Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer urged companies in a Tuesday speech to report illegal conduct within the organization to the Justice Department and promised “meaningful credit” in exchange for cooperation.
“We want companies that uncover illegal conduct to come forward voluntarily,” Breuer said in his remarks at a conference on money laundering enforcement.
While that “does not mean a free pass for doing the right thing,” he said, “many options are available to the Justice Department short of prosecution when a banking entity has been truly cooperative.”
The remarks, in front of members of the American Bar Association and the American Bankers Association, touched on the DOJ’s efforts to step up enforcement of money laundering laws in tandem with the increased enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans companies from paying bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business.
“When we forfeit the proceeds of crime and vigorously prosecute violations of our money laundering laws, we take the profit out of crime and deny criminal organizations the resources they need to survive,” Breuer said.
The department has created a new Money Laundering and Bank Integrity unit, devoted to complex national and international financial cases. The unit will be staffed with both prosecutors and lawyers from the banking industry, Breuer said.
The DOJ also recently launched the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, a program to target and seize the proceeds of foreign corruption. That initiative is staffed with lawyers from the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, which will lead it, the Office of International Affairs, and the Fraud Section, Breuer said.
[...] Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Criminal Division announced the creation of the unit in [...]