Two tech executives face trial under a bribery law Trump has put on hold
Jury selection in the case of two former Cognizant executives will start Monday, despite the president’s brake on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
President Trump has paused new investigations into foreign bribery after criticizing the law against it, but two former officials of a New Jersey professional services company are about to go on trial under the statute anyway.
An executive order in early February put a halt to initiating any investigations or enforcement actions under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and ordered a review of the law’s guidelines and policies by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Nonetheless, jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in Newark, N.J., in the trial of Gordon Coburn and Steven Schwartz, former executives at Cognizant Technology Solutions.
Coburn, Cognizant’s former president, and Schwartz, its former chief legal officer, were charged in 2019 over their alleged involvement in paying bribes in India, where the company has a large presence. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said last month they had reviewed the case in light of the order, and would be moving forward.
Many observers have been puzzled by the administration’s move away from a law that has been among the most important tools the U.S. government has to police corporate behavior, issuing fines that have reached into the billions of dollars.
The decision to go ahead with the trial could add to the confusion on where the FCPA stands.
“If the administration is pausing FCPA enforcement until there is DOJ guidance, then why is this case continuing?" said Sara Kropf, a defense attorney who represents individuals and companies accused of white-collar crimes. “It is hard to believe that the government is continuing to prosecute these defendants for conduct that it would not even investigate right now."
A lawyer for Coburn and a representative for the Justice Department declined to comment. A lawyer for Schwartz didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Depending on the outcome of Bondi’s review, the trial of Coburn and Schwartz could be one of the last major FCPA cases to go before a jury.
In a legal filing last month, the Justice Department said Bondi is also reviewing the case against an oil trader convicted in 2024 of paying bribes in Brazil. Trump’s order requires Bondi to look at the possibility of “remedial measures" when a past FCPA investigation or enforcement action was “inappropriate."
The FCPA, passed in 1977, is meant to prevent U.S. and U.S.-listed corporations from using their financial heft to sway foreign officials, an expansive definition that U.S. law enforcers have interpreted to include even low-ranking government employees. Coburn and Schwartz are accused of involvement in paying about $2 million in bribes to secure a permit to open a new office campus in India.
In his Feb. 10 executive order, Trump said “overexpansive and unpredictable FCPA enforcement … wastes limited prosecutorial resources" and actively harms U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. In his first administration, though, he ordered prosecutors to use the FCPA against Chinese companies that compete with American businesses in specific.
Prior to Trump’s pause on the FCPA, Bondi had said she would use the law to pursue drug cartel-related prosecutions and shift its focus away from other targets.
The case against Coburn and Schwartz has already faced numerous delays and setbacks. At one point, the defense team accused prosecutors of improperly outsourcing their investigation into the men to the company itself, though a judge in 2023 said that didn’t happen.
Cognizant, headquartered in Teaneck, N.J., has over 336,000 employees, most of them in India, and posted $19.7 billion in revenue last year.
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