The United States Department of Justice will dismantle the units dedicated to processing white collar crimes and to track foreign efforts to influence US elections among other measures announced by the new Secretary of Justice PAM Bondi.
The United States Department of Justice will reorient a large part of its staff and resources towards the “total elimination” of drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations in the United States, while dismantling the units dedicated to processing white collar crimes Already Cleptocrats and to track foreign efforts to influence US elections.
The change, announced in a series of memoranda issued this week by the newly sworn End of his first term in office.
In a memorandum issued on Wednesday, his first day in office, Bondi requested a “fundamental change of mentality and focus” in the fight against drug cartels.
“We must do more than trying to mitigate the enormous damage that these groups cause in the United States,” Bondi wrote. “It is not enough to stop the tide of mortal poisons, such as fentanil National Security Department and other parts of the Government towards the objective of eliminating these threats to American sovereignty. “
Elimination of programs against Cleptocracy
The same memorandum described Bondi's measures to eliminate specific units from the department.
Among those eliminated were two dedicated to attacking Cleptocrats, public figures that use their authority to steal resources to their own people.
The Kleptocracy asset recovery initiative, established in 2010, worked to identify the assets of Cleptocrats, confiscate them and return them to the countries of which they were stolen.
The KleptocapTule working group, an independent unit, was formed in early 2022 following the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The unit pursued oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and applied sanctions against Russia by the United States and its allies after the invasion.
“The lawyers assigned to these initiatives will return to their previous positions,” said the Bondi memorandum, “and the resources currently dedicated to these initiatives will go to the total elimination of cartels and transnational organizations.”
The unit of the criminal division, focused on the presentation of processes under the Law of Corrupt Practices abroad, said, “must prioritize investigations related to bribery abroad that facilitates the criminal operations of cartels and organizations transnational, and divert the attention of investigations and cases that do not imply this connection. “
In 2024 alone, the FCPA unit won hundreds of millions of dollars in payments of agreements of companies guilty to bribe public officials.
The processes under the law of prevention of extortion abroad were also reoriented under the new instructions.
Worried anti -corruption groups
Gary Kalman, Executive Director of International Transparency United States, told VOA that changes in the priorities of the Department of Justice could have dire consequences for the world's fight against public corruption.
“The elimination of Cleptocracy initiatives is a concern, since these initiatives were providing valuable coordination and information exchange services between different departments and some of our allies abroad,” Kalman said.
“Those networks had some encouraging results and allowed investigations to advance more quickly,” he said. “The dismantling of these programs will probably have a negative effect on our ability to investigate and process cases.”
Regarding the change in FCPA and FEPA investigations, Kalman said that he will depend on how the administration chooses to define “transnational criminal organizations.”
The rapes of the FCPA and the FePA “are by nature transnational crimes,” he said. Therefore, he said, it is difficult to know with certainty what kind of investigations will be a priority.
“For example, do the Iranian government consider an 'organization'?” He asked.
In an analysis of the measures of the Department of Justice, a group of lawyers of the law firm Arnold & Porter argued that the new position of the department could lead to more cases of the FCPA.
“The application of the FCPA could actually increase, at least in certain areas,” they wrote. “For example, the Department of Justice could more aggressively pursue the violations of FCPA directly related to Mexico and other Latin American countries, as well as China, places that the Trump administration has publicly identified as sources of transnational criminal activity, including the illegal narcotics traffic. “
Reorientation of criminal proceedings by foreign influence
In a separate memorandum, Bondi revealed that the Department of Justice will also dissolve the working group on foreign influence, established in 2017 to investigate the efforts of state actors, such as Russia and China, to influence US public opinion, particularly around The elections.
Trump has been very critical of the efforts of the forces of the order to identify and eradicate foreign interference in the US elections, especially after a report by the special prosecutor Robert Mueller, in 2019, found extensive evidence that operations of operations had mounted Russian influence to benefit Trump's candidacy during the 2016 presidential elections.
In his memorandum, Bondi wrote: “To release resources to address more urgent priorities and end the risks of greater use of weapons and abuses of procedural discretion, the working group on foreign influence will be dissolved.”
The defenders of electoral integrity were dismayed by the decision.
Susannah Goodman, director of Electoral Security of the Activist Common cause, said in a statement that the decision to dissolve the FITF is a “terrible mistake” that will leave the state and local electoral infrastructure without critical support.
“FITF provides critical protection to safeguard our votes and our choices of hostile foreign intelligence services, including Russia, China and Iran,” said Goodman.
“We know that foreign governments have been interfering with our elections for decades and even more expansively from the 2016 electoral cycle. It is difficult to imagine a more urgent priority than protecting our elections from foreign interference,” he said.
“State and local officials who direct our elections do not have the resources or experience to compete directly with highly sophisticated foreign intelligence services,” he said.