SEC Division of Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal and several high-ranking officials from the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the FBI spoke on November 29, 2022 at a conference sponsored by Sandpiper Partners LLC concerning hot topics in SEC and DOJ enforcement.  The panelists all made clear that the views they expressed were their own, but those views are worth hearing.

The Second Circuit has recently held that the Government must account for rental income it denied a property owner during a period of illegal seizure even though the Government was able to establish probable cause at a post-seizure hearing. The appeal stemmed from a decades-long sanctions and civil forfeiture action

Last week, representatives of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) participated in Sandpiper Partners LLC’s Annual SEC/DOJ Enforcement 2016 Panel at the Metropolitan Club. Participants included: Stephanie Avakian (Deputy Director, Division of Enforcement, SEC), Nicole Friedlander (Chief, Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York), and Telemachus Kasulis (Deputy Chief, Securities and Commodities Task Force, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York).

When an enforcement action for a violation of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act is announced, chances are the matter has already come to a close – by the time the action becomes public, the agency and the parties usually have agreed upon financial penalties and other sanctions to be levied. But that is not the case for ValueAct Capital and its affiliated investment funds. After the Department of Justice filed a complaint against ValueAct on April 4, the company did not take the allegations lying down. Instead, it vowed to vigorously defend its position.

The Department of Justice yesterday upped the ante in its efforts to encourage companies to self-report potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) violations when it unveiled a one-year pilot program that includes carrots for companies who take the self-reporting route and sticks for those that don’t.  This announcement follows the Department’s recent emphasis on prosecuting individuals in white collar cases, the addition of new resources to combat corruption that includes ten new FCPA prosecutors and three new squads of FBI agents dedicated to investigating corruption, and enhanced cooperation between U.S. law enforcement and their international counterparts.   Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Leslie Caldwell said that the objective of the pilot program is to provide greater transparency into the Department’s charging decisions and to provide an incentive for companies to self-disclose FCPA misconduct so that the Department can prosecute “individuals whose criminal wrongdoing might otherwise never be uncovered by or disclosed to law enforcement.”

Potentially abusive trading algorithms, such as algorithms that purportedly engage in “spoofing” or “layering” are the subject of considerable regulatory interest.  However, in an interesting complaint filed on October 19, 2015, the CFTC alleged that a firm manually entering futures orders engaged in illegal spoofing that appears to have lured algorithmic traders into the market. 

After prolonged criticism over its lack of prosecution of individuals responsible for corporate misconduct, the Justice Department has issued new internal guidance that makes clear that prosecuting individuals in white collar cases is a high priority and should be considered at the very early stages of a corporate misconduct investigation.