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Journalism of Courage
The Trump administration is rolling back on the enforcement of certain types of white-collar crimes, including cases related to foreign bribery, public corruption, money laundering, and crypto markets. This move comes two months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the US Justice Department to halt prosecuting Americans accused of bribing foreign officials to secure overseas business deals.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, at the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered prosecutors to focus their anti-money-laundering and sanctions-evasion attention on drug cartels and international crime organizations.
It says the administration is effectively redefining what constitutes a crime in some business conduct cases. These decisions aim to provide relief to US citizens but may also benefit companies and executives facing charges in US courts, such as key executives of the Adani Group, who are currently facing bribery charges.
Sources in the know said the new policy is likely to provide relief to Azure Power – which had a contract (a build, operate and transfer deal) with an Adani Group firm for a solar project – and, by extension, the Adani Group.
“Lawyers for Indian billionaire Gautam Adani are asking the Justice Department to drop criminal charges tied to an alleged foreign-bribery scheme against him and other executives of his companies, according to people familiar with the matter. The Adani Group has called the allegations ‘baseless’,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
US Federal prosecutors are taking note of Trump’s dislike of the overseas-bribery law.
“The newly installed US attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, formerly a Trump adviser and one of his defense lawyers, moved to dismiss charges against the former Cognizant executives accused of paying bribes in India,” WSJ said.
“Her decision undercut prosecutors in that office who had received approval in February—before she took over—to proceed to trial, according to an internal Justice Department memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,” it said.
The February order instructed US Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 until she issues revised enforcement guidance that promotes American competitiveness. Future FCPA investigations and enforcement actions will be governed by this new guidance and must be approved by the Attorney General, the order states.
The White House then claimed that the FCPA puts US firms at a disadvantage to foreign competitors as they cannot engage in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field.
A White House factsheet said American national security depends on America and its companies gaining strategic commercial advantages around the world, and President Donald Trump is stopping excessive, unpredictable FCPA enforcement that makes American companies less competitive.
In 2024, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission filed 26 FCPA-related enforcement actions, with at least 31 companies under investigation by year-end.
Trump’s executive order in February said bribery prosecutions hurt the ability of American companies to compete overseas, punishing them for practices that are routine in some parts of the world. That pronouncement could upend dozens of cases and investigations, WSJ said.
According to WSJ, some defense lawyers, encouraged by the shift, have urged prosecutors to drop cases or probes. Lawyers for Polymarket, the crypto-fueled online prediction market that forecast Trump’s November win, are seeking an end to an investigation that began last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Defense contractor Boeing has sought the Justice Department’s consent to back out of a proposed guilty plea related to two deadly crashes of 737 MAX jets. The plea, reached at the end of the Biden , would require it to hire a compliance monitor for three years, it said.
“Glencore, a Switzerland-based commodity trading giant that pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of overseas bribery and market manipulation, got the Justice Department’s support this year to end the work of two compliance monitors, which had cost the company $140 million,” WSJ said.
WSJ said Trump has granted clemency to several defendants convicted by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan. In late March, he pardoned Nikola founder Trevor Milton, a Trump donor convicted of defrauding investors by lying about the development of his company’s zero-emissions trucks and technology.
“He also pardoned three founders of the crypto exchange BitMEX, who had pleaded guilty to failing to maintain controls against money laundering. The president pardoned the company, too, saving it from a $100 million fine due to be paid that same day,” it said.
