DOJ Announces New Whistleblower Program and Enforcement Initiatives

In Short The Development: On March 7, 2024, Deputy Attorney General (“DAG”) Lisa Monaco discussed updates to the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ” or “Department”) corporate criminal enforcement policies and announced a pilot program that will financially reward whistleblowers unveiling major corporate misconduct. The Result: The policies and priorities discussed reaffirm DOJ’s “carrot and stick” approach […]

Apr 3, 2024 - 19:25

DOJ Announces New Whistleblower Program and Enforcement Initiatives

Posted by Louis Gabel, Karen Hewitt and James Loonam, Jones Day, on Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Editor's Note:

Louis Gabel, Karen Hewitt, and James Loonam are Partners at Jones Day. This post is based on a Jones Day memorandum by Mr. Gabel, Ms. Hewitt, Mr. Loonam, Jill Hengen, Jordan Matthews, and Hank Walther.

In Short

The Development: On March 7, 2024, Deputy Attorney General (“DAG”) Lisa Monaco discussed updates to the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ” or “Department”) corporate criminal enforcement policies and announced a pilot program that will financially reward whistleblowers unveiling major corporate misconduct.

The Result: The policies and priorities discussed reaffirm DOJ’s “carrot and stick” approach to encouraging companies to self-disclose criminal misconduct and cooperate with the Department’s efforts to prosecute individual wrongdoers. The new whistleblower reward program, which is expected to take shape over the next 90 days, provides stronger incentives for tipsters to disclose corporate and financial misconduct. Further, DOJ has adopted an aggressive stance toward seeking enhanced penalties for corporate misuse of new and disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (“AI”).

Looking Ahead: DOJ continues to emphasize aggressive enforcement of white-collar crime against entities and individuals and remains committed to incentivizing voluntary self-disclosure (“VSD”) by corporations. And increasingly, the Department is incentivizing individuals to expose wrongdoing by providing non-culpable whistleblowers with financial incentives through the impending DOJ whistleblower program. Given the special scrutiny the Department will apply to the use of technologies like AI, companies should consider updating their compliance programs to mitigate risks related to the misuse of AI.

On March 7, 2024, DAG Monaco delivered the keynote remarks at the American Bar Association’s National Institute on White Collar Crime. Her remarks centered on DOJ’s enforcement priorities and the tools it will use to identify and hold accountable individual and corporate wrongdoers. First, DAG Monaco discussed DOJ’s efforts to encourage companies to voluntarily self-disclose evidence of wrongdoing, emphasizing the recent uptick in self-disclosures and the resulting prosecutions of senior executives across diverse industries. Second, she unveiled a pilot whistleblower rewards program about which DOJ will provide more details in the next 90 days; this program will financially compensate individuals who report major corporate misconduct to DOJ. And third, she discussed how DOJ will apply its existing law-enforcement toolkit to emerging technologies like AI.

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