Justice Department scales back corporate crime prosecutions as policy shifts

Matthew R. Galeotti issued a May 12, 2025 memorandum that rewrote the Justice Department’s corporate crime playbook, and the same day the Criminal Division announced revised enforcement and voluntary self-disclosure policies. The new policy applies to all corporate criminal matters handled by the Criminal Division, not just FCPA cases, and it gives companies that voluntarily self-disclose, fully cooperate, and timely remediate a presumption of declination in certain circumstances.

That shift has already shown up in recent declinations. The department declined to prosecute a company for export control offenses committed by a former employee, and it later issued a declination letter to Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in August 2025 under the revised corporate policy. For critics, the accountability gap is obvious: prosecutors can identify misconduct inside a firm, yet still decide that no criminal case against the company is warranted.

The contrast with earlier headline corporate cases is stark. Purdue Pharma was sentenced in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, on April 28, 2026, and ordered to pay criminal penalties of more than $5 billion for its role in the opioid crisis. McKinsey & Company also entered a deferred prosecution agreement over its work connected to Purdue, a deal that became a central example of how the department had used corporate charges to punish institutional wrongdoing and pressure companies to change conduct.

Galeotti’s memo landed the same day he spoke at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Conference in Washington, underscoring how closely the policy changes were tied to the department’s white-collar agenda. DOJ also issued an updated Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, updated criteria for corporate compliance monitors, and an updated corporate whistleblower awards pilot program in May. A June 5 memorandum then addressed how to coordinate corporate resolution penalties across parallel criminal, civil, regulatory, and administrative proceedings.

The department has paired the policy changes with more public-facing materials, including a Corporate Crime Case Database and corporate enforcement guidance pages. That transparency push does not erase the central question now facing investors, workers, and consumers: whether more declinations will encourage faster reporting and internal fixes, or reduce the deterrent force that comes from charging companies when wrongdoing reaches the executive suite. The department says the goal is to encourage responsible corporate behavior and faster, more efficient resolutions while still prosecuting corporate crime firmly and fairly.