Apple is the latest company to feel the sting of corruption. A supply manager in Asia, Paul Devine, was arrested on Friday for giving Apple suppliers in the region confidential company information to help them win favorable contracts. Devine received more than $1 million in kickbacks from the companies involved.

The mid-level manager is in the custody of the US marshals and will appear in the US District Court in San Jose, California, Monday to face 23 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. According to the indictment, Devine allegedly used a chain of US and foreign bank accounts and a front company for receiving payments.

Although Apple has not been named, and has in fact laid its own civil suit against Devine, it does raise the specter of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The question is whether Apple had policies in place to protect against such a situation occurring.

In its civil suit, however, Apple notes that it had been investigating Devine for quite some time on corporate policy violations. The suit said that the company had found a cache of emails on his company computer showing payments received and confidential information leaked. This would certainly seem to strike a chord in the company’s favor, should any FCPA investigation arise.

Glen Ware, co-leader of the corporate intelligence practice at PwC, says that the FCPA is the biggest fear in terms of foreign market risk facing companies right now: “The fines are just debilitating—billions of dollars of fines have been levied.”

Plus, as we have mentioned numerous times (see Steve Taub’s blog, for example), the new FinReg bill is likely to increase bribery cases going forward, so the risk associated with doing business abroad is simply getting bigger.

Companies are responding with greater discretionary spend on risk management to offset perceived regulatory risk with foreign business.

Notes Ware: “With the upswing in anti money laundering legislation, anti-corruption legislation and enforcement, and so on, companies have perceptibly-increased concerns about enforcement.” He adds that the firm has seen a spike of billions of dollars in discretionary spending during the past decade to offset perceived regulatory risk in these markets.

The question is how much of an effect this is having. If the Apple case is any indication, protection against post-corruption fallout may be just as valuable as proactive risk reduction.