The Middle East is an increasingly attractive place to do business, particularly for the energy and defense sectors.  It can be tempting to consider the region as a uniform block with the same laws and cultures.  However, local anti-corruption laws can vary drastically from country to country in the area.  The United Arab Emirates is not the largest country in the region, but due to its federal structure, it has one of the most complicated anti-corruption regimes.  Its web of federal laws, local laws and ministry policies can make it difficult for foreign companies to identify anti-corruption risks.  For this installment of the Regional Risk Spotlight series, the Anti-Corruption Report spoke with John Vincent Lonsberg, a partner at Baker Botts based in Dubai, who has more than three decades of experience doing business in this part of the world.  Lonsberg discussed, among other things, how the U.A.E.’s conflicts of interest laws and economic offset programs complicate working with local third parties, the difficulties of determining who is a foreign official and changing attitudes towards gift-giving in this wealthy federation.  See “Mitigating Corruption Risk in the Middle East (Part One of Two)” (Jul. 22, 2015); Part Two (Aug. 5, 2015).