The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to increase prosecutionsof individual employees for corporate crime and coax companies toturn over evidence on executives after criticism that thegovernment failed to punish wrongdoers in the financial crisis.

Sally Quillian Yates, the department's No. 2 official, orderedpolicy changes to push prosecutors to reinvigorate cases, accordingto a memo she issued Wednesday. Under the new approach, onlycompanies that disclose information about individual wrongdoing maybe eligible for lesser penalties for cooperating.

“Our mission here is not to recover the largest amount of moneyfrom the greatest number of corporations,” Yates plans to sayThursday at a speech at New York University School of Law,according to excerpts released by the Justice Department. “Our jobis to seek accountability from those who break our laws andvictimize our citizens. It's the only way to truly deter corporatewrongdoing.”

The approach to corporate crime is the boldest policyannouncement since Loretta Lynch became attorney general in April.Lawmakers had faulted the Justice Department under the previousattorney general, Eric Holder, for failing to send senior WallStreet executives to prison after the 2008 financial crisis.

While department officials say they haven't held backprosecuting financial wrongdoing, cases against Wall Street bankersand corporate executives have been rare during the Obamaadministration.

The memo, sent to prosecutors around the country, sayssettlements with companies won't shield individuals fromprosecution or civil liability except in “extraordinarycircumstances” and with approval from top department officials.

Prosecutors will be required to explain why cases againstindividuals couldn't be made by the time the statute of limitationsexpires. Decisions not to charge individuals involved in misconductmust be approved by the U.S. attorney or the top Justice Departmentofficial overseeing the investigation.

Department lawyers investigating civil cases, such as falseclaims, must also focus on individuals and shouldn't be governed bya person's ability to pay. These lawyers and criminal prosecutorswill also be required to share information with one another.

Some of the new policies were foreshadowed over the past year inspeeches by officials in the Justice Department's criminaldivision. The rules in the memo will apply to pending and futureinvestigations of corporate wrongdoing.

Holder's Message

A year ago, Holder told an audience at the same law school thatcharges against bankers for criminal conduct were in the works andthat market manipulation investigations were being aided byinformants and undercover traders. Those cases have been slow incoming, even as the department entered into multibillion-dollarsettlements with global financial institutions.

Prosecutors charged 12 traders with attempting to rig benchmarkinterest rates. Three have pleaded guilty and the other cases arepending. The Justice Department never prosecuted a high-levelinvestment-bank executive for wrongdoing that led to the housingbust and financial crisis, which has drawn ire from lawmakers,public-interest groups and even a prominent federal judge inManhattan, Jed Rakoff.

The department has also relied heavily on deferred- prosecutionagreements, which withhold criminal charges against companies inexchange for cooperation with investigations and promises to rootout misconduct. Critics of the deals say they are too lenient andaren't effective in deterring misconduct.

Yates's speech comes as the department's antitrust division isdeciding whether to charge currency traders who were members of achat room known as “The Cartel,” according to two people familiarwith the matter. The traders allegedly colluded with counterpartsat other banks to rig foreign-exchange fixings, according toauthorities who settled with six banks and extracted nearly $6billion in penalties in May.

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