Tag Archives: Alicyn Cooley

PCCE Seeking New Executive Director

After a prolific tenure, Alicyn Cooley will soon be stepping down as PCCE’s Executive Director to begin an exciting new chapter in the private sector. Alicyn’s contributions to PCCE have been extraordinary. Her accomplishments include conferences on The Next Wave of Corporate Enforcement under the Biden Administration; Compliance, Culture, and ESG: How Companies Achieve Meaningful Change and Meet Evolving Regulatory and Stakeholder Expectations; Confronting Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Challenges in Times of Unprecedented Change; and The Advancement of Digital Assets and Addressing Financial Crime Risk, as well as the launch of PCCE’s Directors’ Academy, an annual program providing directors with expert guidance on subjects including corporate governance, enforcement, compliance, cybersecurity and data privacy, directors’ oversight duties, board diversity and composition, ESG, and shareholder activism. In addition to bringing her expertise in white-collar and corporate enforcement to the Program, Alicyn amplified PCCE’s prominence in the fields of cryptocurrency, cybersecurity and ESG. As editor of PCCE’s blog, Compliance & Enforcement, Alicyn spearheaded an ongoing initiative to publish scholarship on what corporate officers, corporate boards, and enforcement and regulatory authorities can do to detect and root out racism and discrimination (including in their own ranks). Please join us in celebrating Alicyn’s groundbreaking and lasting work as PCCE’s Executive Director.

In light of Alicyn’s imminent departure, PCCE is seeking a new Executive Director. We are looking for candidates with enforcement experience, including those who are transitioning out of the government and into private practice. While we would prefer a candidate who is interested in working with us long-term, we are willing to accommodate short-term arrangements as well. The candidate should be able to start no later than February 22, 2022, but preferably sooner.

A full description of the job is below.

Continue reading →

What’s Old Is New Again: DOJ’s New Corporate Criminal Enforcement Policies Equip Prosecutors with More Tools and Information

by Alicyn Cooley and Matthew Levine 

The approach of the Biden Justice Department to corporate and financial crime continues to emerge—or re-emerge. Corporations with federal criminal exposure must now, again (PDF: 463 KB), provide information on all individuals responsible for misconduct in order to receive cooperation credit from the Department of Justice. And corporations which resolve that exposure pursuant to Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) or Nonprosecution Agreements (NPAs) with DOJ will also now face the increased likelihood of independent monitorships—the use of which waned considerably in recent years, even before the Trump administration explicitly discouraged imposing them in 2018 (PDF: 4.9 MB).

In keynote remarks delivered yesterday at the American Bar Association’s National Institute on White Collar Crime, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced these and other new DOJ policies and initiatives, all of which are reminiscent of the Obama Administration’s approach to corporate criminal enforcement. In particular, companies and practitioners should take note of DOJ’s stated commitments to: (1) equipping prosecutors with more information and tools—including monitors—to root out corporate crime and ensure corporations comply with the law and the requirements of their agreements with DOJ; (2) proactively using data accumulated about past corporate resolutions, including taking into account corporations’ full criminal and regulatory histories; and (3) standardizing approaches to corporate enforcement across DOJ and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.

Continue reading →

Superintendent Linda Lacewell Announces Release of New York State Department of Financial Services’ Report on Its Investigation into the July 15, 2020 Hack of High-Profile Twitter Accounts

by Alicyn Cooley

In her keynote session on October 14, 2020, the first day of the fall 2020 conference of New York University School of Law’s Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement, titled, Confronting Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Challenges in Times of Unprecedented Change, Superintendent Linda Lacewell of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced the simultaneous release of DFS’s report on its investigation into the July 15, 2020 hack into the Twitter accounts of cryptocurrency firms and public figures.

Continue reading →

Unexplained Wealth Orders, Explained: The UK Regime and Considerations for the United States (Part II of II)

by Alun Milford and Alicyn Cooley

In Part One of this article, we described the history of Unexplained Wealth Orders (“UWOs”) in England and Wales, and their use by UK authorities to date. As litigation challenging UWOs already has shown, respondents against whom such orders are entered face a binding precedent to the contrary should they seek to persuade a court that a UWO violates their or their spouse’s privilege against self-incrimination. Although the self-incrimination concern presented by UWOs is just one of many reasons that this investigative tool is unlikely to be adopted in the United States, as we detail below, the UWO regime in the United Kingdom presents important considerations—and, potentially, applications—for U.S. authorities. At the same time, the U.S. example of targeted increases in transparency around real estate transactions might give the UK authorities food for thought.

Continue reading →

Unexplained Wealth Orders, Explained: The UK Regime and Considerations for the United States

by Alun Milford and Alicyn Cooley

Two and a half years after their introduction in the United Kingdom, unexplained wealth orders (“UWOs”) are garnering more international attention than ever. Litigation surrounding the first UWOs has progressed in English and Welsh courts, clarifying how the law will be applied there and revealing how the authorities have so far sought to use them. In this two-part article, we review the trajectory of UWOs in the United Kingdom, examine what it shows about the English and Welsh approach to self-incrimination issues raised by UWOs, and compare the UWO system to the current civil forfeiture regime in the United States.

Continue reading →