DOJ to ‘Surge’ Resources at Corporate Crimes With National Security Implications

U.S. prosecutors are increasingly focusing their attention on investigating corporate crimes that have national security implications, a top Justice Department official said Monday.

“We’ve determined that it’s necessary for the department to infuse significant amounts of resources into national security, corporate investigations and prosecutions,” said Marshall Miller, principal associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, during a panel at the Practising Law Institute’s conference on white-collar crime in New York.

Miller cited the appointment, announced Monday, of the National Security Division’s first chief counsel for corporate enforcement. Ian Richardson, a former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, will coordinate and oversee the prosecution of corporate crime relating to U.S. national security. 

The Justice Department’s national security division is in the process of hiring 25 new prosecutors who will be tasked with tackling sanctions evasion and export control violations, with additional resources being added to the money-laundering-and-asset-recovery section’s bank integrity unit. The hires were announced in March.

“It’s a big issue for the department,” said Miller. “We’re surging resources at it. As a result, I think you’re going to see more and more of those cases going forward in a partnership between the national security division, the criminal division and our great U.S. attorney community.”

Prosecutors in recent years have seen more national security investigations uncovering corporate misconduct and more corporate investigations revealing potential national security violations, including violations of sanctions, export controls and material support for terrorism.

In 2022, French cement firm Lafarge pleaded guilty to paying Islamic State and an al Qaeda affiliate to protect its Syrian cement plant, and earlier this year, British American Tobacco agreed to pay more than $635 million to resolve charges that the U.K. tobacco company conspired to violate U.S. sanctions by selling cigarettes to North Korea.

“Agriculture and concrete are not areas like financial services or defense industries where you expect to see national security corporate cases,” Miller said. “But we’re seeing them more and more.”

Miller said the U.S. could increase its emphasis on trade secret issues involving China, citing the formation of the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, a partnership between the Justice Department and Commerce Department that focuses on areas where technology is being illegally obtained by foreign adversaries. 

“We’re looking at all kinds of different ways that that’s happening, from cybercrime, to export control violations to intellectual property crime,” Miller said. 

Write to David Smagalla at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
Marshall Miller serves as principal associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department. A subheading in an earlier version of this article incorrectly said he was the deputy attorney general. (Corrected on Sept. 11)