Corporate & Internal Investigations

President Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, took quick action upon her swearing in on February 5, 2025, to make changes within the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) via the issuance of fourteen separate memorandum directives to DOJ employees. The memoranda kick-off Bondi’s efforts to re-calibrate DOJ policies, enforcement priorities, and internal procedures to align with broader policies of the Trump administration. Two of the memoranda in particular, one laying out a “General Policy Regarding Charging, Plea Negotiations, and Sentencing” (“General Policy Memorandum”) and the other focused on the “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations” (“Cartel Policy Memorandum”), include several key changes related to the DOJ’s enforcement of corporate crime, corruption, and national security-related laws.

In a move that highlights the U.S. government’s ongoing fight against evasion of sanctions and export control laws, the Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Justice yesterday published yet another Tri-Seal Compliance Note directed specifically at foreign persons, describing the applicability of these international trade and finance laws to foreign-based persons (the “March 6 Compliance Note”). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the significant increase of sanctions and export controls targeting Russia, these Departments have published Tri-Seal Compliance Notes on “Third-Party Intermediaries Used to Evade Russia-Related Sanctions” and “Export Controls and Voluntary Self-Disclosure of Potential Violations.”

Ensuring compliance with U.S. export controls, import regulations, and economic sanctions is common practice for companies that engage in international trade. These companies often have internal compliance policies and due diligence practices that help to monitor compliance for everyday operations. In addition, companies undergoing structural, or ownership changes often must conduct trade-related due diligence to assess compliance risks associated with a relevant target company. 

On December 28, 2023, a federal court sentenced New Hampshire charity NuDay (a/k/a NuDay Syria) to five years of probation – the maximum sentence for an organizational defendant – for three counts of Failure to File Export Information.

In its third memorandum in the past two years,¹ BIS recently announced further updates to its Voluntary Self-Disclosure (VSD) process related to administrative violations. My last article covered BIS’s April 18, 2023 memorandum, which discussed incentives for companies to disclose violations after uncovering “significant violations” or risk higher penalties because a failure to disclose will be treated as an aggravating factor.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”) published its third consent agreement of the year on August 28, 2023. This consent agreement is part of an administrative settlement with Island Pyrochemical Industries Corporation (“IPI”)1 involving three alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act (“AECA”) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”). Specifically, IPI engaged in unauthorized brokering activities related to the transfer of ammonium perchlorate (“APC”)2 from an entity from China, a proscribed country under §126.1 of the ITAR, to a Brazilian company. In addition, IPI misrepresented the roles of the Chinese and Brazilian entities and falsely stated that it was the manufacturer of APC on DSP-5 license applications.