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The Yates Memo: Justice Department Prioritizes Individual Accountability in Corporate Cases

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The Yates Memo: Justice Department Prioritizes Individual Accountability in Corporate Cases

Posted by Sentry Team on May 12, 2016

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.

 

(The Sentry, an initiative of the Enough Project, seeks to disrupt and ultimately dismantle the networks of perpetrators, facilitators, and enablers who fund and profit from Africa’s deadliest conflicts.)