and will not comment on its status.
2. Enforcement and the Notice of Covered Action: if the action succeeds with sanctions over $1 million, the notice posts — and your 90-day application window opens.
3. Award review: claims may not be evaluated until all appeals are resolved, then move through a preliminary determination, any reconsideration, and a final order before payment.

From the time that you submit your tip until award review, four to six years from tip to payment is common, and foreign bribery cases tend toward the longer end.

Parallel DOJ prosecutions, foreign proceedings, and mutual legal assistance between jurisdictions all add time, and awards tied to related actions may resolve years after the first case closes.

Contact IWA’s FCPA Whistleblower Attorneys Today

If you have information about bribery of foreign officials by a U.S.-listed company, you do not have to navigate the SEC’s process — or weigh the risks of coming forward from abroad — on your own.

A free, confidential consultation makes sense if you are:

• A non-U.S. citizen or foreign resident with evidence of payments to government officials, or of the accounting entries used to conceal them
• An employee of a subsidiary, joint venture, or affiliate of a U.S.-listed company (an issuer), anywhere in the world
• A third-party agent, distributor, consultant, or intermediary who has seen how payments were structured
• A compliance, finance, internal audit, or legal professional who has seen due diligence overridden or controls bypassed
• An officer or director unsure whether an eligibility exclusion applies to you
• Someone who has already reported internally and needs to act within the 120-day window
• Considering filing anonymously, which requires U.S. counsel under SEC rules

Everything you share is protected by attorney-client privilege, whether or not you ever file.

Looking for Legal Assistance? Contact IWA Today

International Whistleblower Advocates connects whistleblowers around the world with experienced U.S. counsel. Our attorneys can assess your eligibility, protect your identity, prepare a submission built for the top of the 10–30% award range, and manage every deadline — from the Form TCR to the 90-day award application — no matter where in the world you are.