Grain trader Scoular pays $10.2m over bribes at the Mexican border, some reaching a cartel

The United States Department of Justice announced on 17 July 2026 that The Scoular Company, an agricultural supply chain business based in Omaha, Nebraska, had entered a three year deferred prosecution agreement over a long running scheme to bribe Mexican officials at the border. The agreement accompanies a criminal information filed in the Western District of Texas charging one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Scoular agreed to pay a criminal penalty of $9,769,521 and to forfeit a further $414,351.

The conduct ran from 2013 to 2019. Scoular moved corn and other products into Mexico by rail, and Mexican law required the shipments to be inspected for dirt, soil and other impurities. When inspections found them, Scoular authorised third party customs brokers to pay officials so the trains crossed anyway. According to the department, the brokers paid roughly $2,000 per Scoular train and invoiced the money back to the company as reinspection fees, which Scoular reimbursed. Employees discussed shipments and payments over WhatsApp. In total the department put the bribes at more than $400,000 and the fees and costs avoided at more than $6.5 million.

What makes the resolution unusual is the reason the department gave for treating it as serious. Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said a portion of the bribes "ultimately benefited people who helped operate a cartel", and the department listed that finding among the factors behind the deal. The company and its employees did not know it. US Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas put the point far more broadly, saying that nothing crosses into or out of Mexico without the approval and payment of Mexican drug cartels. Those two statements sit awkwardly together: one treats the cartel benefit as a hidden fact discovered in the investigation, the other as a general condition of cross border trade.

Scoular received no voluntary self-disclosure credit, because it did not report the conduct to the Criminal Division's Fraud Section. It received cooperation credit for an internal investigation, factual presentations, identifying those involved and producing documents, but the department recorded certain deficiencies in the early part of the investigation without saying what they were. It received credit for remediation, including dropping the customs brokers associated with reinspection fees, restructuring the compliance function and rewriting its code of conduct. The penalty reflects a 25 per cent reduction from the bottom of the applicable sentencing guidelines range. No independent compliance monitor was imposed.

Lawyers reading the file disagree about what that adds up to. The Volkov Law Group, writing on 26 July 2026, called the discount meaningful but modest next to what full self-disclosure would have bought. Paul, Weiss, writing on 24 July 2026, framed the outcome squarely as the price of not self reporting, and noted that Scoular is only the second corporate FCPA matter of 2026, after a declination for Balt SAS on 19 March 2026. Foley Hoag, writing on 21 July 2026, emphasised instead the evidentiary lesson, that messaging app traffic carried the scheme.

One individual has been sentenced. Carlos Leopoldo Alvelais, an El Paso customs broker who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the FCPA on 23 October 2025, was sentenced on 20 July 2026 in the Western District of Texas to 18 months in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, according to FCPA Professor's report the following day. Scoular's chief legal officer, Tim Manning, told DTN Progressive Farmer on 22 July 2026 that the company has zero tolerance for conduct that violates its compliance policies and standards, and pointed to terminated broker relationships and strengthened controls.

The Australian interest is not remote. The FBI investigated the case, and the FBI and the Australian Federal Police both sit on the International Foreign Bribery Taskforce alongside the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office and National Crime Agency, the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office and police, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Since September 2024 Australia has had a corporate offence of failing to prevent foreign bribery by an associate, in section 70.5A of the Criminal Code, with an adequate procedures defence that the company itself must prove on the balance of probabilities. Since 20 October 2025 the AFP has run a dedicated unit, Taskforce Solaris, whose stated focus includes foreign bribery committed in furtherance of other criminal activity.

Australia also still has a facilitation payments defence, in section 70.4, for benefits of minor value paid for the sole or dominant purpose of expediting a routine government action, provided the payer records it. On the department's own description, routine government action excludes decisions about business, and payments to push failed inspections through would not sit inside the defence. Whether an Australian exporter behaving as Scoular did would in fact be charged is untested, because no prosecution under section 70.5A has yet been reported.

Several things remain unknown. The department has not said what the early cooperation deficiencies were, whether any Scoular employee will be charged, or how the cartel benefit was traced. Nor is it clear whether the cartel nexus becomes a durable test in later cases or remains a description attached to one file.