Key Takeaways

• Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY or the Southern District), recently announced that his office is launching a new whistleblower pilot program, geared toward encouraging individuals with information about corporate crime and public corruption to come forward.
• While Williams indicated that his office would continue to focus on corporate crime, he announced that public corruption would be one of the new enforcement priorities for prosecutors in SDNY for 2024.
• The whistleblower program follows the implementation of a number of new policies by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ or the Department) over the past year, intended to incentivize corporate voluntary self-disclosure.

Background

The newly announced whistleblower policy gives certain individuals who promptly and completely cooperate with prosecutors the opportunity to receive a non-prosecution agreement in exchange for their information. This is a first-of-its-kind formal whistleblower program by a U.S. Attorney’s Office for individuals who have participated in criminal conduct to obtain a non-prosecution disposition by qualifying for, and fulfilling the requirements of, the program. While cooperation agreements between individual defendants and prosecutors are not uncommon in the Southern District, this new policy is intended to boost self-reporting of misconduct by allowing certain criminal participants to avoid prosecution entirely. In the past, all...

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