By KBK Partner Jeffrey Chemerinsky and KBK Associate Michael J. McCarthy (July 2026)
More than three months after the U.S. Department of Justice issued its first-ever departmentwide corporate enforcement policy March 10, the contours of its approach to corporate monitorships are becoming clearer. The policy appeared to cement last year’s shift by rewarding voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation and remediation, while signaling that independent monitors should be imposed only in limited circumstances.
Yet the anticipated wave of terminations of existing monitorships has not materialized. While the DOJ has ended certain monitorships and reporting obligations in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act space — and sought to do the same in a civil rights matter involving the Cleveland Police Department — monitors remain in place in several significant matters. The question remains how prosecutors are distinguishing between companies that can be trusted to self-remediate and those that require independent oversight.
Developments suggest four considerations that will be critical in the policy’s implementation: prospective risk, the nature of the misconduct, systemic consequences and the identity of the victim. These considerations matter because monitorships remain among the most burdensome aspects of corporate resolutions with the DOJ.
Typically imposed through plea agreements, deferred prosecution agreements or nonprosecution agreements, monitorships often require years of independent oversight and substantial commitments of capital.
The first factor is prospective risk, which is explicitly described in the policy and best exemplified by Glencore’s recent exit from two monitorships. In 2022, Glencore pled guilty to a decade-long bribery scheme involving over $100 million paid to foreign officials and to separate market manipulation charges, resulting in a net $443 million settlement and a three-year monitorship.
In March 2025, the DOJ moved to terminate that monitorship more than a year early, crediting structural reforms including upgraded internal controls, revised reporting lines and strengthened third-party due diligence, as well as demonstrated, sustained implementation over time rather than paper compliance. Glencore showed through testing, audits and remediation reports that the underlying compliance failures had been identified and operationalized in practice.
The ongoing monitorship over TD Bank presents a stark contrast. In October 2024, TD Bank pled guilty to conspiracy to fail to maintain an anti-money laundering program that is compliant with the Bank Secrecy Act, paying approximately $3.1 billion to resolve charges and agreeing to third-party oversight.
Prosecutors found that between 2014 and 2023, the bank excluded 92% of its transaction volume from automated monitoring, allowing bad actors in at least three different networks to launder hundreds of millions in illicit proceeds. Despite substantial remediation efforts by the bank since that settlement, the monitorship remains in place.
Anti-money laundering deficiencies create continuing risks that are more difficult to detect than historical misconduct, particularly because they depend on ongoing transaction monitoring and real-time detection systems that can degrade over time. The contrast between Glencore and TD Bank suggests that prosecutors are more willing to end monitoring when misconduct can reasonably be viewed as retrospective and isolated rather than a feature of ongoing business.
The nature of the misconduct also appears to matter. FCPA matters have emerged as leading candidates for monitorship retrenchment because they frequently involve conduct that is geographically remote and historically bounded, often tied to discrete business units, existing relationships or third-party intermediaries.
Such misconduct can often be addressed through targeted compliance improvements and enhanced controls, including tightened approval processes and strengthened third-party vetting.
In 2025, the DOJ’s decisions to terminate reporting obligations in FCPA-related resolutions involving Honeywell International Inc., Stericycle Inc. and Albemarle Corp. reflect a broader willingness to reduce oversight where prosecutors conclude that remediation has addressed the underlying compliance concerns such that ongoing independent oversight adds little value.
Anti-money laundering systems bring a different challenge. Unlike many foreign bribery obligations — and the cases they give rise to — anti-money laundering obligations rely on high-volume monitoring systems that must function correctly every time.
Prosecutors will therefore require a longer, validated record of compliance before concluding that independent oversight is unnecessary, particularly where prior failures suggest structural weaknesses in detection infrastructure rather than isolated incidents.
A third consideration is the likelihood of systemic consequences. Some forms of misconduct present risks extending beyond the company itself. Deficiencies in anti-money laundering programs raise concerns regarding sanctions evasion, terrorism financing, and the integrity of the financial system, particularly where large financial institutions serve as intermediaries in global payment flows.
Those broader consequences help explain why the DOJ may be reluctant to rely exclusively on a company’s own assessment of its remediation efforts. In matters implicating significant systemic risks, the value of independent validation remains comparatively high because the consequences of undetected failure extend well beyond the corporate entity to the system as a whole.
Finally, the identity of the victim appears to influence the analysis. In December 2021, Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the largest providers of privatized military housing in the U.S., pled guilty to fraud against the government, paying over $65 million in fines and restitution.
The company had falsified maintenance records and destroyed other records between 2013 and 2019 to claim performance bonuses it had not earned, leaving military families in substandard housing at installations across several states. That misconduct directly implicated core governmental interests in a way that differs from conduct occurring largely overseas or affecting diffuse commercial counterparties — as in FCPA matters.
Where the federal government is itself the victim, prosecutors will be less willing to conclude that internal remediation alone provides sufficient assurance against future misconduct.
These developments suggest that the DOJ will weigh key considerations when deciding whether oversight is necessary under the new policy. For companies, the takeaway is not that monitorships are gone but that there is a pathway to persuading the DOJ that they are not necessary.
Policy pronouncements and compliance investments alone will not suffice. Rather, companies that can demonstrate reduced future risk and show that the past misconduct was isolated and posed no systemic harm will be best positioned to argue that independent oversight does not serve a meaningful purpose.