Alert 12.22.25
Alert
12.23.25
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has now spent several months enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) under the revised framework adopted after the February 10, 2025, pause mandated by Executive Order 14209. In the period following the pause, DOJ has begun to translate that framework into concrete enforcement activity, with the Smartmatic corporate indictment and the Comcel/Millicom deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) emerging as the two most significant post-pause actions to date. Post-pause directives have seemed to refocus DOJ’s attention on corporate actors, particularly those operating in sectors that intersect with national security and critical infrastructure priorities, and where companies are now expected to identify and self-disclose potential issues far earlier to receive meaningful consideration under the Department’s evolving enforcement policies. For companies, these developments show that DOJ’s new approach has immediate consequences, so it is important to reevaluate FCPA risks now and make sure compliance programs meet the Department’s changing expectations.
The 2025 Enforcement Pause and Revised Guidance
On February 10, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14209, which temporarily halted most FCPA investigations and required DOJ to reevaluate its enforcement posture with a refocusing using a national security lens. That policy reset was reinforced by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s complementary directives instructing the Department to prioritize FCPA matters involving drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations. Together, the executive order and Attorney General Bondi’s guidance formed a unified, recalibrated framework that shifted DOJ away from broad foreign corruption enforcement and toward cases with clearer national security implications. For companies, this combination of a pause and a narrowed enforcement mandate seemingly created a reprieve from new FCPA actions as DOJ realigned its priorities, while signaling that future enforcement would be more targeted to explicitly align with U.S. national interests.
Against this backdrop, on June 9, 2025, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued the new FCPA Guidelines, formally ending the pause and establishing the enforcement guidelines set in motion by Executive Order 14209 and Attorney General Bondi’s directives. These new guidelines articulate DOJ’s refined priorities with far greater specificity, directing prosecutors to focus on cases involving cartels and transnational criminal organizations, conduct that causes concrete harm to U.S. companies, and corruption affecting critical infrastructure or other areas tied to U.S. strategic interests. The new guidelines also make clear that DOJ intends to concentrate on what it characterizes as the most consequential forms of bribery, which include schemes involving sophisticated concealment tactics, obstruction of justice or substantial illicit payments, rather than lower-level conduct or practices resembling generally accepted business courtesies. In doing so, the guidelines provide the first comprehensive roadmap for how DOJ intends to evaluate and enforce both new and legacy FCPA matters moving forward. Deputy Attorney General Blanche stated during public comments on December 4, 2025, that the Department intends to merge all of the Department’s corporate enforcement and voluntary-self disclosure policies into a single, unified policy.
Smartmatic and Comcel illustrate how DOJ is now applying the revised FCPA framework in practice, offering the first concrete insights into how the Department will exercise its tightened priorities. All signs point to this approach continuing under a unified DOJ corporate enforcement system.
Smartmatic’s Corporate Indictment and Its Broader Significance for Post-Pause FCPA Enforcement
DOJ first indicted three Smartmatic executives and the former chair of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) during the Biden administration, in August 2024, alleging more than $1 million in bribes paid to obtain and retain business from COMELEC, including the release of favorable value-added tax reimbursements and other beneficial contractual payments. As alleged, the co-conspirators financed the bribes by creating a slush fund through over-invoicing the cost per voting machine supplied for the 2016 Philippine elections. To conceal the corrupt payments, defendants allegedly used coded language, fabricated contracts and sham loan agreements, and routed transactions through bank accounts in Asia, Europe and the United States.
In October 2025, after the FCPA enforcement pause ended and the revised guidelines were in place, DOJ added Smartmatic as a corporate defendant. The addition of Smartmatic is particularly notable because it appears to be the first time since 2010 that DOJ has indicted a company for FCPA violations without the parties—at least on the surface—having attempted to resolve the matter through a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement rather than resolving the matter through a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement (NPA), and it comes despite the recent guidelines narrowing enforcement. The indictment also arrives as Smartmatic is pursuing a $2.7 billion defamation action against Fox News over false claims of 2020 election fraud. Smartmatic publicly accused prosecutors of being “misled and politically influenced by powerful interests,” a statement that has heightened scrutiny of the case’s potential political backdrop.
The allegations against Smartmatic align with the amended guidelines. The conduct described in the indictment involves senior executive participation, sophisticated efforts to conceal illicit payments and the movement of substantial funds, all of which place the case within the category of serious corruption that DOJ has emphasized under the revised FCPA framework. Equally important, DOJ has given no indication that Smartmatic received credit for a voluntary self-disclosure. Neither the superseding indictment nor DOJ’s public statements suggest that the company self-reported before overt steps by the Department, including charges against individual company executives, even though Smartmatic has stated that it has engaged in extensive cooperation with the government. This absence of a confirmed voluntary self-disclosure stands in contrast to matters where DOJ applies the Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self Disclosure Policy to provide meaningful cooperation credit.
The Smartmatic case will serve as a key test of DOJ’s updated FCPA approach in contested litigation, providing insight into its strategy for handling complex corporate corruption cases under the new enforcement regime.
Comcel/Millicom: First Major FCPA Resolution After Pause
In contrast to Smartmatic, Comunicaciones Celulares S.A. (Comcel) and its parent company Millicom International Cellular S.A. (Millicom) reached a two-year deferred prosecution agreement on November 10, 2025, resolving allegations that Comcel made improper payments to Guatemalan officials between 2012 and 2018 to secure favorable regulatory treatment and legislative advantages. Millicom voluntarily self-disclosed potential misconduct as early as 2015, prompting an initial DOJ investigation that ultimately closed in 2018 without enforcement. The matter did not remain dormant for long, however. In 2020, after DOJ developed new evidence, including indications that certain payments were connected to narcotrafficking activity, the Department reopened the investigation under a substantially different risk lens.
Millicom’s early self-disclosure significantly shaped the eventual outcome. The DPA expressly notes that DOJ gave significant weight to Millicom’s 2015 disclosure when determining the appropriate resolution, including the form and term of the agreement and the decision to award the maximum reduction for cooperation and remediation available under the Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self Disclosure Policy. As a result, DOJ agreed to a DPA rather than a guilty plea, limited the term to two years instead of the standard three, and applied a 50% penalty reduction off the bottom of the guidelines’ range, which is the highest discount permitted for a case that does not qualify for a declination. DOJ concluded that a declination or an NPA was inappropriate given the seriousness and duration of the misconduct and its nexus to organized criminal activity—an enforcement theme that aligns with Attorney General Bondi’s directive to focus FCPA enforcement on corruption tied to cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and with Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s amended guidelines, which prioritize complex, high severity bribery schemes involving substantial payments or sophisticated concealment.
The Comcel DPA underscores how DOJ’s renewed FCPA framework operates in practice. Even where a company self-discloses early and cooperates extensively, the Department may still find a declination or an NPA inappropriate when the underlying conduct is serious, long running and linked to organized criminal activity. Simultaneously, the resolution demonstrates that voluntary self-disclosure remains a powerful mitigating factor, capable of shaping both the structure and severity of an enforcement outcome. As one of the first major FCPA actions following the 2025 pause, Comcel offers a clear signal that DOJ intends to pair stricter national interest-driven enforcement priorities with meaningful, but not automatic, credit for disclosure and remediation.
Key Takeaways
These early post-pause matters demonstrate that DOJ’s amended FCPA framework is already reshaping how enforcement decisions are made. Smartmatic shows that the Department is prepared to pursue politically sensitive cases and take them to trial when the alleged conduct involves substantial payments, senior level involvement and sophisticated concealment. Comcel, by contrast, illustrates that even dormant investigations can be revived when new evidence points to organized criminal activity, and that early voluntary self-disclosure—while not determinative—can still meaningfully influence the form and severity of an eventual resolution.
For companies, several practical themes emerge:
Taken together, Smartmatic and Comcel demonstrate that the next wave of FCPA enforcement will be more selective, more strategically focused and focused on misconduct that intersects with national interest priorities. Companies must be positioned to identify, escalate and report concerns before DOJ identifies them itself.