Tagged: Deferred Prosecution Agreement

Swiss Life and Three Subsidiaries Agree to Pay Justice Department More Than $77 Million for Conspiracy with U.S. Taxpayers to Hide Assets and Income

In the run-up to the deadline for filing federal taxes, the Justice Department has a well-established practice of bringing tax-related enforcement cases against crooked tax preparers, fraudsters and corporate entities as an important reminder on the importance of tax compliance.  For years, the Justice Department struggled to bring Swiss banks to the enforcement table and eventually was successful in building cooperation in enforcement matters.  It...

Standard Chartered Pays Over $1 Billion for Continuing Sanctions Violations (Part I of III)

Global banks are the poster children of sanctions violations and the importance of trade compliance.  At the top of the heap is Standard Chartered Bank. In a long-awaited resolution of a multi-year investigation, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the New York District Attorney’s (DANY), the Federal Reserve, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) and the...

Will the Justice Department Continue to Use DPAs and NPAs?

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ― George Bernard Shaw With a new administration at the Department of Justice, practitioners and commentators are looking for signs of change. Given the current politics of the new administration, the Justice Department will undergo changes in civil rights, antitrust, and criminal enforcement. These “new” or return to old policy announcements were not surprising since they went hand-in-hand...

FCPA Recidivists: Orthofix (Part II of II)

In its continuing quest to push the message of aggressive FCPA enforcement, the SEC resolved FCPA charges against Orthofix, a medical device company, for $6 million in penalties and disgorgement. In a related action, the SEC announced that Orthofix and four executives agreed to pay $8 million for accounting control errors. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Orthofix. All of this sounds reasonable, except for...

Fokker: No Judicial Oversight of Deferred Prosecution Agreements

The D.C. Circuit dealt a blow last week to judicial attempts to exercise supervision over Justice Department negotiated Deferred Prosecution Agreements. In United States v. Fokker (Here), the Court answered the question in a resounding affirmation  of the authority of prosecutors to resolve criminal cases and exercise discretion in charging decisions. In the end, the court’s decision was not a great surprise but the strength...