Foreign Sovereign Immunity May Be Obstacle to DOJ Enforcement Efforts

In May, Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, issued a department-wide memorandum setting forth the department’s enforcement priorities in the white-collar crime sphere. In it, the department announced an effort to combat crime that “poses a significant threat to U.S. interests,” including the “enabling of shadow-banking and sanctions evasions by hostile nation-states and terror regimes.” A potential obstacle to these enforcement efforts is the doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity. This doctrine, as its name suggests, has been used by courts to grant judicial immunity to foreign states, their instrumentalities, and their respective heads of state.