The DOJ dropped its Pfizer bribery probe in China and Mexico soon after Pam Bondi, a former Pfizer legal consultant, became Attorney General in February 2025. The investigation’s closure, evident from Pfizer’s latest filings, has raised concerns about Bondi’s influence and DOJ impartiality.
The DOJ dropped its Pfizer bribery investigation soon after Pam Bondi, a former Pfizer legal consultant, became Attorney General in February 2025.
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Miami Herald — For the past several years, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for potential foreign corruption violations related to its activities in China and Mexico, according to the company’s financial filings.
But that appears to have changed after the Trump administration tapped Pam Bondi — previously an outside legal counsel for Pfizer — to lead the Justice department as attorney general.
In the company’s most recent annual report, filed three weeks after Bondi took office in early February, there was no longer any reference to the Justice Department investigations into the company’s potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. A quarterly a report in May also contains no reference to these investigations.
On her first day in office, Bondi rolled back the enforcement of foreign corruption cases that didn’t involve drug cartels and international criminal organizations, among a host of sweeping changes she made to the department’s priorities. That move was followed five days later, on Feb. 10, by a related executive order issued by President Donald Trump that paused new foreign corruption investigations and enforcement actions.
The Justice Department also reportedly reduced the number of attorneys working on such cases and closed nearly half of existing foreign corruption cases.
Bondi’s stated goal in making the changes was “Removing Bureaucratic Impediments to Aggressive Prosecutions,” but the actions she and President Trump took were widely seen as a signal that the Justice Department would be less interested in pursuing allegations that major corporations like Pfizer paid bribes to win business abroad.
Pfizer is among several companies that filed financial documents this year suggesting that the Justice Department had dropped their federal corruption investigations.
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen raised concerns about Bondi’s relationship with Pfizer in a letter sent last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee and questions how she may have played a role in the department’s apparent decision to drop the case.
“We would always hope that our elected officials are above reproach ethically and a big part of that is ensuring that they don’t have any conflicts of interest,” said Lisa Gilbert, the group’s co-president.
“All of this comes back to the appropriateness of Pam Bondi’s conduct and whether she should be touching anything that approaches Pfizer.”
The Justice Department told The Miami Herald that Bondi’s work for Pfizer had nothing to do with foreign corruption.
“Attorney General Bondi’s brief work with this company occurred when she was a private citizen, concerned a Florida-specific legal matter, and bears no nexus whatsoever to the Department of Justice’s FCPA guidance. Any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect,” said Justice Department spokesman Gates McGavick.
Pfizer declined to comment beyond the disclosures in the company’s financial filings.
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