Executive Risk After The Yates Memo

The Yates Memo, issued by DOJ in September of last year, requires federal prosecutors to focus their efforts on going after individual executives in cases of corporate wrongdoing. A post from Miller & Chevalier, part of its “Executives at Risk” series, looks at how this policy is being implemented, with an examination of a number of noteworthy recent cases and investigations. What the CEO of a peanut company wrote in an email that may get him 28 years, and the case of Don Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Energy, who escaped all charges except a single misdemeanor following a disaster that killed 29 miners.