Paul Calli Quoted in Reporting on Sports Betting Company Entain’s Deferred Prosecution Agreement
Anti-Corruption Report’s recent analysis of sports betting giant Entain’s deferred prosecution agreement extensively quotes Paul Calli.
Entain entered into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve its exposure under the U.K.’s Bribery Act for alleged bribery arising in its Turkey business. In its analysis of the lessons to be learned from the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service’s depiction of its investigation to the media, Anti-Corruption report writes:
There is little to learn from “the self-serving government speechifying that virtually always accompanies enforcement actions,” Calli opined.
Companies are often confronted with the choice of agreeing to a deal that they were at fault for activity that was intentionally hidden from the company, Calli said. This has proven true in several cases in which he himself has sat with executives facing similar enforcement actions, Calli said. And it can be true despite full compliance programs that covered all the bases required, and a team of top attorneys who have maintained conservative growth and risk aversion, he noted.
Government regulators control the message they want to send with enforcement cases, and they only release information that ultimately supports a story that repeats itself with frequency, Calli said. This is the story of wrongdoing companies fully cooperating with investigators and agreeing to a costly settlement as well as an overhaul of their compliance operations, he explained.
“If you look at the history of FCPA cases, and particularly for publicly traded companies, when the dust settles, the share price goes up. And particularly in the gambling industry, it’s just going to keep moving forward,” Calli said.
