The Department of Justice has received a great deal of criticism for its failure to prosecute both corporations and individuals involved in corporate fraud, especially those associated with the financial collapse in 2008. Companies were labeled “too big to fail” and it was difficult to determine the responsible individuals within the corporations. In an effort to quiet some of that criticism, on September 9, 2015, then Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates issued the latest installment of the Department of Justice’s charging guidelines. The policy, entitled, “Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing,” or the “Yates Memo,” as it has been called, does not focus on criminal charges against corporations. Instead, the focus is on prosecuting individuals within the corporate entity. The Yates Memo announces six steps to pursue individual corporate wrongdoing, but the main thrust of the Memo is that the Department of Justice should pursue individuals within the corporation from the outset of the investigation and that a corporation’s cooperation will be judged by whether the corporation provides all relevant information about culpable individuals. In other words, in order to receive any credit for cooperating with the government and obtain leniency in the form of a deferred prosecution agreement, the corporation must conduct an internal investigation and point the finger at culpable employees. The Yates Memo puts a particular emphasis on the need to hold high-level officials responsible for misconduct.

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