Don’t Ask Us to Turn In Our Own Executives, Business Lobby Warns

The Justice Department’s effort to hold individual executives accountable for corporate wrongdoing could backfire by posing conflicts that discourage cooperation from companies, the country’s biggest business lobby warned. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, in a report issued Thursday, evaluated policy changes issued by Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates last year. The changes, described in a treatise known as the Yates memo, require companies to develop evidence against their employees and turn over possible suspects in order to win leniency. In what represents the most prominent opposition to the Yates memo, the Chamber of Commerce said the government’s “all or nothing” approach to gaining cooperation creates uncertainty for businesses because there is no guarantee that compliant companies will receive a break in penalties.