The U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo Wednesday indicating it will increase its efforts to make sure individual corporate wrongdoers are held accountable.
The new rules will include institutional policy shifts that change the way the department investigates, charges, and resolves cases and change the way that it interacts with the targets of an investigation, Sally Q. Yates, deputy attorney general, said in a speech Thursday at New York University’s law school. The rules also add new policies and state that policies already being practiced at various places within the department will apply to everyone in it.
"Regardless of how challenging it may be to make a case against individuals in a corporate fraud case, it's our responsibility at the Department of Justice to overcome these challenges and do everything we can to develop the evidence and bring these cases," Yates, author of the department memo, said in the speech.
"The public expects and demands this accountability,” she said. “Americans should never believe, even incorrectly, that one's criminal activity will go unpunished simply because it was committed on behalf of a corporation."
Many commentators reporting on the memo cited the difficulty of convicting corporate criminals. Corporate cases against individuals are complex and difficult for juries to understand. And, the courts rejected two high-level cases brought by the department, according to the New York Times article “Justice Department Sets Sights on Wall Street Executives.”
While the action on corporate criminals is long over due, many consumer advocates, myself included, would have liked to seen corporate executives who caused the 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession that followed jailed. The public, too, has been clamoring for these criminals to be prosecuted. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations may prevent any of these wrongdoers from being prosecuted now.
“The memo amounts to a striking admission that the DOJ’s policy on Wall Street corporate crime has been completely ineffective,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “The real test going forward will be if the agency can put this policy into action and enforce it aggressively.”
