No executive wants an investigation into wrongdoing at his company to end poorly. The key to avoiding that fate, legal specialists say, is to be sure the company’s own internal investigation starts strongly.
If done properly, an internal investigation “can go a long way to persuading the government that a company should not be prosecuted,” says Peter Verniero, a former justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court who also served as that state’s attorney general. “The converse, unfortunately, is also true. An investigation that begins poorly—that’s hopelessly conflicted and does not have credibility—will not be very helpful to the corporation at the end of the day.”
