Assistant Attorney General Tony West (Steve Bagley/Main Justice)
The Justice Department is in the final stages of hammering out a policy that is expected to speed up False Claims Act investigations and increase the flow of information between federal lawyers and their state counterparts.
In an briefing with reporters on Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the head of the Civil Division, said Attorney General Eric Holder planned to give him the authority to issue civil investigative demands, which are similar to subpoenas and are used to cull materials and depositions in FCA investigations.
The department is close to implementing the policy, West said, adding that he was “anxious to use that authority in appropriate ways.”
Until recently, only the Attorney General could approve CIDs, but in May Congress passed an anti-fraud bill that, among other things, allowed him to delegate the power.
The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 also gave the Justice Department more freedom to share information gleaned from CIDs with whistleblowers and federal and state agencies, effectively acting as a force multiplier.
“This adds a lot to their investigative abilities,”said James Keneally, a defense lawyer at Kelley Drye & Warren in New York. “We have to watch in coming months is what Justice does with its information. This brings a whole host of law enforcement and regulatory agencies into the fold.”
The Justice Department is working through about 1,000 open FCA investigations. West said the more frequent use of the CIDs, combined with greater information-sharing, will quicken the case flow, allowing the government to recover more tax dollars lost to fraud.
In fiscal year 2009, the Justice Department collected $2.4 billion in settlements and judgments from False Claims Act cases, the second largest recovery since the statute was overhauled more than 20 years ago, according to department figures released Thursday.
Since 1986, when the statute was amended to make it easier for private citizens to sue on behalf of the government, the Justice Department has recovered $24 billion in FCA cases.
This post has been corrected from an earlier version.
[...] with whistleblowers and federal and state agencies, effectively acting as a force multiplier. West has said he expects more frequent use of the CIDs, combined with greater information-sharing, to quicken the [...]