Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), recently delivered a speech at SIFMA’s Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Conference. Contemporaneously, the DOJ issued a Memo (the Memo) entitled Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime. Today, I want to explore the key insights and crucial issues for compliance professionals in the Memo.

The Memo marks a turning point in the enforcement landscape, emphasizing a trio of principles: focus, fairness, and efficiency. For compliance professionals, these adjustments represent more than mere policy shifts; they outline clear and practical pathways that demand immediate attention and strategic integration into compliance frameworks.

Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency

The Memo states that the DOJ’s core mission is delivering justice, upholding the rule of law, safeguarding the public, and championing victims’ rights. Within the Criminal Division, this mission translates into proactive efforts aimed at dismantling dangerous criminal entities, such as cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), disrupting human trafficking networks, combating fentanyl and other illicit drug flows, and prosecuting violent offenders and child predators. This is a way of saying that this Administration’s enforcement priorities have changed.

White-collar crime is identified as a critical threat that significantly impacts American citizens and the national economy. Uncontrolled fraud within government programs and markets harms taxpayers, weakens public resources, and undermines national security by facilitating illicit financial activities, including money laundering and sanctions evasion. However, the DOJ believes that overly aggressive enforcement practices can inadvertently damage legitimate businesses, stifle innovation, and punish legitimate risk-taking.

To navigate this complexity, the DOJ’s Criminal Division emphasizes what it characterizes as a balanced enforcement approach grounded in three key principles: focus, fairness, and efficiency. “Focus” entails directing investigative resources towards crimes of greatest national impact, avoiding unnecessary distractions. “Fairness” involves prosecuting individual offenders primarily, ensuring corporate entities are penalized appropriately without excessive burden for isolated misconduct. “Efficiency” calls for streamlined investigations and appropriate, narrowly tailored interventions. Through these guiding tenets, the Criminal Division seeks to effectively tackle serious crimes, protect public interests, and support the vitality and innovation of American enterprise.

Harms Caused by White Collar Crime

White-collar crime presents a significant threat to American society, economy, and national security. Dishonest actors frequently exploit taxpayer-funded government programs through rampant healthcare, procurement, and defense spending fraud, diverting essential resources for vulnerable populations. These abuses weaken government efficacy and impose unjust financial burdens on taxpayers. Additionally, complex investment schemes, including Ponzi operations and elder fraud, target individual investors, stripping them of their financial security and eroding market trust.

Exploiting monetary systems, particularly through digital asset fraud, hampers economic innovation and growth. In contrast, trade and customs fraud, including tariff evasion, negatively impact domestic competitiveness and undermine administration efforts to bolster job creation and investments within the U.S. Financial institutions and shadow banks facilitate serious international crime, including sanctions evasion and money laundering, thus directly supporting transnational criminal enterprises and increasing threats to national security. Specifically, Chinese-affiliated companies (Variable Interest Entities—VIEs) listed on U.S. exchanges have been highlighted for their potential to commit fraud and manipulate markets, putting American investors at significant financial risk.

Sophisticated money laundering schemes further facilitate cross-border crime, allowing criminal organizations to conceal illicit funds and sustain criminal enterprises, including drug trafficking operations that introduce harmful substances like fentanyl to American shores. Furthermore, foreign terrorist groups depend significantly on financial networks and corporate complicity to fund and execute terror activities against U.S. citizens domestically and abroad. Therefore, businesses and financial institutions aiding such organizations severely compromise American lives and national security. Addressing these severe issues, the Criminal Division is intensifying efforts to prosecute these offenses vigorously, prioritizing cases that uphold American economic and national security interests.

Prioritization and Policy Changes

The Criminal Division has updated its enforcement priorities and policies, targeting specific high-impact white-collar crime areas crucial to safeguarding U.S. interests. Priority enforcement categories include fraud against government programs such as healthcare, procurement fraud harming public resources, and trade and customs fraud, like tariff evasion. The Criminal Division will actively prosecute complex financial crimes, including securities fraud, market manipulations, elder fraud, and schemes targeting individual investors and consumers. Additional focus areas encompass activities threatening national security, such as sanctions violations by financial institutions, material support by corporations to foreign terrorist organizations, complex money laundering operations, and violations related to illegal drug manufacturing and distribution.

Furthermore, bribery and associated money laundering activities that harm U.S. competitiveness or security are prioritized, alongside digital asset-related crimes victimizing investors or facilitating significant criminal activities. Prosecutors will prioritize identifying and seizing crime-related assets to reinforce these efforts, emphasizing accountability for senior-level perpetrators or those obstructing justice. Enhancements to the Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program also underscore this refined approach, adding incentives for reporting violations involving international criminal organizations, terrorism support, immigration breaches, sanctions offenses, and trade fraud. These targeted measures aim to enhance investigative effectiveness, promote fairness, and streamline DOJ’s enforcement efforts.

Fairness in Prosecutions

The Criminal Division’s Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP) has emphasized transparency, cooperation, and remediation, significantly enhancing efforts to hold individual offenders accountable while rewarding responsible corporate citizens. Recognizing that individual actors, whether executives, officers, or employees, often commit white-collar crimes at the expense of investors, employees, and consumers, the Criminal Division focuses intensely on prosecuting these specific wrongdoers. Notably, federal prosecution isn’t always necessary for corporate misconduct; alternative remedies like civil or administrative actions may better address less severe infractions, provided the companies demonstrate sincere cooperation and effective remediation.

Prosecutors evaluate multiple factors when determining corporate charges, including timely self-disclosure, cooperation level, and the comprehensiveness of remedial actions. Recent updates to the CEP further simplify its guidelines, making pathways for potential declinations and fine reductions clearer for corporations. These refinements offer maximal transparency, allowing corporations to make informed decisions about proactively addressing misconduct.

The Criminal Division also reviews existing corporate agreements, potentially shortening their terms based on compliance maturity, reduced risk profiles, and proactive self-reporting. Future corporate resolutions will typically cap terms at three years unless exceptional circumstances dictate otherwise. Regular assessments will determine whether agreements warrant early termination, enhancing fairness and practicality in corporate enforcement.

Efficiency Through Streamlined Investigations

The DOJ’s revised approach emphasizes efficiency and clarity in investigating and prosecuting white-collar crimes, recognizing that lengthy and intrusive federal investigations can unnecessarily burden innocent stakeholders and significantly disrupt normal business operations. Complex white-collar schemes often span borders and involve extensive evidence, causing investigations to stretch for years. However, the DOJ now mandates prosecutors to expedite these investigations, swiftly conclude inquiries, and promptly make charging decisions. This renewed urgency ensures that justice is served quickly, limiting collateral damage to uninvolved entities and reducing reputational harm.

Additionally, the DOJ addresses the use of independent compliance monitors, recognizing that monitorships should only be imposed when necessary, specifically when internal company mechanisms alone are insufficient to prevent misconduct recurrence. To further efficiency, monitorships must be narrowly tailored, carefully scoped to address the specific misconduct risks, and designed to minimize financial costs and operational disruptions for companies.

The Criminal Division has implemented a new monitor selection Memo clarifying the criteria prosecutors must consider when determining the necessity of a monitor and how to limit their mandates appropriately. Furthermore, the DOJ is actively reviewing existing monitorships to individually assess their ongoing necessity, ensuring alignment with the principles of efficiency and minimal interference. Compliance professionals should thus prioritize developing robust internal compliance programs, mitigating the need for external monitors, and preparing for swift, efficient cooperation with any DOJ inquiries.

The Galeotti Memo emphasized a renewed commitment to focus, fairness, and efficiency in white-collar crime enforcement. The Memo underscores the critical need to precisely target high-impact criminal activities, including healthcare fraud, securities manipulation, customs violations, and digital asset crimes. The DOJ aims to protect American interests by clearly defining enforcement priorities while minimizing unnecessary business disruptions.

The DOJ’s revised Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP) reflects a balanced approach that prioritizes prosecuting individual wrongdoers over punishing entire corporations for isolated misconduct. Companies are encouraged toward transparency and proactive self-disclosure, incentivized through more straightforward guidelines, reduced penalties, and potentially shorter oversight durations.

Furthermore, the DOJ stresses the importance of streamlined, efficient investigations to conclude cases and promptly limit collateral damage to innocent parties. Independent compliance monitorships are now restricted to essential circumstances, narrowly tailored to specific compliance needs, minimizing cost and operational interference.

The DOJ’s strategic shifts represent a more cooperative and transparent enforcement regime, fostering improved corporate compliance, accountability, and integrity within American enterprises.

Join us tomorrow when we take a deep dive into the Revised CEP.