Sky Blog
The Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Joe Biden is widely expected to increase its focus on white collar enforcement actions against individuals and financial institutions. We anticipate that we will see, as we did in the Obama years, an …
The trend of escalating penalties for derivatives and commodities market abuse violations continued in 2020. Civil monetary penalties exceeding $100 million have become commonplace for serious corporate violations. Moreover, the DOJ routinely conducts criminal investigations in parallel with the CFTC, …
As we write this memorandum, a new administration is forming in Washington, with new leadership teams being nominated at DOJ, SEC, CFTC and other regulatory and law-enforcement agencies — thus prompting the question of what these changes may portend for …
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges affirmatively encourages federal judges to engage in those extrajudicial activities, such as writing articles, that are intended to help improve the administration of law. But for most of my first two decades …
My article, Enforcement Against the Biggest Banks, takes a census of the hundreds of enforcement actions by American regulators against the world’s largest banks between the passage of Dodd-Frank in July 2010 and December 31, 2016, near the end …
For the last several months, Arnold & Porter has been tracking the Department of Justice’s announcements of fraud cases involving the alleged misappropriation of funds provided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). So far, …
During the last 15 years, a consequential U-turn occurred in federal white-collar criminal enforcement. Federal enforcement of white-collar crimes all but collapsed in the period of 2000 to 2007. In the first 11 months of 2008, the SEC prosecuted 133 …
Columbia Law Professor John C. Coffee, Jr.’s Corporate Crime and Punishment delivers a hard-hitting and provocative analysis of the securities law enforcement landscape and the choices that lie ahead. With SEC senior staff changes probable in any new administration, Coffee’s …
In the public imagination, Wirecard was Germany’s biggest tech company success story – a €24 billion high-growth payment processor doing deals across the globe and pioneering new technologies. While naysayers complained about its opaque corporate and financial practices and raised …
Two extraordinary accounting scandals — one at Luckin Coffee Inc. in China and the other at Wirecard AG, the German digital payments firm — have revealed brazen and bankrupting frauds, directed by the most senior executives at each firm. Together, …
One of the most serious corruption cases ever investigated in Israel is “Case 3000,” also known as “The Submarines Scandal.” It concerned suspicions that senior Israeli officers and public servants received bribes for over a decade in order to “fix” …
The U.S. Constitution prohibits the Department of Justice, absent consent of the defendant, from bringing criminal charges against any person or entity without approval of a grand jury composed of American citizens. When the pandemic erupted in earnest in March …
Accounting fraud is a worldwide problem with potentially serious consequences, but it is often detected after the damage has been done. Hence, efficient and effective methods of detecting corporate accounting fraud would offer significant value to regulators, auditors, and investors.…
Health care fraud continues to be a top enforcement priority for U.S. prosecutors, and nowhere is this more true than for the medical technology sector. From 2014-2019, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) brought enforcement actions against 67 medtech companies. …
For over two decades, the federal government has employed roughly the same approach to corporate crime. Prosecutors promise leniency in exchange for corporations’ commitment to improve the internal structures and systems that ensure their employees’ compliance with law. Over the …
The coronavirus’ impact across the United States will make an epic, even Tolstoyan, saga, sweeping across all levels of American society and featuring brave heroes and tragic victims. But so far, this story has lacked one figure that every drama …
For many years, law and economics scholars, as well as politicians and regulators, have debated whether corporate criminal enforcement deters too much beneficial corporate activity or lets corporate criminals off too easily. This debate has recently grown more polarized: On …
On February 26, a long-running legal battle over the scope of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) took another turn when a federal trial court judge ordered that former Alstom executive Lawrence Hoskins be acquitted of the FCPA charges against …
To assist legal and compliance officers of financial institutions, this memorandum summarizes key recent developments in criminal prosecutions and regulatory enforcement actions involving financial institutions during November and December 2019.
Among the significant matters and trends:
2019 was, by many measures, the most significant year ever in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) enforcement. More than $2.6 billion in corporate fines sets a new high-water mark, driven by the two largest corporate resolutions in the statute’s history. …