Wall Street’s top prosecutors want lawbreaking companies to hand themselves in, offering behind-closed-door deals that let them avoid being charged, fined or having full details of their fraud made public.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which secured huge fines and guilty pleas from companies such as Drexel Burnham Lambert and Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital, has been meeting big law firms and corporate advisers in recent weeks to promote its softer approach to white-collar crime.
The lenient new deals are available even in cases where alleged fraud was pervasive, caused severe harm, involved senior leaders and had already been reported in the press or by a whistleblower.
Source: Self-report fraud and walk free, New York prosecutors tell Wall Street