The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has issued a new Voluntary Self-Disclosure (“VSD”) Policy encouraging companies that become aware of misconduct by employees or agents to disclose that misconduct to a U.S. Attorney’s Office or the DOJ. Companies that do so, and that meet certain criteria, will likely avoid prosecution and will potentially receive other significant benefits.

In-house counsel, compliance officers and corporate executives should review the new VSD Policy and review their internal corporate compliance programs to ensure that they have systems in place to identify and remediate misconduct before the DOJ or other federal regulatory agencies become aware of it to afford the time and resources necessary to consider all risk mitigation strategies. To qualify for favorable treatment, the disclosure must be made before the U.S. Attorney’s office or DOJ become aware of the misconduct. The disclosures must be timely, voluntary, and detailed. Companies must also preserve, collect, and produce relevant documents and/or information to the government to meet the threshold cooperation requirements.

Misconduct that is pervasive throughout the company or that involves current executive management may not qualify for the VSD Policy.

Dentons will be conducting a webinar soon to discuss the new VSD Policy in greater detail and answer questions about it. In the meantime, questions may be directed to any of the authors of this Alert, or other members of our White Collar & Government Investigations team.