Just ten days but thousands of miles apart, two former Big Four professionals separately found themselves in hot water on insider trading charges. On May 28, Scott London, a former senior partner with accounting firm KPMG, agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of securities fraud filed against him in federal court in California. Prosecutors […]
Bruce Carton
Posted inFrom the Archive
The Migration of Former SDNY Prosecutors to the SEC Continues
The migration of former prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to the SEC continues. Today, the SEC announced that Robert E. Rice has joined the agency as Chief Counsel to SEC Chairman Mary Jo White. Rice joins the SEC from Deutsche Bank AG in New York, where he was head of governance, […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Web Watch: Best of the Week Ending May 31
Throughout the week over at Securities Docket I highlight the most interesting columns and blog posts from around the web on the subjects of SEC enforcement and securities litigation. Here is a digest of my picks for the week ending May 31. Total S.A. FCPA Actions Hearken Back to Time of Tupac Shakur, Beepers David Smyth, Cady Bar the […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Total S.A. to Pay $398 Million to Resolve Bribery Charges
The SEC brought a significant FCPA action yesterday, charging oil and gas company Total S.A. with paying $60 million in bribes to intermediaries of an Iranian government official. The Iranian official then allegedly exercised his influence to help Total obtain contracts to develop oil and gas fields in Iran that resulted in more than $150 million in […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Sen. Warren Asks SEC for Any Research on Benefits of ‘No Admission’ Settlements
In February 2013, Sen. Elizabeth Warren ushered in her first hearing as a senator by asking the nation’s seven top financial regulators, “How tough you are? …. Tell me a little bit about the last few times you’ve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial? As discussed here, none of the […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Professional SEC Whistleblower Firm Seeks Investors to Finance Investigations
Back in the olden days (pre-2010), the SEC would try to catch securities fraudsters and, if they succeeded, the agency might also impose a fine and disgorgement that would be paid to the U.S. Treasury or to the victims. The passage of Dodd-Frank in 2010 brought with it the new concept of the securities fraud whistleblower, who […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Whistleblower Whose Tip Led SEC to Charge ISS Will Not Receive Award
As discussed here by Compliance Week’s Joe Mont, the SEC charged proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services yesterday for failing to safeguard the confidential proxy voting information of clients. The agency alleged that a former ISS employee provided a proxy solicitor with material, nonpublic information revealing how more than 100 ISS institutional shareholder advisory clients were voting […]
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SEC Settles ‘Pay-to-Play’ Case Against Former Goldman Sachs Banker
The SEC announced today that former Goldman Sachs investment banker Neil M.M. Morrison has agreed to pay $100,000 and accept a bar from the securities industry for five years to settle the agency’s charges related to a “pay-to-play” scheme. In September 2012, the SEC alleged in administrative proceedings against Goldman and Morrison that Morrison made undisclosed campaign contributions to […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
‘Whistleblower Directors Speak’ at CW 2013
This morning, I moderated an interesting panel discussion at CW 2013, Compliance Week’s excellent annual conference. The panel (“Whistleblower Directors Speak”) featured three senior officials representing major government whistleblower programs: Jane Norberg, Deputy Chief, Office of the Whistleblower, Securities and Exchange Commission; Ed Ricobene, chief of the office of policy & review in the U.S. Commodity […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
SEC Wraps Up Its ‘Golden Goose’ Insider Trading Case
Yesterday, four and a half years after the SEC filed its complaint in what is now known even by the agency as the “Golden Goose” case, the SEC announced that final settlements were reached with the last remaining defendants in the matter. On May 14, 2013, a federal court entered final judgments against defendants Jamil […]
