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.  

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. 

On March 3, 2016, DOJ Criminal Division's Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell addressed recent media reports claiming that companies under investigation by DOJ will soon need to certify their full disclosure of certain documents as a prerequisite to obtaining a settlement agreement with the Department.

Oh, what a year makes. Back in October 2014, all the chatter was about the SEC's increased use of its home-grown Administrative Law Judges to move its enforcement actions to their conclusion versus tangling with defendants in federal court.

The U.S. Department of Justice—widely criticized for the perceived lack of cases brought against corporate executives—issued a new directive yesterday to all U.S. Attorneys designed to hold more individuals accountable for illegal corporate conduct.   

Shortly after the July 2010 adoption of the Dodd-Frank Act's whistleblower program, disputes began arising over whether its anti-retaliation protections apply to employees who report misconduct internally to the company, but not externally to the SEC.