The Justice Department has a pilot program that provides discounts to foreign-bribery offenders that disclose and tackle those transgressions and cooperate with the authorities.  The program, launched in April, gives a 50% discount to the bottom fine imposed under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines if companies self-disclose wrongdoing, fully cooperate with investigators and disgorge ill-gotten profits.

But Lanny Breuer, a former DOJ official and now a partner at Covington & Burling, had some issues with its component parts and with how the department is using it. Mr. Breur served as an assistant attorney general and led the division that prosecuted violators of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

According to Breuer, it’s up to the government to decide if a company’s efforts are enough to meet the program’s requirements – i.e., it’s all still discretionary.  The government doesn’t have to follow the pilot when pursuing cases, which means companies don’t know whether they will qualify, he said. “In that sense, it’s no different than it was before the pilot when I spoke as [Asst AG] trying to get companies to disclose,” said Mr. Breuer.