Most companies doing business multi-nationally must engage third parties to operate on the company’s behalf overseas, but in the current anti-corruption landscape, third parties can be a necessary evil.  Under the FCPA, a company can be held responsible for any improper payments made on its behalf by a third-party agent or partner, and many recent FCPA enforcement actions by the SEC and DOJ have involved the actions of third parties.  To best protect themselves from the risks associated with retaining third parties, companies must devote significant resources to the critical and complicated task of conducting due diligence.  How should a company efficiently allocate its due diligence resources?  How can a company effectively gather information in challenging jurisdictions?  What should a company do if it does not wish to inform a prospective agent that it is conducting due diligence?  The Anti-Corruption Report is publishing a series of interviews with experts from different disciplines on best practices for conducting anti-corruption due diligence on third parties.  This article, the second in the series, includes our interview with Nardello & Co.’s FCPA team: Daniel Nardello, Tara MacMillan, Nicholas Peck and Michael Ramos.  Nardello, MacMillan, Peck and Ramos are all seasoned investigators with extensive experience in anti-corruption initiatives.  Nardello and Ramos also both formerly served as prosecutors in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, respectively.  The first article in the series contained an interview with Alice Fisher, a partner at Latham & Watkins and former head of the Criminal Division at the DOJ.