A top U.S. Justice Department official on Friday will announce details of the agency's plans to scrutinize companies' policies around employee use of personal devices and messaging apps when investigating potential misconduct.
Kenneth Polite, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, will tell attendees at an industry conference how prosecutors will be examining policies for off-channel work communications when evaluating a company's compliance programs, according to details of planned remarks shared with Reuters.
The new policy marks the latest sign of heightened government scrutiny over the use such platforms, including short-term messaging.
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Since 2021, firms across Wall Street have been embroiled in investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a civil regulator, over whether employees' use of such channels for discussing deals and other work-related communications have broken record-keeping rules.
Those probes have led to hefty penalties for firms including JPMorgan Chase & Co , Barclays, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. The agency has more recently opened similar probes into other firms including BlackRock Inc.
Polite will also discuss details of a new Justice Department policy aimed at getting companies to tie compensation and bonuses to compliance.
He and other officials have been rolling out a series of new policies aimed at tackling corporate crime and encouraging companies to be more proactive in reporting misconduct to the government.
