By: Sara Kropf There’s no question that corporate executives enjoy certain perks. They come with the job, right? The government can’t outlaw corporate perks, but the SEC has cracked down on the proper disclosure of them. It recently sued the former CEO of...
By: Sara Kropf Whistleblowers are a problem for corporations and a boon for the SEC. The SEC relies in part on whistleblowers to identify possible wrongdoing within publicly-traded companies. From the agency’s perspective, the employees and officers of a company are...
By: Sara Kropf The federal government’s aggressive approach to criminal forfeiture unquestionably targets innocent bystanders to crime. In fact, the law makes it easy—and profitable—for the government to do so. A recent high-profile insider trading case in New...
By: Sara Kropf The conviction and sentence of a man in California were recently vacated when it was discovered that the government had improperly withheld exculpatory material from his defense team at trial. We read a lot of stories about the failures of Brady v....
By: Sara Kropf I have been writing about the stupendously overbroad gag order imposed sua sponte by the judge in the criminal trial of Donald Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Mine. Judge Irene Berger imposed it, several media organizations intervened to challenge it,...
By: Sara Kropf In a white-collar case, the prosecutors have the FBI on their side. A private lawyer can't call on armed agents to investigate a case. Hiring a good private investigator, then, can make all the difference. A skillful and diligent investigator can chase...
By: Sara Kropf A Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) ensures that the Board of Directors, management and employees comply with the rules and regulations of regulatory agencies and the company's own policies and procedures. What happens, then, when the CCO is personally...
By: Sara Kropf A non-prosecution agreement is a wonderful thing. But it may not mean the end of the woes for a company under government investigation. Hewlett-Packard (HP), the California-based technology firm, and its Mexican subsidiary, HP Mexico, entered into an...
By: Sara Kropf A few weeks ago, I wrote about the overly broad gag order imposed by a district court judge in West Virginia in the criminal case against former Massey CEO Don Blankenship. After furious motion practice, including efforts by various media organizations...
By: Sara Kropf Several of the cases I’ve featured in my posts over the last year have had significant developments or come to a close. It’s always interesting—and moderately depressing—to see how things turned out. When an FBI Agent Is the Bad Guy First up we have...