ICAR Condemns Trump Administration Efforts to Further Limit Accountability for Corruption

(March 18 | Washington, D.C.) – Prosecutors in the Department of Justice’s Public Corruption Unit have been informed that the unit will be significantly reduced in size. Most lawyers in the public corruption unit, which is responsible for prosecuting, among other things, fraud and public corruption, will be cut. The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) strongly condemns this action. 

This decision to cut down the unit charged with handling the department’s most politically sensitive cases and broadly maintaining ‘public integrity’ is another sign of the Trump Administration’s determination to dismantle the guardrails which hold businesses and the federal government accountable. If these changes go through, the public corruption unit would merely play a consulting role and lose any ability to hold control over public corruption and election-related cases would become decentralized and spread across U.S. attorneys’ offices all over the country.

The U.S. government has a long history of addressing and limiting corruption, but this progress is now being reversed under the current administration. These cuts are the next in a line of actions the Trump Administration has taken since it began that have undercut established checks on corruption. Recently, the Trump Administration signed an executive order which paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). These proposed cuts to the Justice Department’s public corruption unit would further diminish the government’s ability to enforce the FCPA in the future.

This decision to make extensive cuts to the personnel and scope of authority of the public corruption unit is another example of this administration gutting an important mechanism for limiting corporate power. The lack of a central unit in Washington to prosecute corruption and handle the most politically sensitive cases will greatly decrease the threat of accountability for entities engaged in corrupt practices. An increase of corruption in the U.S. not only harms the perception of the U.S. on the global stage, but diminishes U.S. economic competitiveness. ICAR calls for proposed plans to cut the DOJ’s public corruption unit to be abandoned, and for the unit to continue to serve the purpose of combating corruption.