Government Investigations

Overview

Our white collar department represents public and private companies and individuals in a variety of industries, with particular emphasis on financial services and health care. We represent clients under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, New York and other state regulators and attorneys general, and other domestic and international governmental agencies. Our clients’ matters have involved domestic and cross-border investigations of allegations of financial and accounting fraud, corruption, bribery, and money laundering, insider trading and market manipulation, wrongdoing related to broker-dealer sales practices, antitrust violations such as price-fixing, economic espionage, health care fraud, and tax evasion, as well as a broad spectrum of other regulatory and criminal issues with both domestic and international regulators.

Because of the nature of our white collar department’s work, many of our most successful matters have not resulted in public charges and remain confidential.

Selected Experience

• Representation of Chuck Blazer, the founder of organized American soccer, relating to FIFA, the international soccer organization, in connection with investigations by the FBI, DOJ, and IRS.
• We are representing a multinational food corporation in connection with an ongoing investigation by the New York Attorney General.
• We are representing the Board of Directors of a major corporation that is the subject of a multilayer investigation being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• We represented a broker at a global financial services firm and a financial analyst at an investment bank in insider trading cases brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the SEC.
• We are representing the former first lady of an African nation in a significant Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The case also involves allegations of money laundering and violations of the Travel Act (18 U.S.C. § 1952) in connection with the award of a mining concession valued at several billion dollars. The matter also includes civil criminal forfeiture actions.
• We represented the Executive Director of the New York Port Authority as a major witness in the high-profile “Bridgegate” scandal, a four-day traffic shutdown that caused colossal delays at the George Washington Bridge.
• We regularly represent institutions of higher education in connection with non-public matters, internal investigations, and responding to confidential state and federal inquiries.
• We represented the money manager of a gemach, a charitable organization in Jewish Orthodox communities, in connection with a high-profile and wide-scale money laundering investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey.
• We represented the former chief compliance officer of a health care provider in connection with parallel criminal and civil investigations by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and state authorities into alleged fraudulent billing.
• We are representing the world’s largest Native American tobacco manufacturer in connection with ongoing litigation brought by the New York Attorney General in federal court for various alleged tax violations. Our clients maintain that they are an independent nation, and hence cannot be taxed by the United States for their sale of cigarettes on reservations. This matter addresses important unsettled constitutional issues regarding Native American sovereignty.
• We represented the former CEO of the Montenegro subsidiary of Magyar Telekom, a Hungarian telecommunications company, in connection with a more than four-year investigation and enforcement action by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations pertaining to the company’s operations in Macedonia and Montenegro.