On March 25, 2022, Kenneth Polite, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice (DOJ)'s Criminal Division, delivered a speech at NYU Law School's Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement announcing initiatives that DOJ is undertaking regarding corporate compliance programs and Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs). AAG Polite anchored his remarks in his own experience as a former Chief Compliance Officer at Entergy. He emphasized that the goal of these initiatives is to improve the stature of CCOs, help ensure CCOs can express concerns, and try to ensure CCOs feature prominently in an organization's remedial efforts. The initiatives include:

  1. Asking Criminal Division prosecutors to consider requiring as part of corporate resolutions that CEOs and CCOs certify at the end of the resolution term that the company's compliance program is reasonably designed and implemented to detect and prevent violations of law; and
  2. "Revamping" the Fraud Section's former Strategy, Policy, and Enforcement Unit into a newly named Corporate Enforcement, Compliance, and Policy ("CECP") Unit that includes new management and former compliance and defense lawyers with experience in compliance, monitorships, and corporate enforcement.
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