The Trump Administration raised alarm for some and relief for others with its February 2025 announcement of a “pause” of anti-corruption prosecutions. If the last nine months are an indication, however, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) enforcement is alive and well, albeit supposedly refocused. The 180-day enforcement “pause” actually ended prematurely in June 2025, with the U.S. Department of Justice’s publication of updated FCPA guidance entitled “Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” The new Guidelines on paper describe a more targeted approach to FCPA enforcement than in the past — one that endeavors to focus on cases involving “cartels” and reduces the volume of FCPA enforcement — in line with President Trump’s February 2025 Executive Order. Other themes in the new Guidelines, however, reflect traditional DOJ practices, such as focusing on individual accountability for FCPA misconduct and pursuing foreign companies that violate the statute. Several FCPA actions announced after the Guidelines took effect raise questions about whether the new guidance will change the FCPA enforcement landscape much, if at all.
DOJ officials, such as Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti, have vowed to follow the new FCPA Guidelines. Recent enforcement actions, however, have not hit many of the Administration’s “hot buttons.” Soon after the “pause,” in August 2025, the DOJ’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts issued a letter of declination to U.S.-based Liberty Mutual Insurance Company consistent with the Criminal Division’s Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, revised in May 2025, and required the global insurance company to disgorge approximately $4.7 million in ill-gotten gains. In a separate action the Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas charged two individuals with violating the FCPA in what some have called a “garden-variety” bribery case. More recently, on October 16, 2025, the Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida indicted an election voting machine and service provider company that allegedly facilitated $1 million in bribes. Finally, two weeks ago, on October 23, 2025, a defendant in the Western District of Texas pled guilty to FCPA violations in an agreement that remains under seal.
Recent enforcement actions may not yet reflect the “shake up” envisioned by President Trump, perhaps because the actions stem from investigations that already were in DOJ’s pipeline or because of how DOJ officials are interpreting the new Guidelines. Amidst a period of uncertainty, one thing seems true — as the author and others predicted — the FCPA remains a powerful tool in the DOJ’s toolbox. Whether prosecutors are working on a newly tailored approach under the new Guidelines remains to be seen.
DOJ’s “New” Approach Towards FCPA Enforcement
The June 9, 2025 FCPA Guidelines are the culmination of Attorney General Bondi’s February 5, 2025 memo, which set forth directives and initiatives to pursue elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and President Trump’s February 10, 2025 Executive Order, which imposed the FCPA enforcement pause and directed the Attorney General to develop new guidance for FCPA enforcement. The Guidelines state that the Criminal Division aims to ensure FCPA prosecutions are “carried out in accordance with President Trump’s directive” by establishing guidance that “limit[s] undue burdens” on American companies with global operations and “target[s] enforcement actions” that protect U.S. national interests, with a focus on individuals rather than “corporate structures.”
The new Guidelines outline four non-exhaustive “Executive Order Factors” for prosecutors to consider before initiating new FCPA investigations or actions. First, prosecutors are advised to prioritize enforcement against misconduct linked to cartels or transnational criminal organizations (“TCOs”) to advance the Trump Administration’s goal of eliminating these enterprises. Next, the Guidelines direct prosecutors to consider whether the alleged misconduct undermines U.S. entities’ ability to compete in foreign markets. Third, future FCPA enforcement actions should focus on “urgent threats” to U.S. national security resulting from bribery involving “key infrastructure or assets.” Finally, prosecutors are directed to focus not on “American citizens and business” for what other nations would consider “routine business practice,” but on substantial bribe payments and serious misconduct that foreign authorities would be willing to investigate and prosecute.
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
The new Guidelines aim to recalibrate FCPA enforcement priorities to reflect the Trump Administration’s goals of advancing the “global economic competitiveness” of U.S. companies. Much of the guidance, however, describes FCPA prosecution practices already commonly practiced. As commentators have noted, notions of protecting competition and a fair market through FCPA enforcement are not new because historically corruption enforcement has advanced American business’ competitiveness in the global economy. The Guidelines’ other priorities also are nothing new. Most prior FCPA prosecutors are familiar with the focus on holding individuals accountable for FCPA misconduct, which is reflected in the number of enforcement actions the DOJ has brought against individuals versus the number brought against entities since 2018. Statistics additionally show that many of the major FCPA enforcement actions have been brought against foreign companies, even if past Administrations have not explicitly stated they were targeting such companies. National security concerns also were a focus of President Biden, who issued a memorandum directing officials to create a strategy that permits the government, among other things, to target “corrupt individuals, transnational criminal organizations, and their facilitators.”
In a procedural departure from past practice, the new Guidelines require the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division or a “more senior” Department official to authorize the initiation of any new investigation or enforcement action — apparently to ensure compliance with the updated guidance.
So far, however, the actions disclosed by the DOJ do not look much different than cases of the past. The similarity may be due to the fact that the actions thus far stem from investigations in place before the Guidelines took effect or because DOJ officials are not interpreting the new Guidelines as a radical change from past practice. The enforcement actions thus far may provide insight into how FCPA practice will look in the coming months, but only time will tell whether the new Guidelines will substantially affect enforcement in the long term.
DOJ’s Plays So Far Fall Short of Matching Playbook
The first post-Guidelines action, announced on August 11, 2025, charges two Mexican nationals lawfully living in Texas with FCPA violations for allegedly bribing officials of a Mexican state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos (“PEMEX”), in exchange for contracts with companies associated with one of the defendants. The public announcement of the charges does not reference the new Guidelines, but the press release did include references to the Administration’s goals. The release quotes Acting Assistant Attorney General Galeotti as stating that the indictment “should send a clear message” that the Criminal Division has no tolerance for conduct that undermines “the fair market.” Assistant Director Jose A. Perez of the FBI Criminal Investigation Division added to the release that “[b]ribery harms fair competition, erodes public trust, and will not be tolerated.” The PEMEX action fits within the Guidelines (and past FCPA practice) so far as misconduct is attributed to individuals, who are not U.S. citizens. The DOJ’s initial press release mentioned one of the defendant’s alleged cartel ties, but a later version removed the reference and the indictment does not tie the bribery to cartel activity. Further, $150,000 in bribes is far from the “substantial bribe payments” referenced in the Guidelines, leading commentators to note that the case is a “garden-variety” foreign corruption case that DOJ has been bringing for the past 30 years.
As far as corporate enforcement matters go, following the pause the DOJ announced two actions against businesses, which also raise questions about how the actions fit within the FCPA Guidelines. The first, announced in August, is DOJ’s investigation and issuance of a letter of declination against Liberty Mutual Insurance Company for alleged FCPA violations and details the U.S.-based company’s agreement to disgorge the approximately $4.7 million in illegal profits. The Liberty Mutual matter relates to the company’s subsidiary in India allegedly paying bribes to obtain customer referrals from state-owned banks. The declination is consistent with the DOJ’s recently revised Criminal Division’s Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (“CEP”) (May 2025), which directs the Criminal Division to decline to prosecute a company when certain factors are met and requires that the company “pay all disgorgement/forfeiture as well as restitution/victim compensation payments resulting from the misconduct at issue.” The letter issued by the Fraud Section in the Liberty Mutual matter details the company’s voluntary self-disclosure of misconduct in March 2024, its cooperation and remediation, as well as the absence of aggravating circumstances, which are the four factors that require issuance of a declination under the revised CEP. The declination may seem to let Liberty Mutual largely off the hook, but prosecutors decided to issue a declination and require $4.7 million in disgorgement rather than drop the investigation entirely. The Liberty Mutual matter comes as a surprise under the new Guidelines insofar as the company is U.S.-based and, based on publicly available information, the misconduct is unrelated to cartel activity or threats to national security. Perhaps the insurance company’s disclosure of misconduct in March 2024, and the investigation that followed, required some action from the DOJ.
In the second corporate enforcement matter brought post-pause, the DOJ took forceful action against SGO Corporation Limited, a U.K.-based company known as “Smartmatic.” On October 16, 2025, a grand jury in Miami returned a superseding indictment adding charges against Smartmatic to a case brought in August 2024 against four individuals. The case involves allegations of bribing Philippine government officials with $1 million in goods to secure contracts related to the 2016 Philippine national elections. Under Guidelines that direct prosecutors to focus on holding individuals accountable for misconduct rather than corporate entities, the indictment of Smartmatic is surprising. Perhaps this Administration’s interest in Smartmatic is driven by President Trump’s publicized hostility towards the company for allegedly manipulating votes. If this is the case, actions that do not hit every (or any) of the new Administration’s supposed hot buttons, but perhaps are politically motivated, may receive the necessary DOJ approval.
The Numbers Behind the Narrative
Apart from the types of enforcement actions initiated after the new Guidelines took effect, the quantity of FCPA corporate enforcement actions initiated or announced is also similar to that in recent years. Even though investigations were on hold from February until June, corporate enforcement numbers since the “pause” was lifted are consistent with the same time periods of past years. The number of actions disclosed also is surprising given President Trump’s criticism of prosecutors’ past use of the FCPA as “overexpansive” and “stretched beyond proper bounds.”
During the third quarter of prior years the DOJ announced one corporate resolution in 2024, two in 2023, one in 2022, none in 2021, and two in 2020. In 2021, Biden’s DOJ disclosed only two corporate enforcement actions. The last three years have hovered around a total of seven actions per year, with seven corporate enforcement actions announced in both 2022 and 2023, and eight in 2024. The fourth quarter of the past years historically has shown an uptick in corporate actions compared to earlier quarters (e.g., five corporate actions were announced in Q4 of 2024, out of eight actions overall), so the pace also may pick up in the fourth quarter of 2025. Despite President Trump’s disapproval of the FCPA in his first term, the first Trump Administration still charged an average of almost nine companies per year with FCPA violations, so the current Administration’s supposed push to reduce enforcement against companies may turn out, once again, to be more talk than action.
The Future of FCPA Enforcement
When the DOJ issued the new FCPA Guidelines in June, the legal community speculated whether prosecutors and Department officials would interpret the guidance in a way that dramatically changed FCPA enforcement. The last sixth months, however, have demonstrated that not much has changed in FCPA practice, at least insofar as what has been disclosed to the public. Perhaps the similarities between pre-Guidelines and post-Guidelines enforcement cases come from the fact that FCPA investigations take multiple years. Recent actions were likely in motion pre-“pause” under a different set of guidance. Alternatively, perhaps the recent cases signal that the DOJ is interpreting the Guidelines as not really saying anything new. Time will tell whether the FCPA-landscape will shift under the current Administration.
