Key Takeaways:
- In recent public remarks, the Deputy Attorney General discussed this administration’s FCPA priorities, building on FCPA guidance issued earlier this year.
- In bringing FCPA prosecutions, DOJ will focus on conduct that harms U.S. security and economic interests, such as conduct with ties to cartels, terrorism, or other transnational criminal networks.
- DOJ will continue to reward early and voluntary disclosure. Greater leniency will be given to companies that are transparent about violations or misconduct.
- Corporate monitors are being reevaluated, and DOJ will impose them on a more selective basis.
- DOJ may decline to investigate or prosecute conduct with limited connections to the United States even where extraterritorial jurisdiction could potentially apply.
Speaking at a conference on FCPA and Global Anti-Corruption, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a series of policy updates that refine how the Department of Justice will investigate and enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. DAG Blanche’s remarks expanded on the Department’s June 2025 Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the FCPA (see our previous coverage here) by offering additional guidance on the types of cases that will be prioritized and the ways that the Department will approach enforcement and remedies. The June updates focused on concentrating prosecutorial resources on conduct that implicates U.S. interests, centralizing enforcement decision-making, and providing more predictable incentives for voluntary disclosure and cooperation. While DOJ reiterated that FCPA enforcement remains a priority, the new policies reinforce changes from the June memo to limit the scope to cases with meaningful U.S. touchpoints and serious indicia of corrupt intent as well as signal a recalibrated approach to corporate resolutions, monitorships, and case selection.
Core Enforcement Principles and Charging Posture
While principally focused on FCPA enforcement, DAG Blanche’s remarks also identified a Department-wide prosecutorial framework for corporate criminal investigations more broadly, anchored in five guiding principles:
- prioritizing individual accountability over organizational responsibility
- pursuing corporate criminal resolutions only where admissible evidence can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt
- incentivizing cooperation
- conducting efficient investigations
- ensuring a consistent escalation process for significant decisions.
In practical terms, this means that DOJ may avoid enforcement measures absent a trial-ready evidentiary record and will resist leveraging weak theories or diffuse “collective knowledge” to drive corporate settlements or plea agreements.
Focused Case Selection: U.S. Nexus, Serious Misconduct, and Competitive Harm
Continuing the policy emphasis from the June memo on cases with U.S. victims, the Department’s FCPA docket will emphasize conduct that demonstrably affects U.S. interests. Prosecutors are directed to prioritize cases involving one or more of the following features: a significant connection to the United States; harm to specific and identifiable U.S. companies or individuals, including competitive harm from foreign bribery that distorts markets; linkages to cartels or transnational criminal organizations; and corruption that threatens national security, including in sectors such as critical infrastructure, defense, and strategic supply chains. Correspondingly, prosecutors are instructed to deprioritize matters centered on de minimis courtesies or low-dollar, customary business practices, and to avoid stretching the statute to reach peripheral conduct more appropriately addressed by foreign authorities.
Voluntary Self-Disclosure, Cooperation, and Whistleblower Inputs
The updated approach reinforces a transparent, incentive-based model. Companies that self-report misconduct promptly, produce evidence that is difficult for the government to obtain, and otherwise “go the extra mile” can expect meaningful credit. The Department has paired these incentives with enhanced intake channels—through voluntary self-disclosures as well as the Criminal Division’s whistleblower program, which, according to DAG Blanche, has generated significant leads since its expansion to priority areas including trade and customs fraud, sanctions, and related financial crimes. The message is clear: increased transparency about potential benefits and risks is intended to drive earlier engagement with DOJ.
Procedural Discipline: Authorization, Efficiency, and Elevation
While FCPA matters have long been centralized in and coordinated by the Department’s Fraud Section at Main Justice, DAG Blanche highlighted that this administration is further tightening that centralization. New FCPA matters require senior Criminal Division authorization, reflecting a concerted effort to tightly manage case intake against the Department’s priority criteria. Once opened, investigations should proceed expeditiously, according to DAG Blanche. When parties wish to elevate concerns, DAG Blanche expressed that the Department expects an orderly process—raising issues first with line prosecutors and supervisors before seeking further review—both to preserve fairness and to ensure consistency across cases.
Monitorships and Remediation: Calibrating Oversight to Benefits
The Department has revisited the use of corporate monitorships and will reserve them for instances where the compliance and deterrence benefits clearly outweigh cost. Where monitors are imposed, the Department intends to employ upfront budgets with fee caps, with any increases requiring approval. The aim is to avoid sprawling or “untethered” engagements and to emphasize sustainable, company-led remediation overseen by the DOJ only as necessary.
Implications for Multinationals and Cross-Border Coordination
The Department emphasized that nationality will not determine outcomes. U.S. enforcement will turn on the strength of the U.S. nexus and alignment with articulated priorities. At the same time, the Department may decline to intervene where bribery schemes lack meaningful connection to the United States and are more appropriately addressed abroad. Parallel obligations to securities regulators and foreign authorities remain unchanged, and issuers must continue to maintain effective books-and-records and internal controls. However, despite the nod to securities regulators, the SEC was notably absent from the conference and thus offered no companion policy pronouncements.
What Companies Should Do Now
As we advised when writing on the June 2025 guidelines, Companies should revisit their anti-corruption programs and investigative playbooks in light of DOJ’s new priorities. This includes monitoring supply chain due diligence, tailoring controls to higher-risk sectors and counterparties, documenting remediation and compliance regimes, and aligning incident response protocols to support timely, voluntary disclosures when warranted. Organizations should also prepare for faster-moving investigative timelines and be ready to produce hard evidence of individual culpability, cooperation, and remediation where they seek credit. Senior executives should stay up to date on the strategic shifts—particularly DOJ’s narrowed case selection, trial-readiness expectations, and recalibrated approach to monitorships—to ensure informed corporate decision-making if potential misconduct is detected. Critically, companies must not relax their compliance efforts in view of a perception of lessened enforcement, as recent enforcement actions support the DAG’s comments that FCPA activity has resumed following the enforcement pause earlier this year.
Law Clerk Joshua Nacht contributed to this article.
