President Biden recently signed into law the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (“FEPA”), enabling federal prosecution of non-U.S. government officials who solicit or receive bribes.
FEPA complements the Foreign Corrupt...more
1/23/2024
/ Anti-Corruption ,
Anti-Money Laundering ,
Biden Administration ,
Bribery ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Economic Sanctions ,
FEPA ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
Foreign Official ,
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ,
Wire Fraud
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (the “Court”) issued a major ruling against the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on August 29, 2023, holding that the SEC acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a cease-and-desist order on August 28, 2023, charging Impact Theory, LLC (“Impact Theory”) with conducting an unregistered offering of crypto asset securities in violation...more
9/8/2023
/ Cryptocurrency ,
Digital Assets ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Ethereum ,
Howey ,
Investment ,
Investors ,
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) ,
Securities Act of 1933 ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Tokens
In the latest decision evaluating the application of federal securities laws to the digital asset context, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) ruled in favor...more
8/23/2023
/ Cryptoassets ,
Digital Assets ,
Howey ,
Investment ,
Investment Contract ,
Liquidity ,
New York ,
Profits ,
Registration Requirement ,
Ripple ,
Securities ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Stablecoins ,
Token Sales
On July 13, 2023, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (the “Court”) issued a major ruling in in a closely-followed lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”)...more
The Supreme Court yet again unanimously overturned bribery convictions based on prosecutorial overreach via the honest services wire fraud statute. The steady stream of reversals fundamentally challenges the DOJ’s approach in...more
The First Circuit applied a narrow definition of “bribery” for honest services fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1346. Payments made to the purportedly harmed party in the alleged bribery scheme—here, the universities—cannot...more
Last week, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced a Compensation Incentives and Clawbacks Pilot Program (the “Pilot Program” or “Program”) that will apply to all corporate criminal resolutions with the Criminal Division...more
This week the Department of Justice rolled out its new United States Attorney’s Offices’ Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy.
The Policy, which is effective immediately, details when a company will be considered to have made...more
This week the DOJ published revisions to its Corporate Enforcement Policy designed to even further encourage companies to make voluntary self-disclosures of wrongdoing within their ranks, cooperate with investigations, and...more
1/20/2023
/ Compliance ,
Corporate Crimes ,
Corporate Fraud ,
Corporate Misconduct ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy (CEP) ,
Federal Sentencing Guidelines ,
Investigations ,
Remedial Actions ,
Securities Fraud ,
Self-Disclosure Requirements
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held, on December 27, 2022, in United States v. Blaszczak (“Blaszczak II”) that an agency’s confidential, pre-decisional information did not count as...more
1/18/2023
/ Appeals ,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Confidential Information ,
Fraud ,
Hedge Funds ,
Insider Trading ,
Kelly v United States ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Fraud ,
Wire Fraud
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in United States v. Banks1 that under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, “loss” means only actual loss and not intended loss.
Although the term “loss” is not explicitly...more
In a year of increased volatility across the world’s financial markets, prosecutors, regulators and exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic sharpened their focus on “spoofing” – i.e., bidding or offering without the intent to...more
2/24/2021
/ CFTC ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Markets ,
Market Manipulation ,
Market Participants ,
Securities Regulation ,
Securities Traders ,
Securities Violations ,
Spoofing ,
UK ,
White Collar Crimes
Key Takeaways -
The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has undoubtedly increased firms’ exposure to market abuse risks in a number of ways:
Due to the rapidly changing consequences of restrictions caused by COVID-19 for...more
4/7/2020
/ Business Continuity Plans ,
Compliance ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ,
Global Market ,
Hong Kong ,
Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (HKSFC) ,
Hong Kong Stock Exchange ,
Insider Information ,
Liquidity ,
Market Abuse ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Remote Working ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
SEHK ,
UK ,
United States
On February 12 2019 the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019 (the “COPO Act”) came into force in the UK. This new law gives UK authorities (including the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) and the Financial Conduct Authority...more
3/8/2019
/ CLOUD Act ,
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) ,
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019 (the COPO Act) ,
Designated International Co-Operation Agreement (DICA) ,
Document Productions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ,
Foreign Jurisdictions ,
HMRC ,
International Litigation ,
Long Arm Statute ,
National Crime Agency (NCA) ,
Nexus ,
Overseas Production Order (OPO) ,
Serious Fraud Office (SFO) ,
UK ,
UK Brexit
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in January, announced a wave of coordinated spoofing cases that the Acting Assistant Attorney General, John P. Cronan, described as the...more
The CLOUD Act resolves the central issue in United States v. Microsoft — U.S. law enforcement agencies now have explicit legal authority to obtain electronic data from U.S. cloud and communication companies regardless of...more
4/16/2018
/ CLOUD Act ,
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) ,
Cloud Storage ,
Criminal Investigations ,
Data Privacy ,
Electronic Communications ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Foreign Governments ,
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ,
International Litigation ,
Law Enforcement ,
Motions to Quash ,
New Legislation ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act ,
Subpoenas ,
US v Microsoft
A judge in the District of Connecticut paved the way last month for what the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has described as “the second spoofing case that will go to trial in the country.” By denying the defendant’s motion...more
4/4/2018
/ Algorithmic Trading ,
CFTC ,
Civil Conspiracy ,
Commodities ,
Commodities Traders ,
Criminal Conspiracy ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Futures ,
High Frequency Trading ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Popular ,
Spoofing