(Bloomberg) -- Companies operating in the US need to “come forward and own up” when it comes to admitting to corporate misconduct in order to have any kind of leniency from prosecution by the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. 

The Justice Department is implementing new policies to crack down on corporate crime in a bid to help companies have “predictability” when it comes to what kind of compliance and disclosure programs they should have, Monaco said Friday on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power With David Westin.”

“This is about being very, very clear,” Monaco said. “We want companies to have in place a program that allows them to detect misconduct. Their program needs to be designed to be able to detect it and detect it early.”

Monaco announced the policy Thursday following a yearlong review by an advisory group she created last fall. 

Under the changes, the department will allow more companies that voluntarily report misconduct to avoid pleading guilty and shift the focus to prosecuting executives by encouraging companies to claw back compensation from executives and employees responsible for wrongdoing.

The department is seeking to build on successful cases earlier this year in which it scored guilty pleas over corporate misconduct from Glencore Plc and a unit of Allianz SE in exchange for billions of dollars in fines.

The new policies are designed to both incentivize corporations to make investments and empower federal prosecutors to hold those accountable for misconduct, Monaco said. 

“There’s a good business case to be made for making those investments and making those hard decisions,” she said.

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