The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) recently announced that over $5.6 billion in False Claims Act (“FCA”) settlements and judgments had been reached during the 2021 fiscal year, with over $5 billion of those settlements coming from the healthcare industry. This year’s amount is the second largest in history,1 much of which is attributable to Purdue Pharma’s $2.8 billion settlement of allegations of submitting false claims to federal healthcare programs.2
In addition to a record year for FCA settlements, DOJ also announced a shift in its enforcement approach. In October 2021, Deputy Attorney General (“DAG”) Lisa Monaco summarized the enhanced DOJ approach as one that will take a broader view of companies’ past wrongdoing, require companies to provide more detailed information on individuals (harkening back to DOJ’s approach in years past), and allow for the broader use of monitorships. First, DOJ will take into account prior corporate misconduct when deciding the outcome for a company that is being investigated – even minor regulatory transgressions – rather than focusing only on the conduct that is the subject of the initial investigation. Second, for a company to receive credit for cooperating with DOJ, it must provide information regarding each individual involved in the activities contemplated by the investigation – not just those “substantially involved in or responsible for” alleged misconduct. Third, moving forward, there will be no presumption against corporate...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...