Corporate misconduct allegations often result in investigations by multiple agencies, including foreign, federal, state, and local authorities. Without proper coordination, companies risk being hit with duplicative penalties for the same misconduct. Duplicative corporate penalties can be avoided, but coordinating a corporate resolution with multiple authorities is hard to navigate.
Within the United States, federal prosecutors often have overlapping jurisdiction with other federal criminal and civil prosecutors, federal and state regulators, and local prosecutors. In international investigations, federal prosecutors also have to cooperate with foreign authorities with overlapping jurisdiction. All of these players can have a legitimate interest in protecting the public from economic crimes. Regulatory competition, however, often leads government authorities to want to take the lead over other authorities. Other times, government authorities jump from the sidelines onto the field of play when a corporate resolution is near and refuse to leave the field without a share of the penalties. A coordinated resolution is difficult to achieve in either case. In the end, the overlapping jurisdiction and regulatory competition can either lead to (1) each authority “piling on” their share of penalties or (2) a coordinated resolution that identifies the collective harm caused by the company’s misconduct, the appropriate penalties for that harm, and the fair allocation of the penalties among the interested government players. Continue reading