Supply-Chain Policing to Be Selective, Environmental Cops Say

The Justice Department’s environmental division won’t necessarily conduct detailed investigations of a company’s supply chain partners as long as the company is making good-faith efforts to comply with the law, an agency spokesman told Bloomberg Law.

Those remarks clarify comments from Todd Kim, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, who said at an American Bar Association conference in December that if a corporate supply chain “originates from a criminally tainted source, then my division will consider the criminal responsibility of all parts of that supply chain.”

At least one former department official has cautioned that Kim’s ...