Justice Dept. To follow a narrow approach to continue company bribery abroad

The Ministry of Justice has closed approximately half of its open investigation into bribery by American companies abroad, but intends to start prosecutions to focus more closely on misconduct that harms the country to compete with foreign companies, officials said Tuesday.

President Trump signed an executive order In February they paused all the studies of the department under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, awaiting an evaluation of enforcement policy by Todd Blanche, the number 2 official of the department.

Good government groups criticized the freezing as the elimination of guardrails needed to prevent abuse. The movement coincided with the closing of investigations into the aircraft manufacturer Bombardier and the maker of the Stryker medical devices, among other things.

But Mr. Blanche, in a statementsaid that the decision was taken to coordinate the enforcement of the law to the broader goal of the administration to increase American leverage against foreign companies and governments, by moving “prosecution sources to matters that clearly national security and competitiveness.”

Mr. Blanche, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr Trump, accused the Biden Government under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland of opening too many cases, “tax companies” and damaged national interests.

Critics said that the new guidelines were a dangerous reversal that left major investigations, including a deal that the Ministry of Justice closed in May with Boeing who saved the company to take criminal responsibility for deadly 737 Max -Crashes in 2018 and 2019. Many families of the victims were strongly opposed the agreement.

“This retreat by maintaining laws against business crime is a perversion of justice that further concentrates the power of the administration to corrupt insiders and to punish observed enemies,” said Rick Clayypool, a research director at the Non -Profit Group Public Citizen.

“American companies that deal with criminal bribery schedules abroad will no longer be prosecuted,” he added. “That’s the bottom line.”

The Department plans to discharge responsibility for investigating bribery by American companies and people abroad to local law enforcement and regulatory authorities, officials said.

Matthew R. Galeotti, the head of the criminal division of the department, criticized that the Department intended to sharply scaled its prosecutions of all business elinquents, in the aftermath of the Trump administration right -wing policy shifts and the dismissal, forced transfers and mass retirement of the department.

The criminal division “has and will not close more deserving investigations or reject meritorious matters” with regard to foreign bribery and other white-collar crimes, Mr Galeotti told those present of a conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, according to his prepared comments.

“We will follow these investigations powerfully and open new,” added Mr Galeotti, a former federal public prosecutor in Brooklyn.

In an earlier memo, Mr. Galeotti outlined other changes, including a new policy to refuse to prosecute some offenses that have been reported to the department by companies in a good wedding effort to be Police themselves. Critics believe that the movement undermines the deterioration of a potential prosecution.

Mr. Galeotti defended the protocols and said that they had already yielded whistleblower tips and self -reporting with regard to “drug trafficking, purchasing fraud, health care fraud and more.”

He concluded with a warning for lawyers who represent companies, which suggests that they should not assume that they will receive a sweetheart deal if they look for ‘premature’ plea agreements or make false claims of misconduct of prosecution in an attempt to obtain leverage.

“Be an honest broker,” he said.