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The Morning Risk Report: Justice Department Prepping Single Policy for All Corporate Criminal Cases

By Richard Vanderford | Dow Jones Risk Journal

 

Good morning. The Justice Department will soon announce a new policy intended to unify its approach to all corporate criminal cases, Risk Journal's Max Fillion reports.

“I expect to issue a single corporate enforcement policy that will apply to criminal cases across the entire department,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a speech at a legal conference in National Harbor, Md., on Thursday.

  • Policy divergence: The Justice Department is made up of separate divisions devoted to a specific subject—antitrust, environmental or tax and sanctions evasion, for example—and each has its own policies for prosecuting corporate criminal behavior, which differ to varying degrees from one another. The policies in part dictate how harshly prosecutors will treat a corporation that voluntarily self-discloses misconduct previously unknown to the department.
     
  • Following the fraud lawyers: The department’s criminal division, which handles fraud, money-laundering and foreign-bribery cases, issued an updated policy for corporate criminal enforcement in May. The coming policy is intended to build on the success of the criminal division, Blanche said.
     
  • Fewer monitors: Blanche also echoed previous department signaling that he intends for the Justice Department to cut down on the use of outside corporate compliance monitorships, which it sometimes imposes to help companies reform their compliance programs in the wake of egregious misconduct.
 
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What appears to be an updated stance taken by regulators on setting new rules this year will likely position firms to revisit AI adoption, risk management, and new product offerings as they head into 2026. Read More

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Compliance

Netflix has submitted a mostly cash bid.  Mario Tama/Getty Images

Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix enter exclusive deal negotiations.

Warner Bros. Discovery has entered exclusive negotiations for a deal to sell its studios and HBO Max streaming business to Netflix, a combination that would reshape the entertainment and media industry, according to people familiar with the matter.

Warner’s move to exclusive talks with Netflix comes after the latest round of bids for the media company known for Superman and the Harry Potter movies. Paramount had sought to buy the entire company, including cable networks such as CNN, TNT and TBS, while Comcast was pursuing the studios and HBO Max streaming business.

Paramount earlier criticized Netflix’s bid in a letter to Warner Discovery’s lawyers, saying a sale to the streamer would likely “never close” because of potential regulatory challenges here and abroad, given its global dominance.

 

U.S. fines company tied to sanctioned oligarch.

The U.S. has fined an entity tied to Oleg Deripaska $7.1 million for allegedly violating sanctions imposed on the Russian oligarch, Risk Journal reports.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday said it imposed the fine on Gracetown, a company that managed Deripaska’s luxury real estate in New York and Washington, D.C.

 ‏‏‎ ‎
  • Halozyme was granted a preliminary injunction that would prevent Merck & Co. from distributing a formulation of Keytruda in Germany as part of a patent-infringement dispute over the cancer treatment.
     
  • David Gentile, the GPB Capital founder freed from federal prison last week by President Trump, might also avoid forfeiting about $15.6 million sought by prosecutors following his conviction on criminal fraud and conspiracy charges involving more than $1.7 billion and 17,000 private-equity investors.
     
  • The European Union fined Elon Musk’s X platform about $140 million for what it sees as breaches of the bloc’s landmark digital content law, the first ever penalty it has handed out under the legislation.
     
  • The European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into whether Meta Platforms’ rules governing AI developers’ access to the WhatsApp messaging platform hurt competition.
     
  • Dutch authorities arrested two men and searched multiple business premises and homes as part of an investigation into alleged violations of Russia sanctions.
     
  • President Trump is tightening work permits for migrants in an expansion of his crackdown on legal immigration.
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$2.1 Billion

The amount of ransomware payments made between 2022 and 2024, according to an analysis by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

 

Risk

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky met with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris this week. Photo: Stephane de Sakutin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

European leaders warn Zelensky to be wary in U.S. high-speed push for peace.

In recent days, European leaders have delivered a stark warning to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Don’t give in to Russian demands without ironclad security commitments from the U.S.

The message reflects European leaders’ growing wariness of Washington’s high-speed effort to reach a peace deal that has left them on the sidelines.

  • Drones Fight Other Drones in the Battle for Ukraine’s Skies
 

Putin and Modi deepen relationship that has drawn Trump’s anger.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is embarking on a high-profile visit to India, aiming to protect a partnership that is a crucial economic and diplomatic lifeline for Moscow but one that has drawn the ire of the Trump administration.

Putin arrived in New Delhi Thursday evening for a two-day summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which the Russian president is expected to offer cheap oil and Russia’s latest arms in an effort to bolster the longstanding relationship between the two powers.

 
  • President Trump has issued a new national-security strategy that sharply criticizes the “unrealistic expectations” of European leaders for settling the war in Ukraine and calls for an end to NATO expansion.
     
  • Singapore’s financial regulator criticized banks and financial institutions for doing a poor job supervising financial advisers, specifically those with unclean financial records, such as unpaid debts or past misconduct.
 ‏‏‎ ‎

“The question isn’t whether our entrepreneurs have the capacity to reinvigorate our capital markets, but whether regulators have the will...I am pleased to report we do..”

— Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins.
 

What Else Matters

  • Activist investor Elliott Investment Management is close to striking a settlement agreement with beverage and snacks giant PepsiCo, after taking a big stake in the company in September, according to people familiar with the matter.
     
  • A grand jury on Thursday declined to approve a new indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, days after the first one was dismissed, people familiar with the matter said.
     
  • The European Union expects to launch the formal bidding process for artificial-intelligence gigafactories early next year as the bloc seeks to catch up with the U.S. in the AI race.
     
  • Target is testing new fulfillment models for overnight delivery of online orders as one of the country’s largest retailers works to turn around a yearslong sales slump.
     
  • A Chinese entrepreneur saw IP addresses as Africa’s great untapped resource, but his attempt to cash in on them brought chaos.
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About Us

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

You can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editor David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com.

 
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