On April 18, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Kokesh v. Securities and Exchange Commission—a case which could determine whether the Securities and Exchange Commission's power to disgorge ill-gotten gains is subject to a statute of limitations.  

The U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ")'s Criminal Fraud Section recently issued guidance for corporate compliance programs in a document titled Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs ("Fraud Section Guidance"), which reflects a number of notable differences from prior guidance on similar issues. 

In this two-part series, we recap the confirmation hearing highlights of President Donald Trump's nominee for chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, who testified before the Senate Banking Committee on March 23, 2017. 

President Donald Trump's nominee for chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, testified before the Senate Banking Committee during his confirmation hearing on March 23, 2017.  

Analysis of public sources indicates that under the Obama administration, the U.S. government has made substantial efforts to combat trade secret theft through an increase by the U.S. Department of Justice in the number of criminal trade secret prosecutions.

For those watching in the trading world, the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that your friends can, indeed, pass on a gift of non-public information about a company that could leave you criminally liable for insider trading, even if they gain nothing concrete in return. 

The massive Panama Papers leak has attracted attention to the use of offshore business entities and implicated 2,400 U.S.-based clients of Mossack Fonseca. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced an administrative settlement with Apex Fund Services (US) Inc., a firm providing administrative services to private funds, based on its alleged failure to heed red flags and correct faulty accounting by two private equity managers. 

Recently, John C. Cruden, DOJ's Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environmental and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), which oversees DOJ's environmental litigation, voiced a heightened commitment to enforcing environmental laws through criminal prosecution.

Since the financial crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement activity has been the subject of much attention and debate. 

On Wednesday, March 30, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Luis v. United States, No. 14-419, slip op., that the pretrial restraint of legitimate, untainted assets needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Sixth Amendment.