DOJ’s White Collar Developments to Watch in 2024, Besides Trump

The Justice Department’s white collar enforcement push is entering a pivotal fourth and potentially final year to advance senior leaders’ goals around holding executives and foreign actors accountable.

Even while the special counsel’s two prosecutions against former President Donald Trump—one of which is scheduled to go to trial in March—attracts by far the most attention, 2024 is expected to reveal more signs of how a series of corporate crime initiatives are manifesting in practice.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and other senior officials spent much of 2023 emphasizing their intent to crack down on corporate criminals by incentivizing companies to self-disclose wrongdoing and to invest more resources into matters that implicate national security threats. It’ll take well beyond the next 12 months to define the legacy of those efforts, but 2024 should still flesh out the types of cases prosecutors are able to bring pursuant to those policy shifts, white collar lawyers say.

“We are very likely to see in 2024 more real evidence about the corporate enforcement policy and I think we’re going to see more cases resolved under that policy,” said Brian Blais, a litigation and enforcement partner at Ropes & Gray. “We’re seeing the initial wave of that in 2023, but not with any real volume. We’re likely to see a whole lot more in 2024, where we can make better assessments as to is the carrot approach that is being offered really effective and bearing fruit.”

Here are developments to watch as signs of whether the white collar crackdown is working.

C-Suite Reach

The guilty plea of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in November signaled that DOJ was serious about punishing those at the very top for their companies’ misdeeds. How much, if any, prison time Zhao ends up sentenced will be another key gauge. His sentencing hearing is slated for Feb. 23.

That plea wasn’t enough to satisfy lawmakers from both parties, who pressed two DOJ senior officials at a December hearing on why executives often escape consequences in other settlements. A year from now, the department may have much more to highlight.

“You’re going to see, and I’ve already gotten a sense of, more of a focus on identifying who is culpable within an organization, and the expectation that a company is going to disclose those individuals to the department,” said Kamil Shields, a former assistant US attorney in Washington, DC who’s now a litigation partner at Sullivan & Cromwell.

The department’s attempts to reward companies with cooperation credit when handing over employee chats on devices and its greater sophistication in engaging the private sector—such as crypto tracing contractors—to root out financial misconduct are reasons why Shields is “expecting to see a lot more high-profile prosecutions of individuals.”

National Security Intersection

Throughout the past year, DOJ leaders have trumpeted their interest in investigating white collar cases at the intersection with national security concerns. Now that they’ve significantly staffed up on prosecutors in the export controls and bank integrity enforcement units, defense lawyers are watching to see how that translates into tough-to-prove cases.

Department scrutiny of companies and individuals across the globe that access the US financial system when doing business in Russia, North Korea, and other adversaries should lead to some “very significant” cases brought for violating trade sanctions, export controls, and anti-money laundering laws, said John Kocoras, a white collar partner at Skadden.

Although it might not deliver a high volume of cases in 2024, Kocoras, who was the top deputy at the US attorney’s office in Chicago, predicted DOJ will leverage improved information sharing with other government agencies to advance the national security probes. They will also make “use of a broad range of statutes to prosecute criminals, even statutes that don’t necessarily involve national security laws, but are used more traditionally to fight other federal crimes like mail fraud and wire fraud statutes,” he said.

The war between Israel and Hamas may also lead to an increase in terrorism financing and money laundering cases “involving Hamas assets in various banks,” said Blais, a former supervisor at the Manhattan US attorney’s office.

The department is also likely to show results in national security corporate enforcement “across a lot of different industries,” said Josh Levine, a Simpson Thacher partner who heads the firm’s crisis management practice. “Things like gas and oil industry, clearly financial services and crypto, real estate, but we’re also seeing it in areas like manufacturing and construction.”

Emerging Tools

The next year will present further opportunities for DOJ to demonstrate that its use of data analytics to uncover crimes, such as overseas bribery, is more than just a talking point to encourage company disclosures.

Crystal Jezierski, a senior managing director at Guidepost Solutions, said she’ll be watching the department’s moves on emerging technology, such as whether it leans in to machine learning and generative AI to get smarter on identifying investigation targets.

Federal prosecutors are likely to continue pushing legal boundaries by using correspondent banking accounts in the US as the jurisdictional hook to go after suspicious activity abroad, said Jonathan Lopez, a former DOJ criminal division supervisor who’s now a partner at Jacobson Lopez.

The department has also made a point of promoting its relationship-building progress with international law enforcement partners, including in newer areas like South Africa and Colombia. “You should expect to see more multi-country resolutions,” Acting Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said at an Oct. 30 conference.

Election Cycle

The department’s corporate enforcement is typically more insulated from election year pressure. The white collar policy portfolio doesn’t cut neatly across party lines. Many investigations pursuant to Biden-era strategies are likely to continue regardless of who is president in 2025.

At the same time, there may be a greater sense of urgency to conclude politically sensitive cases or white-collar matters that aren’t run-of-the-mill, because a different administration could have different views, Blais said.

With the Trump prosecutions serving as the backdrop, Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to remain steadfast in his commitment to nonpartisan enforcement.

“This administration has taken great pains to avoid the appearance of playing politics,” Levine said. “So while they’re always focused on producing results and I’m sure that we will see some big ticket corporate resolutions in the coming year, I don’t think they would let the prospect of an election pressure them to bring cases that aren’t ready or that they don’t believe in.”