DOJ Weighs Getting Rid of a Punishment That Companies Despise

The Justice Department is weighing whether to release companies from obligations to hire outside monitors as part of settlements with prosecutors — a form of oversight that has long frustrated executives.

US officials have paused compliance monitorships and are weighing whether to permanently disband at least some of them, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. Senior leaders at the department have privately discussed the possible changes with certain companies under monitorships, some of the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.

Todd Blanche

Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg

Monitors have long been a staple of deals between prosecutors and companies looking to resolve probes. Several companies still have monitors they agreed to hire under settlements with the department during the Biden administration.

Firms that currently have monitors as part of settlements with US prosecutors include crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd., a US subsidiary of Toronto-Dominion Bank and a unit of UK lender NatWest Group Plc. Critics of the arrangements, which can involve paying outside consultants or lawyers tens of millions of dollars to ensure compliance, have argued monitors are unnecessary and costly.

Spokespeople for TD Bank and NatWest declined to comment. Binance didn’t respond to requests for comment.

It’s unclear whether a policy change by the Justice Department would erase all or just some of monitorships currently in place and whether it would also apply to future settlements.

Shifting Focus

The review was ordered by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of a broader analysis of actions taken during the Biden administration, said one of the people. It could mark a change from the first Trump administration, when more than half a dozen companies agreed to monitors as part of settlements.

The Justice Department has signaled it’s shifting focus away from traditional white collar corporate crime to crack down on drug cartels. In February, Trump ordered a pause to enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act while Attorney General Pam Bondi conducts a review of those cases. The order upended several cases that were nearing trial.

Read More: Cognizant Bribery Case Tossed After Trump Urged Pause on FCPA

Corporations have long complained about monitorships, but the oversight hasn’t been a major political issue. One exception came in December when a judge in Texas rejected a deal between Boeing Co. and the Justice Department and cited a provision that required diversity and inclusion criteria to be factored into the selection of the monitor.

Rooting out DEI has also been a focus of the Trump administration. Boeing had agreed to a monitorship as part of a guilty plea tied to two deadly 737 Max crashes.

Pam Bondi, US attorney general

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg

The Justice Department under Trump has already pulled back on monitors in one instance. In March, prosecutors notified a court that it would be ending monitorships for two units of Glencore Plc early. Nearly three years ago, the company pleaded guilty to a bribery and market manipulation scheme and agreed to use two monitors. It paid a combined $142 million for the monitors in 2023 and 2024, according to the company’s annual reports.

Glencore said in a statement it has “engaged constructively with the monitors and made significant progress over the last two years in enhancing” its compliance program. The company said it’s pleased that the government recognized its efforts and “terminated the monitorships earlier than scheduled.”

Separate Meetings

Over the past few weeks, companies and their monitors held separate meetings with senior officials at the Justice Department, where each side was given the opportunity to advocate for whether to continue or discontinue the oversight, according to some of the people familiar with the review. In addition to stopping their work, officials have asked monitors to answer questions about their efforts and budget.

The NatWest Group Plc headquarters in London.

Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

Some monitorships have started fairly recently.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, agreed to a corporate monitor as part of a deal with the Justice Department in 2023 in which it agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties to US agencies for violating US money-laundering regulations and trade sanctions.

Read More: Binance Pleads Guilty, Loses CZ, Pays Fines to End Legal Woes

TD also agreed to a monitor as part of its deal last year to pay $3.1 billion to authorities for failing to stop drug cartels and other criminals from money laundering.

Meanwhile, other monitorships are nearing their end. A unit of NatWest pleaded guilty in 2021 to committing fraud in Treasury markets. The monitorship is set to expire later this year.

Some monitorships haven’t yet started. RTX Corp., one of the biggest US defense contractors, has yet to receive a monitor after agreeing to a settlement last year.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Sabrina Willmer in Washington at swillmer2@bloomberg.net;
Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

David Scheer, Ben Bain

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