On October 6, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an August 14, 2014, petition for writ of certiorari by Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriquez, former owners of Terra Communications (Terra). The petition asked the court to define who counts as a foreign official under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
In 2011, Esquenazi and Rodriquez…
On September 16, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced enforcement actions against 19 firms and an individual trader for short sales in violation of Rule 105 of Regulation M. The SEC’s latest crackdown on short-selling violations in advance of stock offerings came one day shy of the one-year anniversary of enforcement actions against 23…
Colleges, universities and anyone offering postsecondary education, take note: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) continues to target alleged unfair and deceptive practices related to the student loan and financial aid process. A few weeks ago, the CFPB filed suit against Corinthian Colleges in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging violations…
No one could accuse the Serious Fraud Office of living a charmed life. It is regularly accused of stupidity and inefficiency by a hostile press, and not infrequently the government weighs in with destabilising tactics, either by slashing its paltry budget, or by planning to redesign the counter fraud landscape.
A report this week in…
Recently, the SEC announced its largest whistleblower award to date − an expected award of $30-35 million − to be issued to a foreign resident. Notably, the award would have been even larger if the tipster had not unreasonably delayed in reporting the violations.
This award to a foreign resident is of particular interest because…
“From this autumn, we will start to see cases adopted by us, under our recalibrated focus on top tier work, coming to trial…we have much in the pipeline.”
David Green CB QC, Director of the SFO, addressing the Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime on 2 September 2014
One such case is the SFO’s bribery case,…
In a move that should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency issued a proposed rule last week that would expand its oversight, supervision and enforcement jurisdiction to include nonbank automobile finance companies.
Established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act…
It is always assumed that sentences in the US for any crime are significantly higher than they are in the UK, but nowhere is this more starkly exemplified than in white collar crime. The recent sentence of 9 years in prison for Mathew Martoma for insider trading is the latest proof of the truth of…
Welcome to the new McGuireWoods London LLP fraud blog: The Fraud Board, which has taken over from our highly rated Bribery Library site. There are various reasons for the change, but the main rationale is that while the subject of Bribery remains very important in the economic crime landscape, and will continue to feature strongly…
In a recent speech to the Practising Law Institute’s Private Equity Forum, Norm Champ, Director of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management, discussed the SEC’s increasing attention to the growth in “alternative mutual funds,” or open-end mutual funds that feature investment strategies more typically seen in private funds. Similar to recent speeches and discussions related…
