Jones Day's lawyers have vast experience representing companies and senior executives in all facets of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement actions. We have successfully defended against many formal and informal SEC investigations of insider trading, manipulation, and other allegations of securities fraud. Due to their status in this area of the law, our partners frequently receive and accept invitations to speak on SEC enforcement issues to the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association, the Association of General Counsel, and many other organizations. These lawyers also routinely deal with the issues of grand jury investigations, as well as private civil lawsuits related to SEC investigations. This is important in an era when Sarbanes-Oxley and related regulatory enactments have expanded corporate executives' liability for securities, accounting, and other frauds related to the filing of financial statements.
Jones Day's Securities Enforcement lawyers bring to each engagement deep experience in investigating, prosecuting, defending and trying the most sophisticated administrative, civil and criminal securities and commodities enforcement matters. Our partners have served at the SEC and as chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. They represent clients before the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the industry self-regulatory organizations and state securities commissioners, as well as various U.S. attorneys' offices and other units of the Justice Department. Our lawyers have tried federal securities law charges before criminal juries, district judges and administrative law judges. They have also served upon recommendation of the SEC and by appointment of the court as consultants and to oversee settlements in SEC actions.
Our clients in securities enforcement matters include public companies, directors and board committees, auditors, broker/dealers, hedge funds, investment advisors, mutual funds, law firms, and their members and executives. The matters involve accounting and financial statement issues, including classification questions, revenue recognition, manipulation of reserves, questionable use of special purpose entities, and alleged aiding and abetting another issuer's false accounting; disclosure issues and the adequacy of SEC filings; irregularities in initial and secondary public offerings of securities; selective disclosures implicating Regulation FD; insider trading; trading irregularities in the Treasury securities market; market timing and late trading of mutual funds; broker/dealer sales practices, supervision issues and insider trading policies; auditor independence and malpractice issues; questionable foreign payments and books and records violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and many other issues.
Our attorneys also represent clients in a wide variety of CFTC investigations, including alleged market manipulation involving several energy markets, and alleged false reporting of transactions to manipulate index prices for natural gas.
Corporations may be held criminally liable for money laundering if a corporate officer or employee is acting within the scope of his authority and for the benefit of the corporation when he commits a money laundering offense.
The passage of the USA PATRIOT Act will add certain foreign crimes as “specified unlawful activity” and redefine financial institutions to include foreign banks as well as a variety of other businesses. Prosecutors will be able to charge money laundering in some cases even when there is no underlying crime in the United States. The foreign offenses that are now defined as “specified unlawful activity” include offenses “against a foreign nation” involving bribery of a public official; the misappropriation, theft, or embezzlement of public funds by or for the benefit of a public official; certain smuggling or export control violations; or any other offense with respect to which the United States would be obligated by treaty to extradite if the perpetrator were found in the United States. Thus, foreign law may now play a direct role in money laundering offenses.