On April 5, 2024, a federal jury in San Francisco returned a verdict in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Panuwat. The jury found that a corporate executive had...more
On Oct. 4, 2023, in remarks delivered to the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics’ 22nd Annual Compliance & Ethics Institute, Deputy Attorney General (AG) Lisa Monaco announced the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) new...more
On June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy to review a decision by the Fifth Circuit rejecting key aspects of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC or the...more
7/10/2023
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Administrative Procedure ,
Appeals ,
Article II ,
Certiorari ,
PCAOB ,
Removal For-Cause ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Regulation ,
Seventh Amendment
In concert with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) focus on voluntary self-disclosure of corporate misconduct, as well as DOJ’s commitment to addressing sanctions evasion, export control violations and similar economic crimes,...more
On March 30, federal regulators announced that Wells Fargo Bank had entered into settlements in which it agreed to pay $97.8 million in fines for enabling sanctions violations between 2010 and 2015. In two separate...more
Earlier this month, at the American Bar Association’s (ABA) 38th National Institute on White Collar Crime, Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. highlighted the...more
Eager to enlist corporations as “allies in [its] fight against crime,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, expansions to the Criminal Division’s corporate enforcement policy, now the Criminal...more
On Sept. 15, 2022, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco spoke at New York University Law School outlining the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities and policies on corporate criminal enforcement....more
This alert addresses proceedings in two SEC securities enforcement actions emanating out of the Fifth Circuit. Both pose issues relating to the SEC’s power to bring enforcement proceedings in front of in-house administrative...more
On Feb. 25, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in United States v. Afriyie that restitution orders under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA) do not allow victims to recover attorneys’ fees...more
Over the course of the year — and even dating back to his time on the campaign trail — President Biden and senior officials in his administration, including Department of Justice (DOJ) and Security and Exchange Commission...more
12/21/2021
/ Anti-Corruption ,
Biden Administration ,
Bribery ,
Compliance ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Corporate Governance ,
Corruption ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
Popular ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
White Collar Crimes
In her Oct. 28, 2021 keynote address at the American Bar Association’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime, new Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa Monaco announced several policy changes to the Department of...more
In a recent speech at the Practising Law Institute’s annual SEC Speaks conference, Gurbir Grewal, the new director of the Division of Enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission), signaled...more
On Sept. 27, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the most recent legal challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) practice of using “no-deny” consent agreements to resolve civil...more
On Sept. 14, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) entered a cease-and-desist order against App Annie Inc. and its co-founder and former CEO, Bertrand Schmitt, after agreeing to settle securities fraud claims....more
In a significant decision, a panel of the Second Circuit recently held that a French citizen who was charged with violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) in connection with the LIBOR scandal, but who lives in France and...more
Introduction -
On Feb. 2, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cease-and-desist order settling charges against the former CEO and CFO of WageWorks Inc. (WageWorks, or the Company), stemming from the...more
2/22/2021
/ Cease and Desist Orders ,
Compensation & Benefits ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dodd-Frank ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Executive Compensation ,
Financial Statements ,
Incentive Compensation ,
Reimbursements ,
Sarbanes-Oxley ,
Section 304 ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations
In a recent settled administrative proceeding, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or the Commission) imposed a $20 million fine and a cease-and-desist order on Andeavor LLC, a Texas energy company, in connection with...more
On July 3, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released the Second Edition of their joint Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Resource Guide or Guide). ...more
Three years ago, in a footnote to its unanimous opinion in Kokesh v. S.E.C., the Supreme Court left open two questions: “whether courts possess authority to order disgorgement in SEC enforcement proceedings” and “whether...more
On May 7, 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions of two public officials charged in the “Bridgegate” political corruption scandal. ...more
5/13/2020
/ Appeals ,
Bridgegate ,
Criminal Convictions ,
Federal-Program Fraud ,
Governor Christie ,
Intent to Obtain Money or Property ,
Kelly v United States ,
Political Scandals ,
Public Officials ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Wire Fraud
When Law No. 2016-1691 (Sapin II Law) created the convention judicaire d’intérêt public (CJIP), modeled after the American deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), it was feared that the existence of potentially dueling French...more
8/21/2019
/ AFA ,
Anti-Corruption ,
CJIP ,
Cooperation ,
Corporate Misconduct ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Deferred Prosecution Agreements ,
France ,
Internal Investigations ,
Sapin II ,
Self-Reporting ,
White Collar Crimes
On April 30, 2019, Brian A. Benczkowski, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, announced the release of an updated version of the Criminal Division’s guidance for...more
In a speech delivered on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein described important changes to DOJ policies for awarding cooperation credit in corporate investigations. These changes have been...more
12/4/2018
/ Cooperation Agreement ,
Corporate Investigations ,
Corruption ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
Government Investigations ,
Individual Accountability ,
Policy Statement ,
White Collar Crimes ,
Willful Misconduct ,
Yates Memorandum
In its June 22, 2018, decision in Carpenter v. United States, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the government obtained a court order requiring his...more
6/29/2018
/ Carpenter v US ,
Cell Phones ,
Cell Site Location Information (CSLI) ,
Criminal Convictions ,
Electronic Records ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Exigent Circumstances ,
Fourth Amendment ,
Geolocation ,
Location Data ,
Probable Cause ,
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy ,
Remand ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Third-Party ,
Warrantless Searches