Engaging third parties is necessary for most global businesses, but rife with corruption risk.  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 most of the recent FCPA enforcement actions by the SEC and DOJ have involved the actions of third parties – making the task of conducting due diligence on third parties one of the most critical and complicated issues in FCPA compliance.  How should a company efficiently allocate its due diligence resources?  What should a company do when its third-party partner is less than forthcoming?  Can a party engage a third party even if due diligence raises red flags?  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 first in the series, includes our interview with Alice Fisher, partner at Latham & Watkins.  Fisher specializes in white collar criminal investigations, internal investigations and advising clients on a range of criminal matters, including the FCPA.  She formerly served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division of the DOJ.  See also “Designing Effective FCPA Compliance Programs and Monitoring Third Parties After the Guidance: An Interview with H. David Kotz, Michael Volkov and Paul Zikmund” (Jan. 23, 2013).