The Treasury Department has unveiled a new enforcement website for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), aimed at enhancing transparency and providing detailed guidance regarding CFIUS penalties and other enforcement actions. This update is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen CFIUS as a national security tool.
"In the last few years, CFIUS has redoubled its resources and focus on enforcement and accountability, and that is by design: if CFIUS requires companies to make certain commitments to protect national security and they fail to do so, there must be consequences," said Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Investment Security Paul Rosen. "Today’s penalty updates underscore CFIUS’s commitment to accountability and the protection of national security."
CFIUS, chaired by the Treasury Department, is an interagency committee authorized to review certain transactions involving foreign investment in the United States to determine their impact on national security.
The updated website now includes comprehensive information about all civil monetary penalties imposed by CFIUS over recent years, including details on the largest penalty ever issued by the committee. For each penalty action, additional transparency is provided by describing the conduct that led to the penalty along with mitigating and aggravating factors where applicable, consistent with confidentiality obligations.
In 2023 and 2024 alone, CFIUS has issued three times more penalties than it had in its nearly 50-year history prior. This follows the issuance of Penalty and Enforcement Guidelines in 2022, which outlined how violations of laws and regulations governing transaction parties are assessed. These guidelines marked an increased focus on enforcement and accountability.
Links to new sections of the website include:
- CFIUS Enforcement
- CFIUS Mitigation
- CFIUS Non-Notified Transactions
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