On June 9, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memorandum titled "Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)." The memo follows a four-month review triggered by President Trump's Executive Order, signed in February, instructing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Attorney General Pamela Bondi to pause enforcement of the FCPA and revise guidelines for the federal anti-bribery law (Executive Order). See Cozen O'Connor's prior alert about the implications of the Executive Order. "This Justice Department has overhauled FCPA enforcement to protect American businesses and sharpen our national security focus," Blanche wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.

Takeaways

• Department of Justice will resume investigations and prosecutions of foreign bribery, focusing prospective cases on matters that undermine U.S. firms' competitiveness, especially in key industries such as intelligence, energy, and defense. "Companies that bribe foreign officials to obtain business can put their law-abiding competitors, including U.S. companies, at a serious economic disadvantage," the new directive states. "By bribing foreign officials to obtain lucrative contracts and illicit profits – at times hundreds of millions of dollars – corrupt competitors skew markets and disadvantage law-abiding U.S. companies and others for many years."
• The guidelines will also prioritize cases that threaten U.S. national security or involve serious misconduct. In public remarks at the ACI Global Anti-Corruption, Ethics & Compliance conference on Tuesday, DOJ Criminal Division Chief Matthew Galeotti said that the trough-line of the new guidance is that "they require the vindication of U.S. interests." Conduct that does not implicate such interests, he added, should be left to foreign regulators.
• DOJ has closed nearly half of the open foreign bribery investigations initiated under the Biden Administration, but it plans to authorize new investigations, prioritizing cases linked to drug cartels and transnational organizations. "We're ending abusive overreach and closing cases that never should've been opened," Blanche wrote in a statement on X. Yet fighting corporate and white collar crime remains a "critical component of the Criminal Division's priorities'" Galeotti said in his ACI remarks.

The new guidance was issued in order to ensure that "FCPA investigations and prosecutions are carried out in accordance with President Trump's directive by:

1. limiting undue burdens on American companies that operate abroad and
2. targeting enforcement actions against conduct that directly undermines U.S. national interests." 

Prosecutors investigating and prosecuting FCPA offenders are instructed to proceed in an efficient manner in their investigations, "consider collateral consequences" to the company and its employees, and "focus on cases in which individuals have engaged in criminal misconduct and not attribute nonspecific malfeasance to corporate structures." In addition, the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, or official acting in that capacity or a more senior DOJ official, must authorize all "initiation of all new FCPA investigations or enforcement actions."

The guidance also provides a non-exhaustive list of factors for DOJ officials to consider when deciding whether to initiate FCPA investigations of enforcement actions. That list of factors includes: "whether the alleged misconduct:

1. is associated with the criminal operations of a Cartel or [Transnational Criminal Organization or TCO];
2. utilizes money launderers or shell companies that engage in money laundering for Cartels or TCOs; or
3. is linked to employees of state-owned entities or other foreign officials who have received bribes from Cartels or TCOs."

Other priorities for FCPA actions will focus on conduct that threatens U.S. national security, undercuts law-abiding U.S. companies or involves serious misconduct, including "substantial bribe payments, proven and sophisticated efforts to conceal bribe payments, fraudulent conduct in furtherance of the bribery scheme, and efforts to obstruct justice," according to the memo.

The Justice Department has pointed to other changes in white collar priorities, including promising declinations of prosecutions to companies that self-report violations of laws, cooperate, and remediate the issues that led to the violations. "The benefits to companies that voluntarily self-report, cooperate, and remediate have never been clearer and more certain: those companies will receive a declination, not just a presumption. Issuing declinations for voluntary self-reports is sound policy - both to hold the most culpable individuals accountable and as a preventative measure to deter misconduct from happening in the first place," Galeotti noted in his ACI remarks.

Conclusion

Although many players in the legal field have interpreted the FCPA pause as a sign that there may be a complete retrenchment in foreign bribery prosecutions, the new directive makes it clear that this is not the case. While not legally binding, the new guidance does not mean multinational corporations should change their FCPA compliance policies and procedures. On the contrary, they should continue to maintain robust, carefully designed, and properly resourced anti-corruption and anti-money laundering compliance programs, including whistleblower programs. They should also evaluate the results of any internal investigation into potential FCPA violations in light of this new guidance and determine whether voluntary self-disclosure to the DOJ is appropriate. The latest memo sends a strong signal that corporations that fully and timely disclose their wrongdoing could get non-prosecution agreements. However, it does not provide details on what constitutes full and timely disclosure.

We will continue to monitor developments in this area. Please contact the author of this alert if you have any questions about the subject.