DOJ: Don’t Let FCPA Enforcement Fears Stop M&A Deals
Deputy assistant attorney general Matthew Miner, who oversees the DOJ’s criminal division’s FCPA unit, said the agency wants corporate acquisitions to happen, and doesn’t want the “specter of enforcement” to discourage good actors from going ahead with them.
To encourage M&A activity, the DOJ will apply the principles in the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy to successor companies where there’s wrongdoing, Miner said.
That means acquiring companies and targets meeting the requirements of the policy – “voluntary self disclosure, full cooperation, and timely and appropriate remediation” – will be entitled to a presumption of declination.
Miner said the DOJ understands that acquiring companies sometimes have “limited access to a target company’s data and records, perhaps even more so when the target company is in a high risk jurisdiction.”
