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Should You Tell Employees How Their Company Can Get Immunity From Prosecution?

By James J. Graham and William J. Hardy
November 29, 2004

The landscape has changed for many senior executives and other employees of corporations subject to government investigation. Two recent cases show how prosecutors virtually forced companies to “turn in” suspect executives and other employees to avoid prosecution. Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, effective Nov. 1, 2004, incorporate this change in the way courts will assess a corporation's compliance program.

Before the Scandals

Pre-Enron, most corporations facing a federal investigation understood the benefits of loyalty to employees, which took the form of:

  • defending the good intentions of the employees, if not the conduct itself;
  • correcting but not disclosing to the government the internal problems unless there was a legal duty to do so (and there are actually very few); and
  • advancing fees for the employees' own lawyers if the government sought to interview employees it suspected of wrongdoing.

This could be called a “circle the wagons” approach, and it usually worked well for everyone except the government investigators.

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