Summary
On March 10, 2026, the Department of Justice released its first-ever department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP). The new CEP applies to all corporate criminal matters handled by the Department, except for violations of 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–38, which remain governed by the Antitrust Division’s separate leniency program. According to the press release announcing the new CEP, it supersedes “all component-specific or U.S. Attorney’s Office-specific corporate enforcement policies currently in effect.” This appears to include the SDNY voluntary self-disclosure policy announced in February 2026, the May 2025 Criminal Division CEP, the DOJ’s February 2023 United States Attorneys’ Offices Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, the July 2023 National Security Division’s Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, among others.
According to the DOJ, the new CEP is designed to promote consistency, transparency, and predictability in the Department’s corporate criminal enforcement, and to incentivize voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation by corporations. The substance of the new policy largely tracks the prior Criminal Division CEP, with several modifications described below.
Key Changes
While the new CEP preserves the overall architecture of the prior Criminal Division policy, it makes a number of substantive changes.
Penalty Mitigation Range. Under the prior policy, a company that self-disclosed, cooperated, and remediated but nonetheless faced aggravating circumstances warranting a criminal resolution was entitled to a flat reduction of 75% off the low end of the applicable U.S.S.G. fine range. The new policy replaces that fixed reduction with “a reduction of at least 50% but not more than 75% off the low end of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines fine range,” introducing prosecutorial discretion where none previously existed.
Prior Criminal History. The prior policy limited the recidivism aggravating factor to “a criminal adjudication or resolution ... within the last five years based on similar misconduct by the entity engaged in the current misconduct.” The new policy expands this to “a criminal adjudication or resolution either within the last five years or otherwise based on similar conduct by the entity engaged in the current misconduct.” The change removes the five-year look-back limitation while retaining the requirement that the prior conduct be similar in nature to the current misconduct. This approach echoes the September 2022 memorandum issued by then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, which moved away from a hard time cutoff in favor of a facts-and-circumstances analysis of a company’s prior criminal history. Notably, however, the new CEP may go further than the Monaco memorandum, still instructed prosecutors generally to accord less weight to older conduct, whereas the new policy imposes no such gradation.
Whistleblower Disclosure Timing. Under the prior policy, a company receiving a whistleblower’s internal report had 120 days to self-report to the Department and would qualify for “a presumption of a declination.” The new policy drops the word “presumption” and requires the company to “self-report[] the conduct to the Department as soon as reasonably practicable.”
Cooperation Standard. Under the prior policy, a company was required to separately: (1) “[d]isclose[] all relevant, non-privileged facts known to it” and (2) “[t]imely disclose[] all non-privileged facts relevant to the conduct at issue.” The new policy consolidates these into a single obligation to “timely, truthfully, and accurately disclose[] all facts and non-privileged evidence relevant to the conduct at issue.”
De-confliction Notice. The new policy adds a provision with no equivalent in the prior policy: “Nothing herein is intended to prohibit a company from taking steps that it is otherwise under an obligation to take under applicable laws and regulations. Where, however, such an action may conflict with the Department’s investigation or a de-confliction request, the company is expected to notify the Department in advance of taking such an action with sufficient time to allow the Department to take reasonable steps in its discretion.” The prior policy did not contemplate potential conflicts between de-confliction requests and other corporate obligations.
Financial Condition. Under the prior policy, where a company asserted financial hardship, “the company will bear the burden to provide factual support for such an assertion,” and “the Criminal Division will closely evaluate the validity of any such claim.” The new policy removes this burden-shifting framework entirely, replacing it with a straightforward instruction that “the Department will take into consideration the size, sophistication, and financial condition of the cooperating company when assessing the scope, quantity, quality, impact, and timing of cooperation.”
Resolution Agreement Transparency. The new policy adds that “[p]rosecutors should also include in their corporate resolution agreements information sufficient to outline why a particular company received a particular amount of cooperation credit.” No equivalent provision existed in the prior policy, although including such information in corporate resolutions has been the Criminal Division’s practice for some time.
Implications
The new CEP now ensures that—with the exception of antitrust cases that have long been subject to the Antitrust Division’s unique leniency program—the concrete benefits of voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation offered by the Department in corporate criminal cases are governed by a single, uniform policy. For companies facing potential criminal exposure under all other federal criminal statutes, the new policy brings a degree of predictability and consistency that did not exist under the prior regime, where the potential benefits and aggravating circumstances depended on which office or component was handling the matter. The benefits of the CEP are now available across the board, regardless of where a case lands. The tradeoff is that the prior patchwork of component-specific policies offered companies some degree of flexibility and, in certain instances, more favorable terms. While the new Department-wide CEP makes several changes to the prior Criminal Division CEP, it hews closely to it, and companies can continue to look to precedent cases decided under prior policies to get a sense of what to expect going forward.