Justice Manual
9-27.000 - PRINCIPLES OF FEDERAL PROSECUTION
9-27.230 - INITIATING AND DECLINING CHARGES—SUBSTANTIAL FEDERAL INTEREST
IMPORTANT NOTE: one of the many reasons why McDonald’s Corporation and their subsidiary companies, and their accomplices, will be prosecuted, is that many years ago, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested eight people for rigging the McDonald’s contests “Monopoly””. Equality before the law means that the attorney for the U.S. government won’t be able to reasonably argue that the criminal entity McDonald’s Corporation and their executives should be given a free pass for having committed one of the biggest fraud in history.
9-28.000 - PRINCIPLES OF FEDERAL PROSECUTION OF BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
9-28.210 - FOCUS ON INDIVIDUAL WRONGDOERS
“Provable individual criminal culpability should be pursued, particularly if it relates to high-level corporate officers, even in the face of an offer of a corporate guilty plea or some other disposition of the charges against the corporation, including a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement, or a civil resolution. In other words, regardless of the ultimate corporate disposition, a separate evaluation must be made with respect to potentially liable individuals.”
9-28.300 - FACTORS TO BE CONSIDERED
“1. the nature and seriousness of the offense, including the risk of harm to the public, and applicable policies and priorities, if any, governing the prosecution of corporations for particular categories of crime (see JM 9-28.400);”
“6. the corporation’s timely and voluntary disclosure of wrongdoing (see JM 9-28.900);”
“11. the interests of any victims (see JM 9-28.1400).”
9-28.500 - PERVASIVENESS OF WRONGDOING WITHIN THE CORPORATION
“Charging a corporation for even minor misconduct may be appropriate where the wrongdoing was pervasive and […] was condoned by upper management.”
“Comment: Of these factors, the most important is the role and conduct of management. Although acts of even low-level employees may result in criminal liability, a corporation is directed by its management and management is responsible for a corporate culture in which criminal conduct is either discouraged or tacitly encouraged. As stated in commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines:
Pervasiveness [is] case specific and [will] depend on the number, and degree of responsibility, of individuals [with] substantial authority … who participated in, condoned, or were willfully ignorant of the offense. Fewer individuals need to be involved for a finding of pervasiveness if those individuals exercised a relatively high degree of authority. Pervasiveness can occur either within an organization as a whole or within a unit of an organization.
USSG § 8C2.5, cmt. (n. 4).”
9-28.800 - CORPORATE COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS
“The fundamental questions any prosecutor should ask are: Is the corporation’s compliance program well designed? Is the program being applied earnestly and in good faith? Does the corporation’s compliance program work? In answering these questions, the prosecutor should consider the comprehensiveness of the compliance program; the extent and pervasiveness of the criminal misconduct; the number and level of the corporate employees involved; the seriousness, duration, and frequency of the misconduct; and any remedial actions taken by the corporation, including, for example, disciplinary action against past violators uncovered by the prior compliance program, and revisions to corporate compliance programs in light of lessons learned.” (I emphasize)
“Prosecutors should therefore attempt to determine whether a corporation’s compliance program is merely a “paper program” or whether it was designed, implemented, reviewed, and revised, as appropriate, in an effective manner.”
“Compliance programs should be designed to detect the particular types of misconduct most likely to occur in a particular corporation’s line of business. Many corporations operate in complex regulatory environments outside the normal experience of criminal prosecutors.” (I emphasize)
9-28.1100 - COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES
9-28.1300 - ADEQUACY OF THE PROSECUTION OF INDIVIDUALS
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9-28.1400 – INTERESTS OF THE VICTIM
9-47.000 - FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT OF 1977