Skip to main content
Menu Icon
Close

InfoBytes Blog

Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

DOJ issues new guidance regarding corporate monitors

Financial Crimes DOJ

Financial Crimes

On October 11, Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski issued a memorandum to the DOJ’s Criminal Division that revises the framework for assessing when DOJ will require a corporate monitor as part of a resolution. 

Under the revised framework, Criminal Division attorneys must now consider whether the company’s “remedial measures” or changes to “corporate culture” are enough to protect against future misconduct. For instance, “[w]here misconduct occurred under different corporate leadership” that has since left the company, a monitor may not be needed. Criminal Division attorneys must also consider not just the monetary costs to the company of imposing a corporate monitor, but also the burden to the company’s operations, and should impose a monitor only when a “clear benefit” would outweigh the costs and burdens. 

As AAG Benczkowski remarked in a speech given the day after the memorandum was issued, the new corporate monitor policy is based on the “foundational principle” that “the imposition of a corporate monitor is never meant to be punitive,” and a corporate monitor ultimately “will not be necessary in many corporate criminal resolutions.” 

The memorandum also refines the monitor selection process with the goal of, as AAG Benczkowski described in his speech, ensuring “that the process is fair,” that the “best candidate” is selected, and that “even the perception of any conflicts of interest” is avoided.