Katherine Goldstein Shares Guidance for Avoiding Pandemic-Related Financial Crimes with CCBJ

Corporate Counsel Business Journal, for its article “Setting the Right Tone On Financial Crimes,” interviewed Akin Gump litigation partner Katherine Goldstein on her experience as a federal prosecutor and her guidance for companies to avoid financial crimes such as insider trading and fraud related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the topics discussed:

• Investigation and prosecution trends relating to insider trading: “When I was at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from 2004 to 2017, the office saw the biggest increase in insider trading enforcement since the Boesky Milken days in the early to mid 1980s. There were more than 100 prosecutions brought against individuals. There were prosecutions brought against funds. There was a very well-publicized enforcement push against insider trading that involved new uses of investigative techniques, including the use of wiretaps. The education and training that prosecutors got during the course of that enforcement push is now really ingrained in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the emphasis on insider trading is not going away anytime soon. Now it’s actually seen as being part of the bread and butter of the unit – part of the core mission for prosecutors in the unit and their partners at the SEC.”
• Key tips for in-house counsel and directors regarding compliance and risk management: “In-house counsel compliance and risk functions need to remember that their actions could potentially be evaluated by people who don’t have their knowledge or expertise of their particular business – people who essentially get to armchair quarterback decisions that are made after the fact. So, what are the implications of that? It’s really important to have up-to-date and state-of-the-art policies and controls.”
• COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on law enforcement activity: “What we’ve seen over the last several months is that there’s a renewed focus on, one, insider trading, and two, accounting and disclosure issues, making sure that there’s a real focus on public entities making fair disclosures to the public about the impact of COVID on their businesses, both now and in the future. Then, three, there’s a huge focus on frauds or scams that take advantage of COVID – investor frauds or cyber schemes that prey on people’s COVID-related concerns.”

To read the full interview, click here.