Milbank Litigation partner Antonia Apps was recently featured in Corporate Crime Reporter for an article titled “Milbank Partner Antonia Apps on Connolly and the Government’s Micromanaging of Internal Investigations.”
Discussing the recent US v. Connolly decision, which dealt with government direction during a corporate internal investigation, Ms. Apps said: “The Court in this case found that the level of direction by the agencies as to each step of the internal investigation conducted by outside counsel was somewhat extraordinary. The District Court focused on the numerous ways in which the government agencies micromanaged the investigation. And second, it was combined with what the court found to be an absence of investigative steps taken by the government. It will not be every case. I don’t even think it’s the majority of cases where you have this combination of intense direction by the government combined with the government not taking any investigative steps until the end of the investigation.”
Describing the impact of the case, Ms. Apps continued: “The case is meant to be a warning for the government that it should not conduct the level of direction that appears to have happened in this particular case. There can be a line between the government providing too much direction to outside counsel conducting an investigation and one where the government steps back, takes its hands off the wheel, and allows outside counsel to conduct the investigation and come back and present to the government the key findings of the case in ways that would not cross the line that Judge McMahon identified in the case.”
To read the full interview from Corporate Crime Reporter, please click here.
