The Department of Justice is planning to allow companies to avoid prosecution if they report their crimes.
The new leniency program requires companies to cooperate fully with investigators and fix the underlying problems found if they are to be pardoned, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. told the Wall Street Journal.
Polite argued that incentivizing companies to self-report will greatly encourage a positive approach to ethics and compliance.
“We are incentivizing companies to help police themselves and make the investments in corporate compliance that help achieve a good corporate culture,” he told the outlet.
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He further outlined the new policy in a Tuesday speech at Georgetown Law School. A parallel incentive program for whistleblowers will encourage companies to come forward with any wrongdoing before a whistleblower so they can avoid the fallout from a leak.
“When a company has uncovered criminal misconduct in its operations, the clearest path to avoiding a guilty plea or an indictment is voluntary self-disclosure,” Polite said in his speech.
He also dismissed fears that the policy would allow guilty parties to get away with wrongdoing. He said the policy will actually better allow the DOJ to prosecute guilty people because cooperation from companies is often an essential ingredient in successfully prosecuting individual offenders.
“Individuals are at the very center of the reason why we’re driving these policies forward,” Polite told the Wall Street Journal.
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Rod Rosenstein, former deputy attorney general during the Trump administration, voiced support for the new policy.
“It’s extremely difficult to develop criminal cases against corporate executives without a company’s cooperation,” he explained.
