The scope of the programme covers such offences as:

• Domestic active bribery of public officials by or through public and/or private companies;
• Foreign corruption and bribery by public or private companies, including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) and associated money laundering;
• Offences by financial institutions, their insiders and/or agents also through money laundering, fraud, and registration of companies making money transfers;
• Offences undermining integrity of financial markets involving financial institutions, investment advisors or funds, public and/or private companies with the staff of 50 and over employees, as well as insiders and/or agents of the aforementioned companies;
• Offences related to fraud with any federal contracts committed by or through public and/or private companies with the staff of 50 and over employees;
• Health care fraud committed by or through public and/or private companies having the staff of 50 and over employees.

A whistleblower can be a natural person involved in the commission of an offence except for:

• Director-general;
• Financial director;
• Senior foreign official;
• Public official;
• Individual who organised the criminal scheme or managed it.

The Division can conclude a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with whistleblowers provided that they:

1. Disclose information which the Division or any other unit of the US Department of Justice was unaware of to the former;

2. Make a disclosure:

• Voluntarily, i.e. in the absence of any investigation, obligation to disclose that information under other agreement and/or threat of inevitable disclosure to public authorities and/or the general public;
• Truthfully;
• Completely, i.e. provide all information they dispose of about any offence in which they were involved and/or they are aware of, including the measure of their own involvement;

3. Cooperate with the investigation and can provide substantial assistance in holding those equally or more culpable than themselves also by providing truthful and complete testimony, documents, notes and other evidence at the request of the Division;

4. Forfeit any ill-gotten gains and compensate the victims;

5. Were not previously convicted of any acts related to violence, use of force, threats, infliction of significant harm to health of a patient, sexual offences, terrorism, fraud and misconduct.

The pilot programme is not the only initiative of the US Ministry of Justice aimed at encouraging disclosure of offences by natural persons launched this year. Almost at the same time as it was ran, the start of development and subsequent implementation of another pilot programme providing for rewards to whistleblowers disclosing information about important corporate or financial offences was announced.

These initiatives designed to encourage disclosures by natural persons are another step of the US law enforcement to promote whistleblowing concerning corruption: in particular, since 2016 a leniency programme for legal persons that, inter alia, self-report illegal activities and the involvement of their employees therein has been underway along with several programmes on rewards for whistleblowers (see here and here). However, experts believe that the rapidly growing number of these initiatives results in their partial duplication, which may create legal collisions and complicate both the participation of whistleblowers in such programmes and the assessment of compliance with their requirements by law enforcement.