On March 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced a new Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Disclosure Policy that establishes a department-wide framework governing how prosecutors evaluate voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation by companies in criminal cases in an intended effort to promote uniformity, predictability, and fairness in how it pursues white-collar cases.  The Policy implements a unified framework for how DOJ prosecutors evaluate and reward disclosure. 

What It Says
 

The Policy provides that the DOJ will not prosecute companies that report misconduct to and cooperate with the DOJ, as long as the company adheres to the specific rules and qualifications.  Specifically, the DOJ will not prosecute a company (1) that voluntarily self-discloses the misconduct to an appropriate DOJ criminal component; (2) fully cooperates with the DOJ’s investigation; (3) timely and appropriately remediates the misconduct; and (4) there are no aggravating circumstances. 

There are five requirements to qualify as “voluntary self-disclosure”:  (1) the company must make a good faith disclosure of the misconduct to the appropriate DOJ component; (2) the misconduct must not have been previously known to the Department; (3) the company must have no preexisting obligation to disclose the misconduct to DOJ; (4) the disclosure must occur before an imminent threat of disclosure or government investigation; and (5) the company must disclose the conduct within a reasonably prompt time after becoming aware of it, with the burden of demonstrating timeliness falling on the company.  Additionally, “full cooperation” means that a company proactively disclose all relevant non-privileged facts and evidence, with attribution to specific sources rather than a general narrative and identifies all responsible individuals.

The Policy also allows a “near-miss” resolution, where the company fully cooperates and timely remediates, but does not make all the technical requirements.  Moreover, where a company does not meet the requirements or qualify as a “near-miss”, the DOJ prosecutor retains full discretion, but the maximum fine is reduced.

What It Means
 

At face-value, the Policy will incentivize early disclosure and provide greater consistency and predictability, in contrast to the earlier trend of different DOJ divisions and offices offering their own self-disclosure policies. The Policy is clearly also driven by a need to lessen the investigative and prosecutorial burdens on a resource-strapped DOJ.

But can this DOJ be taken at face value?  Self-disclosure in any context is a massive decision for a company, and no amount of government pronouncements will remove the trepidation companies will feel when undertaking it.

If companies are to be persuaded to self-disclose misconduct, they must trust that DOJ will follow its policies and take predictable, rational steps consistent with a good-faith execution of DOJ’s stated views. They must know what lies behind the proverbial door. 

This was generally taken as a given in prior administrations.  Now however, many companies will look at DOJ’s handling of its investigations and prosecutions of political opponents, its on-again off-again defense of President Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, and its seemingly preferential treatment of companies that are politically and financially aligned with the administration, and wonder if they have a reliable partner in self-disclosure. Only three days after the release of the corporate enforcement Policy, a federal judge quashed DOJ’s probe of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, writing that, “The Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President.”

While not all companies facing self-disclosure will think of themselves as likely to “displease the President” and become a political lighting rod, the Trump Administration’s open politicization of DOJ will weigh heavily on companies wondering what lies behind the self-disclosure door.