The U.S. Department of Justice recently released a comprehensive guidance document entitled “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs.” The guidance document will assist federal prosecutors to make decisions about whether and to what extent a company’s compliance program was effective for the purposes of determining (1), whether criminal charges should be filed against the company; (2), whether and in what amount a fine should be levied against the company; and (3), whether a monitor, or some other compliance obligation, should be imposed on the company. The guidance document offers valuable insight for compliance professionals and reinforces the fact that prosecutors will assign significant weight to compliance programs when determining whether to charge, fine, or impose monitorships on companies that have engaged in wrongdoing.

While noting that DOJ does not use a “rigid formula” to assess the effectiveness of a company’s compliance program, the guidance document lays out three “fundamental questions” that a prosecutor should answer: