The Securities and Exchange Commission SEC announced Tuesday that Oracle will pay millions of dollars for settling charges related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FCPA. Oracle will pay $15 million in penalties and $8 million in disgorgement. The SEC said in a press release that the tech company has agreed to stop and deny from committing violations of the anti-bribery, books and records, and internal accounting controls provisions of the FCPA.
The release said that the company did not admit to or deny the SEC's allegations as part of the agreement.
According to a press release from the SEC, the regulatory agency alleged that Oracle subsidiaries in Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates UAE have violated the FCPA by using slush funds between 2016 and 2019 to bribe foreign officials in exchange for business.
Some Turkish and UAE subsidiaries accused of paying for foreign officials to attend conferences, and some Turkey subsidiary employees used the slush funds to pay for officials' families to go with them or visit California on the side.
Michael Egbert, vice president of Oracle corporate communications, told FOX Business that the conduct outlined by the SEC is contrary to our core values and clear policies.
In 2012, Oracle paid $2 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing, the SEC said in a press release that the company's Indian subsidiary secretly set aside money from company's books that was eventually used to make unauthorized payments to phony vendors in India.
The company moved its headquarters from California to Texas in late 2020 and reported revenues of $11.4 billion for the first quarter of 2023, up from $9.2 billion in the same period the previous fiscal year. Oracle said that it's net income fell from $2.46 billion to $1.55 billion.