Department Of Justice Focuses Corporate Compliance Efforts On Executive Compensation

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent plea agreement with Danske Bank demonstrates increasingly aggressive efforts to incentivize corporate compliance and hold individual executives accountable for corporate misconduct. The DOJ charged Danske Bank, a global financial institution based in Denmark, with defrauding banks in the United States. The plea agreement contains a notable provision that ties executive compensation and bonuses for the bank’s executives to future compliance efforts. The agreement follows recent statements by DOJ officials that companies will be expected to claw back compensation from executives who engage in misconduct. Corporate executives should be on notice that the DOJ is becoming increasingly aggressive in holding corporate executives personally accountable for compliance at their organizations. READ MORE