미국 준법통제제도의 발전과정에서 연방검찰의 기업사법처리지침의 역할과 시사점

Federal prosecutorial guidelines have given great influences on the development of the corporate compliance program in the United States. They have played even greater roles than Federal sentencing guidelines for organizations and various regulatory incentives of other government agencies in a manner of the broad scope of prosecution. Federal prosecutorial guidelines of Department of Justice have begun with Holder memo to systematically cope with growing corporate crimes in 1999. After Enron and Worldcom debacles, the guideline was revised to Thompson memo that took more aggressive positions toward corporate crimes in 2003. Thompson memo triggered severe controversies for its tolerance of the somewhat abusive request for the waivers of attorney-client and work product privileges, so came the next versions of McNulty memo in 2006 and Filip memo in 2008. Compliance program has been the central considering factor in all the memos above and one of the basic standards for business organizations to comply with for a desirable compliance program until now. This study reviews the history and the application of federal prosecutorial guidelines to corporate crimes in the US and tries to get some insight into what the compliance program should be for the newly introduced mandatory compliance program of large listed companies in Korea. The article recommends that Department of Justice and Supreme Prosecutors' Office in Korea make and carry out prosecutorial guidelines aimed at corporate crimes to keep pace with the coming mandatory compliance program of listed companies. It is important that various interested parties participate in the processes of establishment, operation, and review of the guidelines to control the possible abuse of enormous power of prosecutors.