The Yates Memo: Justice Department prioritizes individual accountability in corporate cases

By Sentry Team

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is putting a new priority on accountability for individuals within companies when those companies break the law — and has enacted a new set of protocols to help make that happen in more of its cases.

Often a company is fined or sanctioned, but those actual human beings in the company who were actively involved in the wrongdoing don’t ever face justice. It can be difficult to untangle who did what in a company, and the DOJ’s stated goal is not to find a scapegoat to take the fall (i.e. who in the company is appointed “Vice President of Going to Jail”), but it’s critical to create more individual accountability. So the DOJ has enacted a set of new protocols to better map out “who did what” in a case of corporate crime or malfeasance.

Click here to read about the new initiatives led by Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates in the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) Blog.