DOJ Insider Perspectives on the Current Regulatory Landscape

Immediately after Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva's keynote at Ethicsverse Day 2026, moderator Matt Kelly of Radical Compliance convened three seasoned practitioners to debrief what had just been said. The panel featured Hui Chen, the former DOJ compliance counsel who wrote the first Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance a decade ago and now runs the consultancy CDE (Culture, Data & Ethics); Sean Tonolli, a former deputy chief of the Fraud Section, now a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel; and Matthew Axelrod, former Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the Bureau of Industry and Security, now a partner at Gibson Dunn.

The result was an unusually frank analysis. Rather than simply echo the keynote, the panel interrogated it — parsing word choices, flagging what went unsaid, mapping the shifting enforcement landscape, and challenging the reflexive rush to self-disclose. This recap moves through every thread of that conversation. For the AAG's own remarks, see the companion keynote recap.

Key Takeaways

Reading Between the Lines: What the Panel Actually Heard

Hui Chen flagged three things. First, like other officials in this administration, the AAG made clear that white-collar work is not the department's only focus — he opened with cartels, not corporate cases. Second, he called corporate enforcement a "significant" priority, pointedly not a "top" one. Third, his headline advice to compliance officers — pristine, precise writing — struck her as a curious choice: useful, but hardly the first thing she would tell the profession.
Sean Tonolli confirmed the message landed the same way internally: the administration's clarity about priorities, including the cartel focus and the America-First trade-fraud emphasis, actually made it easier to direct prosecutors, even as it forced changes in approach. He also vouched for Duva's down-to-earth, line-prosecutor authenticity and shared credit for building the flowchart.
Matthew Axelrod welcomed the AAG speaking publicly at all, noting that officials act as a "force multiplier" when they explain the government's expectations, and that such appearances have become less common under this administration.

Export Controls: Quietly "the New FCPA"

Axelrod pointed out that export-control enforcement — handled by U.S. Attorney's offices, the National Security Division, and BIS rather than the Criminal Division — remains very active, citing a recent $36 million Bosch resolution and an earlier resolution with Applied Materials exceeding $250 million.
He tied its prominence to national security: export controls exist to keep sensitive U.S. technology from reaching adversaries, aligning them squarely with the administration's stated priorities. Some in the field now call export enforcement "the new FCPA."

The New National Fraud Enforcement Division

Kelly raised a genuine source of confusion: a new National Fraud Enforcement Division standing up in parallel to the Criminal Division. The panel drew the dividing line — fraud against the public fisc (procurement fraud, trade fraud, criminal tax, and traditional healthcare and Medicare/Medicaid fraud) goes to the new division, while FCPA, securities fraud, and health-and-safety matters like Purdue Pharma stay with the Criminal Division.
Reassuringly, a uniform department-wide corporate enforcement policy issued in March applies across both divisions (antitrust aside), and the new division has absorbed compliance specialists from the Fraud Section, so the approach should stay consistent.
The panel flagged one caveat: the new division carries more direct White House and Vice President's-office involvement than has been customary, adding a political overlay companies should be aware of.

The Cartel Nexus and Heightened Risk in Mexico

On the Scoular case's claim that some bribe money benefited cartels, the panel was skeptical that the facts cleanly met the stated FCPA criteria, suggesting the department may have strained to fit the matter to its announced priorities.
The practical takeaway: the elements of an FCPA violation have not changed, and the real lesson is simply not to pay the bribe. But because cartels are now designated terrorist organizations, overall corporate enforcement risk for companies operating in parts of Mexico — where some connection to cartels can be hard to avoid — has genuinely increased, with new enforcement tools beyond the FCPA available.

How Prosecutors Really Use the Compliance Guidelines

Tonolli explained the sequence: line prosecutors first build the case against individuals, and only once there is sufficient evidence of individual crime do dedicated compliance specialists engage and dig deeply into the program.
Chen stressed that the compliance program is only about one and a half of the ten factors prosecutors weigh under the Justice Manual, and that the guidance she wrote was deliberately not a how-to for running a program — it is a tool for prosecutors to assess a program after misconduct has already occurred. Her analogy: your child-rearing bible should not be the juvenile-delinquency manual.
Axelrod pushed back respectfully, calling the guidance an "open-book exam" — you know the questions in advance, so run through them now, because doing so both reduces the odds of ending up before a prosecutor and gives you a more compelling story if you do.

The Self-Disclosure Calculus: Slow Down

Chen challenged the reflex to run straight to DOJ, reminding the audience that self-disclosure cases are the only ones anyone hears about; the many companies that chose other paths, or declined to cooperate and were never charged, remain invisible.
On timing, the panel noted DOJ has resisted defining "prompt," with the closest marker being the whistleblower provision — disclosure can still count as voluntary within 120 days — later softened to "reasonably prompt but no later than 120 days." In practice, think weeks to a few months, not a year.
Axelrod reframed the decision around one question: if the government is going to hear about it, make sure it hears about it from you first. But with fewer prosecutors and agents assigned to corporate cases, in many areas the odds of the government finding out on its own have dropped — making the internal investigation and remediation the easy call, and walking in to serve yourself up the genuinely hard one.
Chen urged companies to document their investigation, root-cause analysis, and full remediation under privilege even when they choose not to disclose, and reminded everyone that corporations, like individuals, retain rights — a company can decline to cooperate and require the government to issue a grand-jury subpoena, which is a great deal of work for stretched prosecutors. She recounted a company that over-invested in disclosing a trivial $50,000 Thailand matter that never needed to reach DOJ at all.

Individual Accountability and the Board

Holding individual wrongdoers accountable is table stakes: corporate criminal liability is vicarious, so prosecutors need evidence that at least one identified person committed a crime, and stalling on that point creates immediate friction.
Axelrod traced the individual-accountability principle to the Yates Memo — which its author calls the individual accountability memo — and noted it has survived as a through-line across administrations, with this one leaning even further toward pursuing individuals over companies.
Chen argued remediation and individual accountability are inseparable: a program enhancement without genuine root-cause analysis and organizational justice is window dressing. When senior executives are implicated, real accountability often requires the board to step in.

How to Engage the Government — Professional, Not Personal

The panel agreed the relationship with prosecutors should be professional and respectful, but not a friendship — Chen cautioned against confusing rapport with the legal realities of defending the company, and urged keeping clear boundaries.
Taking the AAG's "show up in person" advice literally, the panel advised calling ahead rather than appearing unannounced, and stressed that the compliance officer — not just outside counsel — should attend.
Whatever posture a company takes, they warned, never let disagreements over the facts become personally aggressive; the government has too much power and discretion for that to be wise.

Closing Summary

The debrief supplied the nuance the keynote could not. White-collar enforcement is a "significant" but not top priority; export controls and public-fisc fraud are ascendant; the new National Fraud Enforcement Division redraws jurisdictional lines while a uniform policy keeps the approach consistent; and the cartel designation has quietly raised the stakes for companies operating in Mexico. Most important, the panel reframed self-disclosure as a decision to be reasoned through, not a reflex — the compliance program is only a sliver of what prosecutors weigh, companies retain real rights, and stretched government resources mean the internal investigation and remediation are the easy call while walking in is the hard one. The enduring advice for compliance leaders is to run the open-book exam now — investigate, document, and remediate with discipline — so that whether or not you ever sit across from a prosecutor, you have both reduced the odds of getting there and built a story you can stand behind.