Corporate America take note: Use of deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, now mainstays of the government’s effort to combat corporate crime, climbed to their second highest level of the decade in 2010.
The U.S. Department of Justice entered into 32 such agreements in 2010, up from 21 agreements in 2009, according to a tally by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. The only year with more agreements was 2007, when the DOJ resolved a large number of FCPA investigations related to the Iraq Oil-for-Food program, along with healthcare fraud investigations in the orthopedic manufacturing industry. By comparison, GDC cites only one publicly reported corporate DPA in 2000. The 32 agreements resulted in a total of more than $2.314 billion in monetary penalties.
