The 1977 act resulted from the questionable foreign payments made by U.S. corporations that were uncovered during Watergate. Although foreign payments may make corporations liable under many different statutes, including mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and other laws, the FCPA adds accounting and anitbribery conditions which corporations dealing with foreign nations must meet. Under FCPA, issuers of securities must keep books and records in order and develop internal accounting systems. These records stipulations are integrated with provisions of the Securities Exchange Act and require, in addition, disclosure of all corporate activity. Required internal accounting systems must be designed to ensure the integrity of the books and records and increase management's awareness of the disposition of corporate assets. The antibribery section of FCPA extends previous domestic bribery statutes. A violation of this section consists of use of the mails or any other form of interstate commerce to offer to pay a foreign official, foreign political party or party official, or any person to influence an official act, in furtherance of the payor's business. The Securities Exchange Commission and Justice Department share enforcement responsibility for FCPA, although this dual administration has evoked criticism. To date, scant judicial discussion exists of the FCPA, because most cases involving questionable payments to foreign officials involve pre-FCPA events. Footnotes are included.