UPDATED: For four years, from 2002 to 2006, Gerald and Patricia Green ran the Bangkok International Film Festival in Thailand. They brought the glamour of stars such as Catherine Deneuve and Michael Douglas to gala events, and films like Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” to the screen.
To achieve that, the U.S. Department of Justice says, the Greens bribed Thai authorities $1.8 million, for which they received $14 million in government contracts and grants.
On Aug. 18, the Greens -- he produced Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” in 1986 and was an executive producer on the 2006 Christian Bale film “Rescue Dawn” -- go on trial in a Los Angeles federal court, charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (The trial was initally scheduled for Aug. 4 but was postponed.)
The Greens were arrested in December 2007 and have pleaded not guilty. They are currently out on bail.
The consequences of the case could have serious implications for the way Hollywood does business overseas. This is especially true in countries where the local culture demands a few palms be greased to get a job done.
“The movie industry has good cause to be somewhat fearful of the way the administration may or may not choose to utilize this law,” Green’s lawyer, Jerome Mooney III, told TheWrap.
The money allegedly went to, among others, former Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Juthamas Siriwan, through Film Festival Management, a company specifically created to bid on the Bangkok International Film Festival.
The Greens were awarded the management contract for the 2003 debut of the Bangkok International Film Festival. Created out of the Bangkok Film Festival, which debuted in 1998, it saw such stars as Steven Seagal walking the red carpet, master classes from Terry Gilliam, films such as Julie Taymor’s “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek, and Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” playing to packed houses. 
Their involvement with the festival, and the various spin-offs of it, ended when Siriwan and other officials they dealt with lost their pivotal positions in a coup in 2006.
The Greens are also accused of obstruction of justice and falsified tax returns. In indictments filed in October 2008, the Department of Justice alleged that, besides the greasing of palms with bribes, they "altered and falsified film production budgets to make them appear as though they were created in 2006 in an effort to characterize bribe payments as bona fide film production expenses” when the budgets “were not created in 2006."
It is charged that they hid the payments in various businesses, all of which had the same offices and personnel, and created false tax returns.
The corrupt practices act, which became law in 1977, prohibits American citizens and corporations from making “an offer or payment of anything of value to a foreign official, foreign political party or candidate for political office, for the purpose of influencing any act of that foreign official in violation of the duty of that official, or to secure any improper advantage in order to obtain or retain business.”
