There was nothing gradual about the United States’ return to Venezuela. A January 2026 U.S. military intervention removed Nicolás Maduro, abruptly reopening an oil sector that had been mostly sealed off from U.S. companies since the 2019 sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). What exists now is a fragile, transitional market in which foreign and domestic companies are being encouraged to compete for oil contracts and production rights but access remains governed by ad hoc deals and evolving rules rather than a transparent competitive bidding process. U.S. companies are already being asked to navigate this volatile, high-risk environment, as well as shifting regulatory expectations and U.S. licensing requirements.
This reopening has immediate commercial consequences. American energy, infrastructure, shipping, and services companies are looking hard at Venezuela and confronting an all-too-familiar dilemma: Do they try to compete in a country where bribe demands by foreign officials are routine, or do they walk away and cede ground to competitors from countries with looser rules, such as China and Russia?
For the first time, the United States has a tool that can change that equation. Signed into law by President Biden on Dec. 22, 2023, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, or FEPA, makes it a crime for foreign officials and close associates to demand bribes from U.S. companies and Americans. That may sound obvious, but until recently it was not the law. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), U.S. companies and Americans could be prosecuted for paying bribes, but the foreign officials demanding or accepting those bribes faced no criminal exposure under U.S. law.
That asymmetry has distorted global markets for decades. It has punished compliance and rewarded corruption.
FEPA closes that loophole. It makes it a federal crime for a foreign official, including immediate family members of current or former senior officials, to demand a bribe from any American, any American company, or any of the roughly 6,000 companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Those who do face up to 15 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 or three times the value of the bribe.
This is not a technical fix. If enforced seriously, FEPA can meaningfully change how U.S. companies operate in places like Venezuela. And this is precisely the moment when it should be operationalized: Congress is calling for enforcement, U.S. companies are entering high-risk environments, and the Department of Justice has an opportunity to bring early, signal-setting cases.
FEPA’s Yet-Unfulfilled Potential
FEPA has the potential to reshape how U.S. companies operate in corruption-prone environments like Venezuela, but that potential depends on enforcement that has yet to materialize. On the ground, FEPA changes the conversation. For years, companies could say, “We cannot pay bribes because we will be prosecuted.” Now they can add, “And you will, too.” That is not theoretical leverage. Anyone who has worked in corruption-prone environments knows that this will alter the bargaining dynamic in environments where demands for illicit payments are routine.
FEPA also may encourage foreign governments to take corruption by their own officials more seriously. When officials face a real risk of U.S. criminal prosecution, governments have greater incentives to rein in corruption internally.
But more than two years after FEPA’s enactment, the Department of Justice has not announced a single FEPA prosecution or public investigation. In the same period, the FCPA Unit, which also handles FEPA cases, has been reduced from roughly 32 prosecutors to roughly a dozen. That gap between FEPA’s promise and its use to date is precisely what makes this moment consequential.
This gap between statutory authority and enforcement capacity is not incidental; it is central to whether FEPA can achieve its intended effect.
Prosecutions are the mechanism through which deterrence becomes credible. Public cases against corrupt foreign officials can deter future demands, especially in countries where government officials and elites care deeply about access to the United States and the global financial system. We say this as advocates who have spent decades working on anti-corruption and financial integrity in Washington and engaging directly with law enforcement and policymakers. We have seen how corruption cases are built, and how they fall apart. Laws do not enforce themselves.
Bipartisan Support for FEPA Enforcement Undercut by Mixed Messages by the Executive Branch
That FEPA should be enforced is an expectation shared across party lines in Congress. In February, leaders of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a bipartisan congressional body focused on corruption, human rights, and security risks across Europe and Eurasia, sent a letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials urging robust enforcement of FEPA. The letter was signed by thirteen members of Congress, seven Republicans and six Democrats, with the backing of the Commission’s chairs and ranking members. It underscores that FEPA enforcement is not a symbolic gesture, but part of how Congress intended to protect U.S. companies and Americans operating in high-risk environments.
The Trump administration has signaled some interest in providing that will. On her first day in office, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the DOJ’s FCPA unit, which also oversees FEPA cases, to prioritize investigations tied to drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations. That directive reflects an understanding that foreign corruption is not just a governance problem, but a national security and economic one. Yet, at the same time, the administration paused FCPA enforcement for four months in 2025 and subsequently narrowed the unit’s enforcement priorities to cases with a nexus to cartels or transnational criminal organizations, resulting in the lowest number of FCPA prosecutions in over a decade. In the Venezuela context specifically, that narrowing need not constrain FEPA’s use: the networks most likely to solicit bribes from U.S. companies have already been tied to designated cartels and foreign terrorist organizations.
Despite narrowing the FCPA, the administration has used other tools to target foreign corruption. The United States has sanctioned former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her former planning minister for major bribery schemes tied to public works contracts. Sanctions can be effective, but criminal prosecutions are more powerful. They carry the possibility of extradition and incarceration, and they operate through transparent, rule of law processes such as grand jury indictments, discovery, and public trials.
For its part, the Biden administration laid some groundwork for FEPA enforcement as well. In 2024, the DOJ launched a Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program that explicitly included FEPA and promised financial rewards for information leading to successful cases. But no FEPA prosecutions followed. Whether the statute becomes a real enforcement tool now depends on the Trump administration.
What to Watch
This current posture raises several immediate questions for companies, practitioners, and policymakers. Will the DOJ treat FEPA as a meaningful enforcement priority alongside the FCPA, or as a secondary tool? Will the DOJ’s Criminal Division and FCPA Unit invest in developing early FEPA cases despite resource constraints, competing priorities, and the practical difficulty of building cases against foreign officials who often remain overseas? And what signals should companies be watching for in the near term: public speeches, revised guidance, charging decisions, or coordination with sanctions, money laundering, and cartel-related investigations?
There is also a deeper structural question about how FEPA will operate in practice. FEPA closes a glaring substantive gap in U.S. law, but it does not eliminate the familiar obstacles that come with transnational corruption cases. First, FEPA requires some U.S. connection. Specifically, the foreign official must make the bribe demand, or seek or receive the bribe, by using the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce. Clearing that hurdle, though, may be easier than it sounds. In practice, a phone call or email routed through the United States, a text message sent over a U.S.-based service, or a meeting or money transfer touching U.S. territory would be enough to create the necessary U.S. connection.
Second, prosecutors may face evidentiary challenges in proving corrupt demands that are made through intermediaries or informal channels. And finally, even where the facts are strong, extradition may be difficult in practice, especially when the targeted official remains protected by a sympathetic or authoritarian regime (though countries with relevant extradition treaties with the United States could be obligated to comply). None of that makes FEPA unimportant. Instead, it means that early cases will matter enormously in showing how aggressively the DOJ intends to use the law, and how creatively it will navigate those constraints.
This matters now. As U.S. policy moves toward economic engagement with Venezuela, U.S. companies should not be forced to choose between obeying the law and remaining competitive. Venezuela will not be the only test case, but it may be the first one that counts.
That is also why FEPA’s relationship to the FCPA warrants close attention. The FCPA remains the more established statute, with settled enforcement patterns, institutional familiarity, and a long history of corporate resolutions. FEPA is different. It targets the “demand” side of bribery. In principle, the two statutes work together: the FCPA deters U.S. companies and Americans from paying bribes, while FEPA deters foreign officials from demanding or accepting them. In practice, however, much will depend on whether the DOJ is willing to devote real attention to FEPA rather than leaving it largely symbolic. If FEPA is rarely charged, companies and Americans will remain under pressure from extorting officials without seeing the benefit Congress intended. If it is used early and strategically, it could reshape the entire risk calculus in high-corruption markets.
Put simply, if FEPA is enforced seriously, U.S. companies operating in Venezuela will be able to push back against bribe demands with the full weight of U.S. law behind them. That is how to level the playing field without lowering standards or putting American workers at risk. And if used as Congress envisioned, FEPA can protect U.S. businesses not just in Venezuela, but wherever corruption distorts markets and undermines U.S. and global security.
The question now is not whether FEPA was a good idea. It was. The question is whether the DOJ will use it, and what companies and practitioners should watch for as the first test cases, or the first signs of continued inaction, emerge. If the Trump administration is serious about standing up for U.S. companies and Americans abroad, FEPA is an obvious tool for doing so.
