Increased attention paid to companies' public promotion of their environmental and sustainability programs is likely to continue in 2023, with further developments in regulation and litigation pertaining to "greenwashing" — a marketing practice which involves unsubstantiated or exaggerated claims about the environmentally friendly or socially-responsible attributes of an organization's products or services.
The Second Circuit's long-anticipated decision in United States v. Blaszczak limits the government's ability to bring fraud or insider trading prosecutions where the information used to achieve an advantage is regulatory information held by the government. It also brings the Second Circuit in greater alignment with the Supreme Court's wire fraud jurisprudence.
If you use Whatsapp or similar platforms for work-related communications, then you've probably heard that regulators are putting an end to that practice. Ephemeral and encrypted messaging, they have noted, evades monitoring and prevents retention. A seldom used doctrine allows prosecutors to charge executives with misdemeanor offenses just for being in the position of power when others commit the misconduct. Rather than take a wait-and-see approach, companies and their leaders would do well to prepare for prosecutors to reach deep into their toolbox.
Ever since the Honeycutt ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 that co-conspirators convicted of federal narcotics violations could not be held jointly and severally liable, courts have grappled with whether it also applied outside the narcotics context, to forfeiture judgments imposed in white-collar cases.
General counsel may find themselves pulled into difficult conversations with top executives as the Securities and Exchange Commission tightens its rules on company insiders looking to dump their stock.
Despite the broad language of the Espionage Act, the DOJ has faced significant hurdles in pursuing prosecutions outside the traditional espionage context, and particularly where the alleged foreign agent's activity involves ostensibly legitimate international business dealings.
The recent implosion of FTX Trading leaves investors and their advisers wondering whether any crypto investment is safe. There have been dozens of cryptocurrency-related fraud schemes in recent years including Ponzi schemes and investment schemes using crypto and the blockchain to facilitate the fraud scheme.
Recent actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), together with certain statements by SEC commissioners, may indicate a shift in approach toward a rebuttable presumption that digital assets are securities, without deference to formal legal tests.
This article examines the impact of Hoskins on three issues of importance to white-collar practitioners: the scope of the FCPA; the interpretation of white-collar criminal statutes; and the authority of the district court to consider at the outset of a prosecution threshold questions of the reach of the law to foreign individuals.
Compliance leaders recognize that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is a growing concern for U.S. companies, but face challenges in determining how to embed compliance structures into their programs. One solution is to look to already existing anti-bribery and corruption (AB&C) compliance measures.
