On April 30, 2025, the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it declined to prosecute the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), a Washington, D.C. non-profit research corporation, for violations of export control laws committed by its then-employee. The declination was issued under the March 2024 NSD Enforcement Policy for Business Organizations (the NSD Enforcement Policy). This is the second time that NSD has publicly announced that it had declined to prosecute a company that had submitted a voluntary-self disclosure (VSD), with the first time being the MilliporeSigma declination announced in May 2024.
In its announcement, NSD stated that its decision to decline prosecution—which separately led to a guilty plea of the former employee—took into account USRA’s prompt and voluntary self-disclosure and cooperation with the government’s investigation, including proactively identifying and disclosing foreign-language evidence and evidence located abroad. The declination reflects DOJ’s emphasis on and encouragement of submitting timely VSDs for potential criminal activity.
The violations stemmed from USRA’s contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to license and distribute flight control software that was subject to Export Administration Regulations (EAR). A program administrator hired by USRA under the contract, Jonathan Soong, knowingly exported the software to Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (also known as Beihang University), a university in China on the Entity List, without an export control license. As part of the scheme, Soong used an intermediary to export the software to avoid detection of the end-user, and embezzled over $150,000. Within days of discovering Soong’s violations of export controls, USRA voluntarily self-disclosed the offense to NSD.
In explaining its decision to decline to prosecute USRA, NSD cited to factors set out in the DOJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations and the NSD Enforcement Policy. The NSD Enforcement Policy establishes a presumption of entering into a non-prosecution agreement if a company voluntarily self-discloses violations, fully cooperates, and timely and appropriately remediates. However, prosecutors are also permitted to use their discretion to decline to prosecute entirely instead. In USRA’s case, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, Patrick D. Robbins, stated that what USRA did after discovering its employee’s wrongdoing “made all the difference in the Government’s decision not to prosecute it.” Specifically, NSD identified the following factors in its declination letter:
- First, USRA voluntarily self-disclosed the violation to NSD within days of the employee admitting wrongdoing to outside counsel and before USRA’s internal investigation was complete.
- Second, USRA “exceptional[ly] and proactive[ly] cooperated” with the government’s investigation, which materially assisted the government’s prosecution of the employee.
- Third, the offense was determined to be less concerning because there were only four unlicensed exports and the software was classified as EAR99, a classification given to less sensitive items.
- Fourth, USRA timely remediated the issue by dismissing the employee, reprimanding his supervisor, strengthening its compliance program, and compensating the government.
The government’s declination to prosecute MilliporeSigma last year was similarly motivated by the company’s initial VSD prior to completing its internal investigation, its “exceptional” and “proactive[]” cooperation, which also led to obtaining guilty pleas from culpable individuals, the relatively mild nature of the misconduct, and MilliporeSigma’s timely and appropriate remediation.
The USRA declination follows the disbandment of the NSD’s Corporate Enforcement Unit, announced in a Memorandum published by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on February 5, 2025. Further, the declination and parallel guilty plea of the former employee is consistent with DOJ’s increasing interest in pursuing individual liability for criminal acts. For example, in 2023, former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco stated that “holding individual wrongdoers accountable” was a policy priority for DOJ. Individual criminal prosecutions over corporate criminal enforcement may become more prevalent as DOJ under the Trump administration continues to focus on individual wrongdoers, often by relying on information provided in a corporate VSD.
Enforcement Going Forward
The head of NSD, Sue J. Bai, stated in the USRA press release, “We […] are ready to work together with such responsible corporate actors who are committed to joining us in this fight to protect our country from foreign adversaries” (emphasis added). This is consistent with, and potentially strikes an even more cooperative tone than, former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s statement in a press release issued May 2024 that “companies that step up and own up under the Department’s voluntary self-disclosure programs can help themselves and our nation.” The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) Office of Export Enforcement (OEE) has also emphasized the latitude that companies will be given for voluntarily self-disclosing potential violations of the EAR, including in BIS’s September 2024 updated administrative enforcement provisions.
NSD likely also recognizes that promoting incentives for companies to voluntarily self-disclose ultimately promotes national security interests. Further, VSDs are resource- and cost-effective, as both the government and corporation can avoid a drawn-out investigation. Although a sample size of two public declinations in two years is too small to allow for drawing broad conclusions, it could suggest a more corporate-friendly approach by NSD when companies cooperate in export control cases, in line with the current administration’s general trend towards deregulation and granting businesses the room to operate more freely. It also reflects the current administration’s interest in prosecuting individuals over companies, a policy shift that began under the Biden administration and appears to be continuing.
