Criminal antitrust is the easy part to explain: someone agreed to fix prices or rig bids, and the question is whether the government can prove it. Civil enforcement is harder. The theories are broader, the remedies are negotiated, and the line between a lawful business practice and a violation turns on market facts. This three-part series covers where civil enforcement and litigation are heading and...
In this episode, Michael Volkov reviews six trends in criminal antitrust enforcement in 2026 and ten compliance reminders that follow from them. Drawing on the Antitrust Division’s statistics, budget submission, and recent speeches by its criminal enforcement chief, he explains that criminal cases filed have rebounded from 9 in fiscal 2023 to 27 in 2025, that prison sentences more than doubled while corporate fines collapsed,...
Most companies have AI in two different rooms. Innovation buys the tools. Compliance writes the policy. Nobody connects it. Here’s the core idea. There are two tracks in one program. Track one: use AI to strengthen compliance in screening, monitoring, third-party diligence, hotline triage, and investigations. Track two: govern the risk AI creates, from shadow AI and data leakage to unverified output, bias, and deliberate...
Part 1 described the trends: more individuals charged, public money at the center, proactive investigations, and two competing races to the Division’s door. This post turns those trends into reminders for compliance programs. None is new; what has changed is how costly it is to forget them. Reminder 1: The Rule Has Not Changed Price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation, and output restriction are per...
Criminal antitrust used to mean international cartels, nine-figure corporate fines, and a handful of executives. The 2026 docket looks different. It is broader in industries, heavier on individuals, more proactive in its investigative methods, and increasingly built around public money. This first post identifies six trends, drawing on the Antitrust Division’s published statistics, its FY 2027 budget submission, recent speeches by Criminal Enforcement chief Daniel...
Criminal antitrust is the easy part to explain: someone agreed to fix prices or rig bids, and the question is whether the government can prove it. Civil enforcement is harder. The theories are broader, the remedies are negotiated, and the line between a lawful business practice and a violation turns on market facts. This three-part series covers where civil enforcement and litigation are heading and...
In this episode, Michael Volkov reviews six trends in criminal antitrust enforcement in 2026 and ten compliance reminders that follow from them. Drawing on the Antitrust Division’s statistics, budget submission, and recent speeches by its criminal enforcement chief, he explains that criminal cases filed have rebounded from 9 in fiscal 2023 to 27 in 2025, that prison sentences more than doubled while corporate fines collapsed,...
Most companies have AI in two different rooms. Innovation buys the tools. Compliance writes the policy. Nobody connects it. Here’s the core idea. There are two tracks in one program. Track one: use AI to strengthen compliance in screening, monitoring, third-party diligence, hotline triage, and investigations. Track two: govern the risk AI creates, from shadow AI and data leakage to unverified output, bias, and deliberate...
Part 1 described the trends: more individuals charged, public money at the center, proactive investigations, and two competing races to the Division’s door. This post turns those trends into reminders for compliance programs. None is new; what has changed is how costly it is to forget them. Reminder 1: The Rule Has Not Changed Price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation, and output restriction are per...
Criminal antitrust used to mean international cartels, nine-figure corporate fines, and a handful of executives. The 2026 docket looks different. It is broader in industries, heavier on individuals, more proactive in its investigative methods, and increasingly built around public money. This first post identifies six trends, drawing on the Antitrust Division’s published statistics, its FY 2027 budget submission, recent speeches by Criminal Enforcement chief Daniel...
In this episode, Michael Volkov examines OFAC’s October 27, 2026 settlement with Extreme Networks, which agreed to pay $1,529,685 for nine apparent violations involving exports to MMZA, a Russian defense manufacturer blocked under the 50 percent rule through its ownership by Almaz-Antey. The company had a policy to review every Russia-related dealing, yet OFAC says it ignored red flags that included MMZA email addresses and...
On October 27, 2026, the Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a $1,529,685 settlement with Extreme Networks, Inc., a North Carolina-based AI and cloud networking provider with more than 2,800 employees in 29 countries, over nine apparent violations of the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations. The Department of Justice announced a parallel non-prosecution agreement the same day. This is a case about a company that had a...
You cannot govern AI you cannot see. That’s why the first step is not a policy. It’s an inventory. Once you’ve found every AI tool in your company, including the shadow ones, sort them into tiers. High-risk tools that make decisions about people or money, with human review of every output. Moderate risk, customer-facing tools with sampling and disclosure. Low-risk internal productivity tools on approved...
Your supply chain doesn’t end at your supplier. Neither does your liability. Three risks are converging on the same shipments. Sanctions. Evasion networks use transshipment hubs, shell companies, and last-minute routing changes, and regulators now expect you to screen your cargo, not just your counterparties. Forced labor. U.S. law presumes goods linked to restricted regions or entities were made with forced labor unless you prove...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov examines the growing retrenchment of compliance and why companies that cut or sideline their programs are taking on more risk, not less. Using the Bank of America penalties as a case study, he shows how a compliance function can identify the problem, recommend an exit, and still be overruled or bypassed by the business, which...
