by Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets, Andrew Levine and José Jesús Martínez III
From left to right: Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets, Andrew Levine and José Jesús Martínez III. Photos courtesy of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
On August 13, 2026, Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division (the “Fraud Division”), issued the first memorandum outlining the enforcement priorities and organizational structure of the Fraud Division (the “Memorandum”). Based on the Memorandum, DOJ intends for the Fraud Division to become a significant new enforcement component, with a broad mandate, substantial resources, and an emphasis on data-driven investigations.[1] DOJ published a final rule on August 18, 2026 (effective on August 24) that codified the Fraud Division’s jurisdiction and reassigned to it specified fraud authorities that had been the purview of DOJ’s Criminal Division.[2]
DOJ established the Fraud Unit in April as a new unit that centralized fraud enforcement, but left unanswered important questions about its scope, resources, and relationship with existing DOJ components.[3] Four months later, with the Memorandum and the related rule, DOJ has begun to answer some of those questions.
The Fraud Division will incorporate approximately 500 attorneys and staff, including specialized prosecutors, investigators, asset recovery personnel, corporate enforcement experts, and data scientists. DOJ intends to deploy its personnel nationwide in coordination with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other agencies. It also plans to grow the Fraud Division over the next two years. As a result, companies should expect DOJ to have greater capacity to identify potential misconduct proactively and to pursue matters that cross traditional subject matter and span multiple U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.
The Criminal Division’s longstanding Fraud Section recently was renamed the White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section (the “White Collar Section”). The renamed Section retains the FCPA Unit along with other areas of private sector white collar enforcement. The restructuring raises two related questions for companies, which we address below. First, where will the increasingly well-resourced Fraud Division concentrate its attention? Second, what does the FCPA Unit’s position look like within a smaller, more narrowly focused White Collar Section?
Centralized Fraud Enforcement in the Digital Era
The Memorandum suggests that DOJ views the creation of the Fraud Division as a significant reorganization, characterizing its initial efforts as the beginning of a “sea change” in federal fraud enforcement. The Division’s structure includes specialized sections tackling subject matters including public trust and financial integrity; health care fraud; tax; global trade and commerce; and corporate misconduct.
Likewise, the Memorandum’s emphasis on data analytics signals that DOJ intends to mine large-scale government and commercial data for statistical red flags in addition to relying on whistleblower complaints and other sources. DOJ’s National Fraud Detection Center, located within the Fraud Division, will parse through cross-agency data systems to identify fraud in government programs.
Prosecutors in the Fraud Division will have access to dedicated investigators, appellate counsel, corporate enforcement specialists, automated litigation support, data scientists, and other technological capabilities to identify fraud.
For companies, two aspects of these developments are particularly noteworthy. First, DOJ is investing in its ability to develop investigations from government-held data. The Department describes the Fraud Division’s mission as including the use of advanced data-driven investigative techniques and coordination with agencies administering taxpayer-funded programs. It also includes development of systems to facilitate the identification and investigation of fraud. Companies operating in data-rich regulated environments, particularly government contracting, health care, customs, and trade, should expect that DOJ increasingly will compare government-held information across programs and agencies to identify potential misconduct.
“For companies, two aspects of these developments are particularly noteworthy. First, DOJ is investing in its ability to develop investigations from government-held data…. Second, the new structure may facilitate investigations that touch upon multiple traditional enforcement categories.”
Second, the new structure may facilitate investigations that touch upon multiple traditional enforcement categories. For example, the same conduct may implicate procurement representations, improper payments, customs declarations, sanctions restrictions, tax consequences, and money laundering. By bringing multiple substantive enforcement functions, analytics capabilities, and asset recovery resources within a single Division, DOJ appears intent on reducing institutional barriers to pursuing these issues in a more integrated manner. This is likely to be especially important for companies with internal compliance functions that are siloed by specific subject-matter areas.
Five Broad Enforcement Priorities
The Memorandum identifies five principal enforcement priorities, several of which carry particular implications for multinational companies and anti-corruption practitioners. Those five priorities are: (1) public trust and financial integrity, including government procurement and benefits fraud; (2) global trade and commerce, including customs and trade fraud; (3) health care fraud; (4) internal revenue (tax) fraud; and (5) corporate misconduct.
DOJ identifies government procurement fraud as a “critical priority,” citing defective pricing, bid rigging, self-dealing, bribery, product substitution, and billing fraud. The Fraud Division also will focus on fraud involving government benefits and grant programs and other conduct that misuses taxpayer funds. Companies that contract with the U.S. government or receive federal funding should weigh their enforcement exposure. This is particularly true with respect to corruption issues that may appear in tandem with fraud. A payment made to influence a public procurement decision, for example, may present bribery issues while the surrounding procurement conduct may raise separate fraud, antitrust, or money laundering concerns. Any government-facing misconduct should be assessed through more than an anti-corruption lens. Internal investigations involving tenders, certifications, government pricing, or public funds should consider at an early stage the range of enforcement exposure that the same fact pattern may implicate.
The Fraud Division also will lead DOJ’s coordinated criminal enforcement strategy concerning customs and trade violations and supply chains involving forced labor. Through the Trade Fraud Task Force, DOJ will seek to identify illicit transfers of goods, country-of-origin fraud, undervaluation to evade duties, sanctions evasion, and foreign forced-labor schemes. This continues DOJ’s increasing emphasis on trade fraud and related national security concerns. In appropriate cases, the Fraud Division will work in parallel with DOJ’s Civil Division, which enforces tariff evasion and other forms of fraud on the federal government through the False Claims Act, among other civil statutes.
The Fraud Division’s focus on trade fraud also creates important points of intersection with anti-corruption compliance. Customs brokers, freight forwarders, and other intermediaries can create third-party corruption risk. Customs interactions often involve foreign government officials, and efforts to circumvent duties, origin requirements, or sanctions may involve payments, false documentation, or other conduct that yields multiple bases for enforcement.
Health care enforcement also will form a major part of the new Division’s focus. DOJ intends to use analytics in matters involving Medicare and Medicaid, controlled substances, telemedicine, home health and hospice services, and deceptive marketing. Tax enforcement likewise will remain a priority, with prosecutors targeting fraudulent return preparation, concealment of income, and abusive tax schemes and use tax offenses alongside other fraud charges as appropriate. This reflects the Division’s broader emphasis on pursuing misconduct across traditional enforcement categories rather than within a single regulatory space.
The Memorandum also makes clear that the Fraud Division’s emphasis on fraud involving taxpayer dollars includes corporate enforcement. The Memorandum observes that the Division already has a “strong pipeline of ongoing corporate matters” and that the Division will prioritize anti-fraud corporate enforcement.
The Division includes a dedicated Corporate Enforcement Section, and the Memorandum reiterates DOJ’s commitment to rewarding companies that voluntarily self-disclose, cooperate, and remediate.
There is already some evidence of what that approach may look like. On July 29, 2026, the Fraud Division declined to prosecute Campus Eye Management Holdings, LLC and its subsidiary for alleged health care fraud and kickbacks in light of the companies’ voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation pursuant to DOJ’s Department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy. DOJ simultaneously indicted the companies’ former CEO and founder on seven counts of health care fraud and Anti-Kickback Statute violations arising from the same conduct, underscoring that a corporate declination does not extend to culpable individuals.[4] The matter marked the first time that DOJ declined to prosecute a health care company under the Department-wide policy and illustrates that the Fraud Division will not only prosecute individual fraud schemes but also handle corporate resolutions and declinations under DOJ’s broader corporate enforcement framework.
Potential Implications for FCPA Enforcement
The recent changes transfer significant enforcement responsibilities from the Criminal Division’s White Collar Section to the new Fraud Division, but do not reference the FCPA. FCPA and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (“FEPA”) matters continue to be handled by the Criminal Division’s FCPA Unit, which is part of the newly-renamed White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section.[5] Beyond the FCPA Unit, that Section retains the Health & Safety Unit, the Securities, Market, and Private Fraud Unit, and the Filter and Special Projects Unit. It also includes the Corporate Enforcement and Compliance Unit, which is responsible for all aspects of the Section’s corporate criminal enforcement practice, including advising prosecuting teams on the compliance elements of corporate resolutions, evaluating companies’ compliance programs against DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs framework, and helping draft key corporate enforcement policy documents. Thus, although the new Fraud Division represents a substantial new locus of white-collar enforcement, not all corporate enforcement has migrated from the Criminal Division.
Nevertheless, the number of prosecutors in the FCPA Unit declined from 32 in 2024 to 22 in 2025, according to a DOJ report, and reports indicate that this decline has continued in 2026.[6] That reduction occurred alongside the broader recalibration of FCPA enforcement. DOJ’s June 2025 FCPA Guidelines directed prosecutors to focus on matters implicating specified U.S. national interests, including activities involving cartels and transnational criminal organizations, harm to U.S. companies, national security interests, and substantial bribery schemes.[7] Although the combination of reduced personnel and more targeted enforcement criteria suggests that the FCPA Unit likely will not return to earlier enforcement levels in the near term, DOJ is seeking to replenish the FCPA Unit’s ranks, at least to some extent: a June 23, 2026 vacancy announcement sought trial attorneys for the FCPA Unit.[8]
The restructuring may also create a clearer distinction: the Fraud Division will emphasize taxpayer-funded and public fisc fraud, while the White Collar Section will continue to be responsible for private sector financial crime and FCPA matters. Within that private-sector remit, the Securities, Market, and Private Fraud Unit retains a broad docket spanning securities, market manipulation, and investment fraud, while the FCPA Unit has updated priorities and thinned ranks. This division of labor is not, however, ironclad. The Fraud Division and the Criminal Division retain concurrent authority over a range of fraud matters. Companies whose conduct involves both a government-funded program and a foreign-bribery angle may grapple with the logistics and sequencing of voluntary disclosure.
The Department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy contemplates disclosure to the “appropriate” DOJ component but does not resolve how the appropriate component should be identified if a matter plausibly implicates both the Fraud Division’s and the FCPA Unit’s mandates.
Key Takeaways
The recent changes to DOJ’s fraud enforcement structure and priorities suggest several notable developments in white collar enforcement:
- DOJ is backing its fraud enforcement priorities with substantial resources. The Fraud Division is expected to have approximately 500 attorneys and staff, with further growth planned, dedicated subject-matter sections, and significant data-analytics capabilities. The scale of that investment suggests that the Division’s identified priorities will remain a focus of enforcement activity.
- DOJ’s expanded detection capabilities may increase pressure on companies to identify and assess misconduct quickly. The National Fraud Detection Center, data analytics, and increased interagency information sharing may allow DOJ to identify potential misconduct without relying on whistleblowers, corporate disclosures, or other traditional leads. These capabilities are likely to affect how quickly companies would need to assess potential misconduct. This is especially true if they want the option to be able to make a qualifying voluntary self-disclosure.
- DOJ’s restructuring may increase coordination across enforcement areas. The Fraud Division combines responsibilities for government procurement, global trade and customs, tax, and corporate misconduct, among other areas. Conduct involving these areas also may implicate corruption, sanctions, money laundering, or other offenses, making the allocation and coordination of overlapping DOJ investigations an important issue to watch.
- The effect of DOJ’s restructuring on FCPA enforcement remains uncertain. The FCPA Unit has fewer prosecutors than in the recent past but remains a distinct unit in the newly renamed White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section. The FCPA Unit may emerge from the restructuring smaller in absolute terms but more central to a Criminal Division reduced portfolio that is increasingly concentrated on private-sector white collar enforcement.
[1] Memorandum from Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney General, National Fraud Enforcement Division, The Fraud Division’s Enforcement Priorities (Aug. 13, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1457756/dl; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald Issues Memorandum on the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s Enforcement Priorities (Aug. 13, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/assistant-attorney-general-colin-m-mcdonald-issues-memorandum-national-fraud-enforcement.
[2] Establishing the National Fraud Enforcement Division, 91 Fed. Reg. 53357 (Aug. 18, 2026) (codified at 28 C.F.R. §§ 0.55, 0.70–71).
[3] Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, DOJ Establishes National Fraud Enforcement Division to Centralize and Expand Fraud Enforcement (Apr. 13, 2026), https://www.debevoise.com/insights/publications/2026/04/doj-establishes-national-fraud-enforcement-div.
[4] See U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Fraud Division Resolves Fraud Investigation of Eye Care Group Under New Corporate Enforcement Policy; Health Care Executive Charged for Alleged Fraud and Kickbacks (July 29, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fraud-division-resolves-fraud-investigation-eye-care-group-under-new-corporate-enforcement.
[5] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit, https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act (last updated Aug. 18, 2026).
[6] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section Year in Review 2025, at 12 (Jan. 2026), https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1425226/dl; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section Year in Review 2024, at 12 (Jan. 2025), https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1385111/dl; see also Gaspard Le Dem & Mark Taylor, FCPA Unit Loses Star Trio as Ranks Thin, Global Investigations Review (June 17, 2026), https://globalinvestigationsreview.com/just-anti-corruption/article/fcpa-unit-loses-star-trio-ranks-thin.
[7] Memorandum from Todd Blanche, Deputy Att’y Gen., Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) (June 9, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/dag/media/1403031/dl; see also Andrew M. Levine, et al., DOJ Issues FCPA Enforcement Guidelines, Focusing on Conduct Harming U.S. Economic and National Security Interests, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (June 2025), https://www.debevoise.com/insights/publications/2025/06/doj-issues-fcpa-enforcement-guidelines-focusing.
[8] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division Trial Attorney Vacancy Announcement (June 23, 2026), https://www.usajobs.gov/job/874061900.
Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets and Andrew Levine are Partners, and José Jesús Martínez III is an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. This post originally appeared as an FCPA Update on the firm’s website.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within all posts are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) or of the New York University School of Law. PCCE makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness and validity or any statements made on this site and will not be liable any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author(s) and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with the author(s).
by Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets, Andrew Levine and José Jesús Martínez III
From left to right: Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets, Andrew Levine and José Jesús Martínez III. Photos courtesy of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
On August 13, 2026, Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division (the “Fraud Division”), issued the first memorandum outlining the enforcement priorities and organizational structure of the Fraud Division (the “Memorandum”). Based on the Memorandum, DOJ intends for the Fraud Division to become a significant new enforcement component, with a broad mandate, substantial resources, and an emphasis on data-driven investigations.[1] DOJ published a final rule on August 18, 2026 (effective on August 24) that codified the Fraud Division’s jurisdiction and reassigned to it specified fraud authorities that had been the purview of DOJ’s Criminal Division.[2]
DOJ established the Fraud Unit in April as a new unit that centralized fraud enforcement, but left unanswered important questions about its scope, resources, and relationship with existing DOJ components.[3] Four months later, with the Memorandum and the related rule, DOJ has begun to answer some of those questions.
The Fraud Division will incorporate approximately 500 attorneys and staff, including specialized prosecutors, investigators, asset recovery personnel, corporate enforcement experts, and data scientists. DOJ intends to deploy its personnel nationwide in coordination with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other agencies. It also plans to grow the Fraud Division over the next two years. As a result, companies should expect DOJ to have greater capacity to identify potential misconduct proactively and to pursue matters that cross traditional subject matter and span multiple U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.
The Criminal Division’s longstanding Fraud Section recently was renamed the White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section (the “White Collar Section”). The renamed Section retains the FCPA Unit along with other areas of private sector white collar enforcement. The restructuring raises two related questions for companies, which we address below. First, where will the increasingly well-resourced Fraud Division concentrate its attention? Second, what does the FCPA Unit’s position look like within a smaller, more narrowly focused White Collar Section?
Centralized Fraud Enforcement in the Digital Era
The Memorandum suggests that DOJ views the creation of the Fraud Division as a significant reorganization, characterizing its initial efforts as the beginning of a “sea change” in federal fraud enforcement. The Division’s structure includes specialized sections tackling subject matters including public trust and financial integrity; health care fraud; tax; global trade and commerce; and corporate misconduct.
Likewise, the Memorandum’s emphasis on data analytics signals that DOJ intends to mine large-scale government and commercial data for statistical red flags in addition to relying on whistleblower complaints and other sources. DOJ’s National Fraud Detection Center, located within the Fraud Division, will parse through cross-agency data systems to identify fraud in government programs.
Prosecutors in the Fraud Division will have access to dedicated investigators, appellate counsel, corporate enforcement specialists, automated litigation support, data scientists, and other technological capabilities to identify fraud.
For companies, two aspects of these developments are particularly noteworthy. First, DOJ is investing in its ability to develop investigations from government-held data. The Department describes the Fraud Division’s mission as including the use of advanced data-driven investigative techniques and coordination with agencies administering taxpayer-funded programs. It also includes development of systems to facilitate the identification and investigation of fraud. Companies operating in data-rich regulated environments, particularly government contracting, health care, customs, and trade, should expect that DOJ increasingly will compare government-held information across programs and agencies to identify potential misconduct.
“For companies, two aspects of these developments are particularly noteworthy. First, DOJ is investing in its ability to develop investigations from government-held data…. Second, the new structure may facilitate investigations that touch upon multiple traditional enforcement categories.”
Second, the new structure may facilitate investigations that touch upon multiple traditional enforcement categories. For example, the same conduct may implicate procurement representations, improper payments, customs declarations, sanctions restrictions, tax consequences, and money laundering. By bringing multiple substantive enforcement functions, analytics capabilities, and asset recovery resources within a single Division, DOJ appears intent on reducing institutional barriers to pursuing these issues in a more integrated manner. This is likely to be especially important for companies with internal compliance functions that are siloed by specific subject-matter areas.
Five Broad Enforcement Priorities
The Memorandum identifies five principal enforcement priorities, several of which carry particular implications for multinational companies and anti-corruption practitioners. Those five priorities are: (1) public trust and financial integrity, including government procurement and benefits fraud; (2) global trade and commerce, including customs and trade fraud; (3) health care fraud; (4) internal revenue (tax) fraud; and (5) corporate misconduct.
DOJ identifies government procurement fraud as a “critical priority,” citing defective pricing, bid rigging, self-dealing, bribery, product substitution, and billing fraud. The Fraud Division also will focus on fraud involving government benefits and grant programs and other conduct that misuses taxpayer funds. Companies that contract with the U.S. government or receive federal funding should weigh their enforcement exposure. This is particularly true with respect to corruption issues that may appear in tandem with fraud. A payment made to influence a public procurement decision, for example, may present bribery issues while the surrounding procurement conduct may raise separate fraud, antitrust, or money laundering concerns. Any government-facing misconduct should be assessed through more than an anti-corruption lens. Internal investigations involving tenders, certifications, government pricing, or public funds should consider at an early stage the range of enforcement exposure that the same fact pattern may implicate.
The Fraud Division also will lead DOJ’s coordinated criminal enforcement strategy concerning customs and trade violations and supply chains involving forced labor. Through the Trade Fraud Task Force, DOJ will seek to identify illicit transfers of goods, country-of-origin fraud, undervaluation to evade duties, sanctions evasion, and foreign forced-labor schemes. This continues DOJ’s increasing emphasis on trade fraud and related national security concerns. In appropriate cases, the Fraud Division will work in parallel with DOJ’s Civil Division, which enforces tariff evasion and other forms of fraud on the federal government through the False Claims Act, among other civil statutes.
The Fraud Division’s focus on trade fraud also creates important points of intersection with anti-corruption compliance. Customs brokers, freight forwarders, and other intermediaries can create third-party corruption risk. Customs interactions often involve foreign government officials, and efforts to circumvent duties, origin requirements, or sanctions may involve payments, false documentation, or other conduct that yields multiple bases for enforcement.
Health care enforcement also will form a major part of the new Division’s focus. DOJ intends to use analytics in matters involving Medicare and Medicaid, controlled substances, telemedicine, home health and hospice services, and deceptive marketing. Tax enforcement likewise will remain a priority, with prosecutors targeting fraudulent return preparation, concealment of income, and abusive tax schemes and use tax offenses alongside other fraud charges as appropriate. This reflects the Division’s broader emphasis on pursuing misconduct across traditional enforcement categories rather than within a single regulatory space.
The Memorandum also makes clear that the Fraud Division’s emphasis on fraud involving taxpayer dollars includes corporate enforcement. The Memorandum observes that the Division already has a “strong pipeline of ongoing corporate matters” and that the Division will prioritize anti-fraud corporate enforcement.
The Division includes a dedicated Corporate Enforcement Section, and the Memorandum reiterates DOJ’s commitment to rewarding companies that voluntarily self-disclose, cooperate, and remediate.
There is already some evidence of what that approach may look like. On July 29, 2026, the Fraud Division declined to prosecute Campus Eye Management Holdings, LLC and its subsidiary for alleged health care fraud and kickbacks in light of the companies’ voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation pursuant to DOJ’s Department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy. DOJ simultaneously indicted the companies’ former CEO and founder on seven counts of health care fraud and Anti-Kickback Statute violations arising from the same conduct, underscoring that a corporate declination does not extend to culpable individuals.[4] The matter marked the first time that DOJ declined to prosecute a health care company under the Department-wide policy and illustrates that the Fraud Division will not only prosecute individual fraud schemes but also handle corporate resolutions and declinations under DOJ’s broader corporate enforcement framework.
Potential Implications for FCPA Enforcement
The recent changes transfer significant enforcement responsibilities from the Criminal Division’s White Collar Section to the new Fraud Division, but do not reference the FCPA. FCPA and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (“FEPA”) matters continue to be handled by the Criminal Division’s FCPA Unit, which is part of the newly-renamed White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section.[5] Beyond the FCPA Unit, that Section retains the Health & Safety Unit, the Securities, Market, and Private Fraud Unit, and the Filter and Special Projects Unit. It also includes the Corporate Enforcement and Compliance Unit, which is responsible for all aspects of the Section’s corporate criminal enforcement practice, including advising prosecuting teams on the compliance elements of corporate resolutions, evaluating companies’ compliance programs against DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs framework, and helping draft key corporate enforcement policy documents. Thus, although the new Fraud Division represents a substantial new locus of white-collar enforcement, not all corporate enforcement has migrated from the Criminal Division.
Nevertheless, the number of prosecutors in the FCPA Unit declined from 32 in 2024 to 22 in 2025, according to a DOJ report, and reports indicate that this decline has continued in 2026.[6] That reduction occurred alongside the broader recalibration of FCPA enforcement. DOJ’s June 2025 FCPA Guidelines directed prosecutors to focus on matters implicating specified U.S. national interests, including activities involving cartels and transnational criminal organizations, harm to U.S. companies, national security interests, and substantial bribery schemes.[7] Although the combination of reduced personnel and more targeted enforcement criteria suggests that the FCPA Unit likely will not return to earlier enforcement levels in the near term, DOJ is seeking to replenish the FCPA Unit’s ranks, at least to some extent: a June 23, 2026 vacancy announcement sought trial attorneys for the FCPA Unit.[8]
The restructuring may also create a clearer distinction: the Fraud Division will emphasize taxpayer-funded and public fisc fraud, while the White Collar Section will continue to be responsible for private sector financial crime and FCPA matters. Within that private-sector remit, the Securities, Market, and Private Fraud Unit retains a broad docket spanning securities, market manipulation, and investment fraud, while the FCPA Unit has updated priorities and thinned ranks. This division of labor is not, however, ironclad. The Fraud Division and the Criminal Division retain concurrent authority over a range of fraud matters. Companies whose conduct involves both a government-funded program and a foreign-bribery angle may grapple with the logistics and sequencing of voluntary disclosure.
The Department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy contemplates disclosure to the “appropriate” DOJ component but does not resolve how the appropriate component should be identified if a matter plausibly implicates both the Fraud Division’s and the FCPA Unit’s mandates.
Key Takeaways
The recent changes to DOJ’s fraud enforcement structure and priorities suggest several notable developments in white collar enforcement:
- DOJ is backing its fraud enforcement priorities with substantial resources. The Fraud Division is expected to have approximately 500 attorneys and staff, with further growth planned, dedicated subject-matter sections, and significant data-analytics capabilities. The scale of that investment suggests that the Division’s identified priorities will remain a focus of enforcement activity.
- DOJ’s expanded detection capabilities may increase pressure on companies to identify and assess misconduct quickly. The National Fraud Detection Center, data analytics, and increased interagency information sharing may allow DOJ to identify potential misconduct without relying on whistleblowers, corporate disclosures, or other traditional leads. These capabilities are likely to affect how quickly companies would need to assess potential misconduct. This is especially true if they want the option to be able to make a qualifying voluntary self-disclosure.
- DOJ’s restructuring may increase coordination across enforcement areas. The Fraud Division combines responsibilities for government procurement, global trade and customs, tax, and corporate misconduct, among other areas. Conduct involving these areas also may implicate corruption, sanctions, money laundering, or other offenses, making the allocation and coordination of overlapping DOJ investigations an important issue to watch.
- The effect of DOJ’s restructuring on FCPA enforcement remains uncertain. The FCPA Unit has fewer prosecutors than in the recent past but remains a distinct unit in the newly renamed White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section. The FCPA Unit may emerge from the restructuring smaller in absolute terms but more central to a Criminal Division reduced portfolio that is increasingly concentrated on private-sector white collar enforcement.
[1] Memorandum from Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney General, National Fraud Enforcement Division, The Fraud Division’s Enforcement Priorities (Aug. 13, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1457756/dl; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald Issues Memorandum on the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s Enforcement Priorities (Aug. 13, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/assistant-attorney-general-colin-m-mcdonald-issues-memorandum-national-fraud-enforcement.
[2] Establishing the National Fraud Enforcement Division, 91 Fed. Reg. 53357 (Aug. 18, 2026) (codified at 28 C.F.R. §§ 0.55, 0.70–71).
[3] Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, DOJ Establishes National Fraud Enforcement Division to Centralize and Expand Fraud Enforcement (Apr. 13, 2026), https://www.debevoise.com/insights/publications/2026/04/doj-establishes-national-fraud-enforcement-div.
[4] See U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Fraud Division Resolves Fraud Investigation of Eye Care Group Under New Corporate Enforcement Policy; Health Care Executive Charged for Alleged Fraud and Kickbacks (July 29, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fraud-division-resolves-fraud-investigation-eye-care-group-under-new-corporate-enforcement.
[5] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit, https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act (last updated Aug. 18, 2026).
[6] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section Year in Review 2025, at 12 (Jan. 2026), https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1425226/dl; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section Year in Review 2024, at 12 (Jan. 2025), https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1385111/dl; see also Gaspard Le Dem & Mark Taylor, FCPA Unit Loses Star Trio as Ranks Thin, Global Investigations Review (June 17, 2026), https://globalinvestigationsreview.com/just-anti-corruption/article/fcpa-unit-loses-star-trio-ranks-thin.
[7] Memorandum from Todd Blanche, Deputy Att’y Gen., Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) (June 9, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/dag/media/1403031/dl; see also Andrew M. Levine, et al., DOJ Issues FCPA Enforcement Guidelines, Focusing on Conduct Harming U.S. Economic and National Security Interests, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (June 2025), https://www.debevoise.com/insights/publications/2025/06/doj-issues-fcpa-enforcement-guidelines-focusing.
[8] U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Criminal Division Trial Attorney Vacancy Announcement (June 23, 2026), https://www.usajobs.gov/job/874061900.
Douglas Zolkind, Jane Shvets and Andrew Levine are Partners, and José Jesús Martínez III is an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. This post originally appeared as an FCPA Update on the firm’s website.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within all posts are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) or of the New York University School of Law. PCCE makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness and validity or any statements made on this site and will not be liable any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author(s) and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with the author(s).
