AT&T to pay $23M to settle Illinois bribery probe
By Aaron Nicodemus2022-10-17T18:10:00
An Illinois-based subsidiary of telecommunications giant AT&T will pay $23 million and revamp its ethics and compliance program following a probe into bribes the company paid attempting to influence the Illinois state legislature.
AT&T Illinois will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to resolve a federal criminal investigation that it paid $22,500 through an intermediary to Michael Madigan, former Illinois Speaker of the House. The company was charged Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois with using an interstate facility to promote legislative misconduct, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release.
The DOJ will defer prosecution on the charge for two years and seek to dismiss it if AT&T Illinois continues to cooperate with the investigation and implement “a compliance and ethics program designed to prevent and detect violations of U.S. law throughout their operations,” according to the DPA.