• Business Day (South Africa): Emerging markets

Investors in Namibia could benefit from the country's location as a strategic point of entry to southern African markets.
The Walvis Bay port had been expanded and continued to grow, supported by a network of transport infrastructure into the interior and landlocked neighbours like Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the President said.
In addition, Namibia was a member of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), which is negotiating Free Trade Agreements with Brazil, India, China and Nigeria, enhancing access to more international markets, strengthening Namibia's attractiveness and competitiveness.
"These factors as well as our Government's firm commitment to maintain peace and the rule of law, should convince investors to invest in our country," Pohamba said.
"We expect investors to play an active role in the transfer of skills and technology through training of their employees and joint ventures with Namibian partners."
South African President Thabo Mbeki attended the opening and said investment had to reach smaller countries in southern Africa.
Speaking of the cuff, Mbeki said the capital required for such investment was in the hands of the private sector.
"We must work together very carefully with the private sector and listen to what they have to say.
There must be no corruption and no Mr Ten Per Cent (bribery)," he said to strong applause.
Document AFNWS00020071101e3b1000s3
News

Incorporating electronic discovery in global investigations; JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

William Purcelland Bernard Boit

1,286 words

31 October 2007

Palm Beach Daily Business Review

PBDBR

10

Volume 54; Issue 19

English

Copyright 2007 ALM Properties, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Palm Beach Daily Business Review
law & technology
As the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act receives increased attention from both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, more companies are running afoul of its provisions. Because the FCPA applies to transactions in foreign countries, investigating alleged violations of the statute necessarily involves conducting investigations within the relevant countries. Counsel must consider a range of issues, including electronic data discovery, when conducting such an investigation.
The anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA make it unlawful for U.S. companies, and certain foreign issuers of securities, to make a corrupt payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or directing business to any person.
It also requires companies whose securities are listed in the U.S. to meet its accounting provisions. These accounting provisions, designed to operate in tandem with the anti-bribery provisions, require corporations to make and keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect the transactions of the corporation and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls.
A recent case illustrates the worldwide scope of potential FCPA violations and the need to investigate and report them promptly. On April 26, a subsidiary of Baker Hughes Services International Inc., (a U.S. oil fields products and services provider) pleaded guilty to violating the FCPA and settled related SEC charges. The company agreed to serve a three-year term of organizational probation and paid $11 million in criminal fines, $10 million in civil penalties and more than $24 million in disgorgement. The company was charged with bribing officials of state-owned companies in Kazakhstan, and with violating the FCPA books and records provisions in Nigeria, Angola, Indonesia, Russia and Uzbekistan, as well as Kazakhstan. In agreeing to the disposition, Justice cited the company's voluntary disclosure and its extensive and thorough internal investigation of its business practices in its high-risk global operations.
Other recent cases in the last two years show the federal government's commitment to strict enforcement of the FCPA and the wide variety of locations across the globe that may become the focal point of an investigation. Among the companies that have been prosecuted and/or subject to SEC enforcement action:
• Schnitzer Steel Industries (China and Korea).
• Oil States International (Venezuela).
• American Rice (officers of the company) (Haiti).
• Willbros Group (officers of the company) (Nigeria and Ecuador).
• ITXC Corp. (officers of the company) (various African countries).
• Titan Corp. (Benin).
• GE inVision (China, Philippines and Thailand).
• ABB Ltd. (Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan).
When addressing the EDD considerations in an FCPA investigation, the scope of the investigation can be a challenge, in terms of both management and technology support. The international arena significantly complicates the breadth of electronic data discovery processes.
Normal EDD processes considered routine in a strictly stateside situation can become more difficult when having to deal with data residing on systems and networks within foreign company offices.
Planning is the most critical step in the entire EDD process. For starters, companies should have a well-documented records risk management architecture incorporating processes for managing electronically stored information.
An effective records management process should allow general counsel to quickly identify and notify individuals who potentially possess relevant data and then facilitate an efficient evidence collection plan to build a repository of this data.
In reality, very few global firms have internal records management architectures of this maturity or efficiency. Potential issues of spoliation can become a very real concern unless investigations teams are governed by consistently applied methodologies for handling digital evidence.
Sophisticated case management software can be used in these circumstances to coordinate collection teams globally and track evidence from point of origin to final disposition.
Data privacy
Another early planning consideration involves dealing with international data privacy issues. Legal counsel should have a very detailed plan for supporting cross-border investigations and a process for proactive issue resolution. Managing multijurisdictional investigations should not be attempted without this framework. Legal counsel must work very closely with the investigations teams and especially the technical professionals involved in EDD work. Numerous pieces of legislation have emerged in recent years to address the special privacy considerations for cross-border transfers of data.
Global investigations require greater care in the identification and preservation of digital media and other types of electronically stored information. Within the U.S., nearly everyone has digital media in numerous formats and physical forms and the same is usually true in most foreign countries. Whether it is the SD Card in our cell phones or the mini hard drives in our iPods, digital evidence is no longer just found in the desktop PC or the laptop.
Global collection teams must consult with local IT resources to understand the local information technology environment and develop an appropriate collection plan. Likewise, all collection teams working on a matter should have a common work plan outlining the tools, techniques and procedures that will be used for digital evidence preservation. Failure to do so risks spoliation and potential sanctions.
A FCPA investigation is often likely to involve collection and processing of ESI stored information with foreign language encoded data. Language encoding in digital evidence can sometimes be problematic. Only in the last several years have EDD software tools begun to address this issue.
The ability to index and conduct key word searches in a foreign language is another area of potential concern. Validation of foreign language key words with a consistent methodology should be used to provide some quality control for these search terms.
An evolving area in foreign language processing technologies is machine translation. This is a process where a foreign language can be fed into a software application to produce a full and comprehensible translated version of the text in another language. Although the state of this industry is advancing, very few EDD processing tools have incorporated this feature into their software. The potential value of machine translation software for EDD is that it can provide a general understanding of the body of text for non-native speakers. Reliance upon translation tools typically hinges upon the availability of native speakers to conduct appropriate review.
There is no substitute for having local resources who understand the culture and speak the indigenous language.
Data analysis
FCPA investigations today also often involve sophisticated forensic data analytic tools and techniques designed to look for fraud indicators in a company's transactional databases. Within companies globally, there has been a gradual migration to more standardized accounting systems allowing investigators a greater ability to efficiently use these types of analyses.
Data analytic tools and techniques can run fraud detection routines looking for potential FCPA violations within a company's accounting systems. Features to conduct multilingual key word searches are becoming more commonplace as the need for this capability is now essential. Again, having local resources on the investigations team can be invaluable since fraud indicators common in the U.S. may not exist or look completely different in the relevant country.
In the increasingly likely event U.S. multinational companies are faced with potential charges of violating the FCPA, special considerations will apply to EDD and other forensic technologies. The tools and techniques used to address this challenging environment are evolving to provide investigations teams the resources they need to manage these engagements. n
William Purcell is a partner in Howrey's global litigation practice and is based in its New York office. Bernard Boit is a principal with KPMG's forensic practice, based in Washington D.C.
This article first appears in Law Technology News, an ALM Media affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
Document PBDBR00020071115e3av0001x
News

Incorporating electronic discovery in global investigations; JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

William Purcelland Bernard Boit

1,285 words

31 October 2007

Miami Daily Business Review

MDBR

10

Volume 54; Issue 19

English

Copyright 2007 ALM Properties, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Miami Daily Business Review
law & technology
As the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act receives increased attention from both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, more companies are running afoul of its provisions. Because the FCPA applies to transactions in foreign countries, investigating alleged violations of the statute necessarily involves conducting investigations within the relevant countries. Counsel must consider a range of issues, including electronic data discovery, when conducting such an investigation.
The anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA make it unlawful for U.S. companies, and certain foreign issuers of securities, to make a corrupt payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or directing business to any person.
It also requires companies whose securities are listed in the U.S. to meet its accounting provisions. These accounting provisions, designed to operate in tandem with the anti-bribery provisions, require corporations to make and keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect the transactions of the corporation and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls.
A recent case illustrates the worldwide scope of potential FCPA violations and the need to investigate and report them promptly. On April 26, a subsidiary of Baker Hughes Services International Inc., (a U.S. oil fields products and services provider) pleaded guilty to violating the FCPA and settled related SEC charges. The company agreed to serve a three-year term of organizational probation and paid $11 million in criminal fines, $10 million in civil penalties and more than $24 million in disgorgement. The company was charged with bribing officials of state-owned companies in Kazakhstan, and with violating the FCPA books and records provisions in Nigeria, Angola, Indonesia, Russia and Uzbekistan, as well as Kazakhstan. In agreeing to the disposition, Justice cited the company's voluntary disclosure and its extensive and thorough internal investigation of its business practices in its high-risk global operations.
Other recent cases in the last two years show the federal government's commitment to strict enforcement of the FCPA and the wide variety of locations across the globe that may become the focal point of an investigation. Among the companies that have been prosecuted and/or subject to SEC enforcement action:
• Schnitzer Steel Industries (China and Korea).
• Oil States International (Venezuela).
• American Rice (officers of the company) (Haiti).
• Willbros Group (officers of the company) (Nigeria and Ecuador).
• ITXC Corp. (officers of the company) (various African countries).
• Titan Corp. (Benin).
• GE inVision (China, Philippines and Thailand).
• ABB Ltd. (Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan).
When addressing the EDD considerations in an FCPA investigation, the scope of the investigation can be a challenge, in terms of both management and technology support. The international arena significantly complicates the breadth of electronic data discovery processes.
Normal EDD processes considered routine in a strictly stateside situation can become more difficult when having to deal with data residing on systems and networks within foreign company offices.
Planning is the most critical step in the entire EDD process. For starters, companies should have a well-documented records risk management architecture incorporating processes for managing electronically stored information.
An effective records management process should allow general counsel to quickly identify and notify individuals who potentially possess relevant data and then facilitate an efficient evidence collection plan to build a repository of this data.
In reality, very few global firms have internal records management architectures of this maturity or efficiency. Potential issues of spoliation can become a very real concern unless investigations teams are governed by consistently applied methodologies for handling digital evidence.
Sophisticated case management software can be used in these circumstances to coordinate collection teams globally and track evidence from point of origin to final disposition.
Data privacy
Another early planning consideration involves dealing with international data privacy issues. Legal counsel should have a very detailed plan for supporting cross-border investigations and a process for proactive issue resolution. Managing multijurisdictional investigations should not be attempted without this framework. Legal counsel must work very closely with the investigations teams and especially the technical professionals involved in EDD work. Numerous pieces of legislation have emerged in recent years to address the special privacy considerations for cross-border transfers of data.
Global investigations require greater care in the identification and preservation of digital media and other types of electronically stored information. Within the U.S., nearly everyone has digital media in numerous formats and physical forms and the same is usually true in most foreign countries. Whether it is the SD Card in our cell phones or the mini hard drives in our iPods, digital evidence is no longer just found in the desktop PC or the laptop.
Global collection teams must consult with local IT resources to understand the local information technology environment and develop an appropriate collection plan. Likewise, all collection teams working on a matter should have a common work plan outlining the tools, techniques and procedures that will be used for digital evidence preservation. Failure to do so risks spoliation and potential sanctions.
A FCPA investigation is often likely to involve collection and processing of ESI stored information with foreign language encoded data. Language encoding in digital evidence can sometimes be problematic. Only in the last several years have EDD software tools begun to address this issue.
The ability to index and conduct key word searches in a foreign language is another area of potential concern. Validation of foreign language key words with a consistent methodology should be used to provide some quality control for these search terms.
An evolving area in foreign language processing technologies is machine translation. This is a process where a foreign language can be fed into a software application to produce a full and comprehensible translated version of the text in another language. Although the state of this industry is advancing, very few EDD processing tools have incorporated this feature into their software. The potential value of machine translation software for EDD is that it can provide a general understanding of the body of text for non-native speakers. Reliance upon translation tools typically hinges upon the availability of native speakers to conduct appropriate review.
There is no substitute for having local resources who understand the culture and speak the indigenous language.
Data analysis
FCPA investigations today also often involve sophisticated forensic data analytic tools and techniques designed to look for fraud indicators in a company's transactional databases. Within companies globally, there has been a gradual migration to more standardized accounting systems allowing investigators a greater ability to efficiently use these types of analyses.
Data analytic tools and techniques can run fraud detection routines looking for potential FCPA violations within a company's accounting systems. Features to conduct multilingual key word searches are becoming more commonplace as the need for this capability is now essential. Again, having local resources on the investigations team can be invaluable since fraud indicators common in the U.S. may not exist or look completely different in the relevant country.
In the increasingly likely event U.S. multinational companies are faced with potential charges of violating the FCPA, special considerations will apply to EDD and other forensic technologies. The tools and techniques used to address this challenging environment are evolving to provide investigations teams the resources they need to manage these engagements. n
William Purcell is a partner in Howrey's global litigation practice and is based in its New York office. Bernard Boit is a principal with KPMG's forensic practice, based in Washington D.C.
This article first appears in Law Technology News, an ALM Media affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
Document MDBR000020071115e3av0001x
News

Incorporating electronic discovery in global investigations; JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

William Purcelland Bernard Boit

1,285 words

31 October 2007

Broward Daily Business Review

BDBR

10

Volume 54; Issue 19

English

Copyright 2007 ALM Properties, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Broward Daily Business Review
law & technology
As the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act receives increased attention from both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, more companies are running afoul of its provisions. Because the FCPA applies to transactions in foreign countries, investigating alleged violations of the statute necessarily involves conducting investigations within the relevant countries. Counsel must consider a range of issues, including electronic data discovery, when conducting such an investigation.
The anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA make it unlawful for U.S. companies, and certain foreign issuers of securities, to make a corrupt payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or directing business to any person.
It also requires companies whose securities are listed in the U.S. to meet its accounting provisions. These accounting provisions, designed to operate in tandem with the anti-bribery provisions, require corporations to make and keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect the transactions of the corporation and to devise and maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls.
A recent case illustrates the worldwide scope of potential FCPA violations and the need to investigate and report them promptly. On April 26, a subsidiary of Baker Hughes Services International Inc., (a U.S. oil fields products and services provider) pleaded guilty to violating the FCPA and settled related SEC charges. The company agreed to serve a three-year term of organizational probation and paid $11 million in criminal fines, $10 million in civil penalties and more than $24 million in disgorgement. The company was charged with bribing officials of state-owned companies in Kazakhstan, and with violating the FCPA books and records provisions in Nigeria, Angola, Indonesia, Russia and Uzbekistan, as well as Kazakhstan. In agreeing to the disposition, Justice cited the company's voluntary disclosure and its extensive and thorough internal investigation of its business practices in its high-risk global operations.
Other recent cases in the last two years show the federal government's commitment to strict enforcement of the FCPA and the wide variety of locations across the globe that may become the focal point of an investigation. Among the companies that have been prosecuted and/or subject to SEC enforcement action:
• Schnitzer Steel Industries (China and Korea).
• Oil States International (Venezuela).
• American Rice (officers of the company) (Haiti).
• Willbros Group (officers of the company) (Nigeria and Ecuador).
• ITXC Corp. (officers of the company) (various African countries).
• Titan Corp. (Benin).
• GE inVision (China, Philippines and Thailand).
• ABB Ltd. (Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan).
When addressing the EDD considerations in an FCPA investigation, the scope of the investigation can be a challenge, in terms of both management and technology support. The international arena significantly complicates the breadth of electronic data discovery processes.
Normal EDD processes considered routine in a strictly stateside situation can become more difficult when having to deal with data residing on systems and networks within foreign company offices.
Planning is the most critical step in the entire EDD process. For starters, companies should have a well-documented records risk management architecture incorporating processes for managing electronically stored information.
An effective records management process should allow general counsel to quickly identify and notify individuals who potentially possess relevant data and then facilitate an efficient evidence collection plan to build a repository of this data.
In reality, very few global firms have internal records management architectures of this maturity or efficiency. Potential issues of spoliation can become a very real concern unless investigations teams are governed by consistently applied methodologies for handling digital evidence.
Sophisticated case management software can be used in these circumstances to coordinate collection teams globally and track evidence from point of origin to final disposition.
Data privacy
Another early planning consideration involves dealing with international data privacy issues. Legal counsel should have a very detailed plan for supporting cross-border investigations and a process for proactive issue resolution. Managing multijurisdictional investigations should not be attempted without this framework. Legal counsel must work very closely with the investigations teams and especially the technical professionals involved in EDD work. Numerous pieces of legislation have emerged in recent years to address the special privacy considerations for cross-border transfers of data.
Global investigations require greater care in the identification and preservation of digital media and other types of electronically stored information. Within the U.S., nearly everyone has digital media in numerous formats and physical forms and the same is usually true in most foreign countries. Whether it is the SD Card in our cell phones or the mini hard drives in our iPods, digital evidence is no longer just found in the desktop PC or the laptop.
Global collection teams must consult with local IT resources to understand the local information technology environment and develop an appropriate collection plan. Likewise, all collection teams working on a matter should have a common work plan outlining the tools, techniques and procedures that will be used for digital evidence preservation. Failure to do so risks spoliation and potential sanctions.
A FCPA investigation is often likely to involve collection and processing of ESI stored information with foreign language encoded data. Language encoding in digital evidence can sometimes be problematic. Only in the last several years have EDD software tools begun to address this issue.
The ability to index and conduct key word searches in a foreign language is another area of potential concern. Validation of foreign language key words with a consistent methodology should be used to provide some quality control for these search terms.
An evolving area in foreign language processing technologies is machine translation. This is a process where a foreign language can be fed into a software application to produce a full and comprehensible translated version of the text in another language. Although the state of this industry is advancing, very few EDD processing tools have incorporated this feature into their software. The potential value of machine translation software for EDD is that it can provide a general understanding of the body of text for non-native speakers. Reliance upon translation tools typically hinges upon the availability of native speakers to conduct appropriate review.
There is no substitute for having local resources who understand the culture and speak the indigenous language.
Data analysis
FCPA investigations today also often involve sophisticated forensic data analytic tools and techniques designed to look for fraud indicators in a company's transactional databases. Within companies globally, there has been a gradual migration to more standardized accounting systems allowing investigators a greater ability to efficiently use these types of analyses.
Data analytic tools and techniques can run fraud detection routines looking for potential FCPA violations within a company's accounting systems. Features to conduct multilingual key word searches are becoming more commonplace as the need for this capability is now essential. Again, having local resources on the investigations team can be invaluable since fraud indicators common in the U.S. may not exist or look completely different in the relevant country.
In the increasingly likely event U.S. multinational companies are faced with potential charges of violating the FCPA, special considerations will apply to EDD and other forensic technologies. The tools and techniques used to address this challenging environment are evolving to provide investigations teams the resources they need to manage these engagements. n
William Purcell is a partner in Howrey's global litigation practice and is based in its New York office. Bernard Boit is a principal with KPMG's forensic practice, based in Washington D.C.
This article first appears in Law Technology News, an ALM Media affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
Document BDBR000020071115e3av0001x

Mobile_bid_talk'>UPDATE 2-MTN stock jumps 6.5 pct on China Mobile bid talk
By Ron Derby

392 words

26 October 2007

06:56 AM

Reuters News

LBA

English

(c) 2007 Reuters Limited
(Adds MTN response para 5, updates share price)
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Shares in sub-Saharan Africa's largest mobile phone operator MTN jumped over 6 percent on Friday, with analysts saying the group could become a potential takeover target for China Mobile .
"I think the share is largely moving on speculation of a possible take-out following Standard's transaction yesterday. In the past there was speculation that China Mobile was looking at MTN," Cadiz African Harvest portfolio manager, Rajay Ambekarr said.
China's biggest lender ICBC on Thursday announced plans to purchase 20 percent of Standard Bank for $5.6 billion -- the largest ever foreign investment in Africa.
By 1339 GMT, MTN shares were 5.75 percent stronger at 120 rand, the biggest gainer among blue chips, with the Top-40 index <.JTOPI> up 1.12 percent.
"The MTN Group cannot comment on market speculation," MTN spokeswoman Nozipho January-Bardill said in a statement.
Richard Ferguson, director of global emerging markets research at Nomura, told Reuters it was possible China Mobile -- the world's top cellular carrier by subscribers -- might launch a bid for MTN.
"There is a scarcity of value in emerging markets and MTN would be a logical target, I would have thought," Ferguson told Reuters from London.
In its first foray outside its home market, China Mobile earlier this year agreed to buy an 89 percent stake in money-losing Pakistan operator Paktel Ltd. for $284 million.
"China Mobile in Hong Kong and its parent company in Beijing have a stated aim to derive a significant proportion of their revenues from overseas. China Mobile has over $40 billion, with that amount you must make a sizeable transaction, therefore MTN looks like a sensible target," he added.
MTN -- which is currently in talks with fixed line operator Telkom regarding the sale of certain of Telkom's assets -- has a market capitalisation of close to $35.29 billion.
Ferguson said the Chinese have targeted South Africa, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, Congo-Brazzaville and Angola as countries they would want to enter, mainly due to rich natural resources. MTN has a presence in five of those markets.
MTN-CHINAMOBILE/ (UPDATE 2)|LANGEN|ABN|E|RBN|AFN|SF|U|Z|RNP|DNP|PCO
Document LBA0000020071026e3aq001f5

FACTBOX-Biggest African M&A deals to date
335 words

25 October 2007

06:17 AM

Reuters News

LBA

English

(c) 2007 Reuters Limited
Oct 25 (Reuters) - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is set to buy a 20 percent stake in Standard Bank , Africa's biggest lender by assets, in a deal reported to be worth $5.5 billion.
Below is a list of the previous 10 biggest foreign acquisitions in Africa:
* BARCLAYS-ABSA
Britain's Barclays plc bought a 60 percent stake in South Africa's biggest retail lender Absa for $5.34 billion in May 2005.
* VODAFONE-VENFIN
Britain's Vodafone Group plc acquired South Africa's Venfin for $3.40 billion in November 2005.
* CNOOC-OIL & GAS ASSETS