Objective 4.2: Combat Corruption, Financial Crime, and Fraud

Financial crime can be devastating for victims, wiping out a lifetime of savings.  In 2020, reports of financial victimization via fraud, especially internet-enabled fraud, reached all-time highs.  Even when there are no identifiable individual victims, corporate crime destabilizes markets and creates risks to consumers.  To prevent and disrupt such violations, the Department will work to pursue not just corporations that participate in such practices, but also the individuals responsible.  Finally, the government has an obligation to spend taxpayer dollars responsibly, which requires detecting, targeting, and reducing fraud in government contracting and programs.

Strategy 1: Deter and Prosecute Corporate Crime
The essence of the rule of law is that like cases are treated alike, and that there is not one rule for the rich and another for the poor.  The Department will aggressively prosecute corporate crime, not only by holding companies accountable for their criminal conduct, but also by prosecuting the individuals who commit and profit from corporate malfeasance.  The Department will emphasize to the private sector and the investing public that corporations, and the individuals who run them, must comply with the law.  The FBI, as well as the Criminal Division and our U.S. Attorney’s Offices, will lead the Department’s corporate criminal enforcement efforts.  In addition, the Department will partner with entities at every level of government and around the world to tackle corporate crime.

Strategy 2: Combat Public Corruption
The Department remains resolutely committed to enforcing domestic anti-corruption laws targeting the criminal corruption of federal, state, and local governments.  Through enhanced coordination with law enforcement partners and prosecutors nationwide, as well as through expanded investigative analysis, the Department will seek to disrupt all efforts by government officials to criminally abuse and profit from their positions.  The Department will also address the concomitant efforts of individuals seeking to corrupt these officials.  Because of corruption’s corrosive effects on our democratic institutions, the Department will also continue to investigate and, as appropriate, prosecute bribery, extortion, fraud, and other criminal conduct by public officials or those who seek to corrupt them.

Strategy 3: Combat Corporate Corruption and Advance International Anti-Corruption Efforts
The Department will continue to develop relationships and work in parallel with our foreign law enforcement partners to tackle the most complex international fraud, money laundering, and corruption schemes.  Because transnational corruption can empower corrupt regimes and destabilize foreign governments – potentially resulting in significant threats to our national security – the Department will redouble its efforts to investigate and prosecute foreign corruption and to build the capacity of our foreign partners to combat corruption before those threats reach our shores.  

 Key Performance Indicators:

• Percent of corporate criminal cases in which individual responsibility was evaluated
• Percent of corporate criminal resolutions containing compliance reporting obligations that are evaluated by DOJ at least annually
• Number of criminal disruptions or dismantlements in public corruption and fraud against the government
• Percent of new contacts by the FBI with foreign anti-corruption agencies that progress to mutual sharing of information or assistance or result in a new international corruption case

Contributing DOJ Components: CIV, CRM, TAX, USAO, FBI