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First DOJ Declination For FCPA Violations Since Renewed Enforcement Guidelines
08/26/2025On August 7, 2025, the United States Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section (“DOJ”) issued a declination letter to a U.S.-based insurance company (the “Company”) to resolve alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) by the Company’s subsidiary in India. DOJ issued the letter after the Company agreed to disgorge approximately $4.7 million in allegedly ill-gotten profits. This is the first FCPA declination letter issued following DOJ’s publication of new FCPA enforcement guidelines in June 2025.
According to the declination letter, from 2017 to 2022, the subsidiary allegedly paid approximately $1.47 million in bribes to six state-owned banks in India in return for the state-owned banks’ referral of customers to the Company’s insurance products. Certain employees of the subsidiary then allegedly concealed the nature of these payments by recasting them as marketing expenses, or by using third-party intermediaries to make the payments on the subsidiary’s behalf. The alleged bribery scheme created $9.2 million in revenue and $4.7 million in profits for the subsidiary.
In declining to prosecute the Company, DOJ emphasized the following actions in line with its May 2025 revisions to its Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, which outlines the factors DOJ will consider when determining a resolution for white-collar and corporate enforcement:
- Voluntary self-disclosure: The Company timely and voluntarily self-disclosed the purported misconduct, which it identified during an ongoing internal investigation.
- Full cooperation: The Company fully and proactively cooperated with DOJ, including by providing all known facts and agreeing to cooperate in the future with any further investigations.
- Remediation and Enhancements: The Company performed a root-cause analysis and removed the involved personnel, while also making significant enhancements to its compliance program.
DOJ also noted in the letter that the (i) nature and seriousness of the offense; (ii) lack of aggravating circumstances; and (iii) Company’s willingness to disgorge all $4.7 million of ill-gotten profits further warranted a declination.
This declination letter is the first publicly-settled FCPA matter since the Trump Administration’s freeze of FCPA enforcement in February 2025. That freeze and DOJ’s June 2025 guidance were premised on de-prioritizing cases with a tangential nexus to the U.S. and, instead, focusing FCPA enforcement efforts on misconduct that directly affects U.S. interests and competitiveness. However, the declination makes no reference to the new FCPA guidance and appears unimpacted by it. Instead, the declination letter reflects DOJ’s revised approach to corporate enforcement matters by rewarding companies that timely self-disclose potential misconduct and take measures to bolster their internal controls and remediate any issues. Whether the declination reflects the limited nexus of the alleged conduct with the United States, or a more fulsome shift by DOJ to taking a lighter touch on enforcement of corporate misconduct will be worth monitoring going forward, especially for companies considering self-disclosing potential misconduct.
