White Collar Roundup - December 2018

Softening the Yates Memo

On November 29, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced a revision of the DOJ's policy that organizations must provide information on individual wrongdoers to receive cooperation credit. As we reported here, in September 2015, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates issued a memorandum to all federal prosecutors, called "Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing." The "Yates Memo" required prosecutors to learn which individuals at an organization were involved in the wrongdoing if the organization wanted to receive cooperation credit. That policy was incorporated into the Justice Manual. Rosenstein announced the DOJ has revised the policy to "make ... clear that any company seeking cooperation credit in criminal cases must [still] identify every individual who was substantially involved in or responsible for the criminal conduct." But it is no longer necessary for "companies to identify every employee involved