Head of White-Collar and Co-Head of RISC
Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP
Kevin Harnisch is Head of White-Collar and Co-Head of Regulation, Investigations, Securities and Compliance (RISC), United States. Kevin litigates before the SEC, FINRA and other self-regulatory organizations, the Department of Justice, the CFTC, US attorney's offices, and federal courts. He handles matters relating to securities enforcement defense, internal investigations, anti-corruption issues, and represents corporations and their directors and officers, broker-dealers, hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment banks.
Kevin served as a Branch Chief in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC, where he led cases regarding financial fraud, market manipulation, insider trading, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and municipal bond offerings. He has authored numerous articles, and he frequently lectures on federal securities law and anti-corruption issues. He has experience defending public companies in a wide array of SEC, DOJ and other government agency investigations. Those investigations often pertain to such issues as the accuracy of financial statements, undisclosed related party transactions, the adequacy of internal controls, the FCPA and other anti-corruption laws, responses to whistleblowers, and potential insider trading.
Recent Articles & Comments
Firms that enter into inappropriate NDAs with departing employees risk creating more problems for themselves. (See, e.g., .) Employers should review their forms of NDAs, particularly for departing employees, to ensure that they are not opening themselves up to an enforcement action.
The public has a right to know how the SEC is making determinations on whether to issue whistleblower awards and how the SEC evaluates the various discretionary factors that impact the size of the awards. Protecting the identity of whistleblowers is obviously important, but one wonders if the SEC's current approach has gone too far with the breadth of redactions such that the decisions regarding whistleblowers are doing little more than serving as a general notification of the fact of an…
This is a stark reminder of the importance of performing post-closing diligence and promptly integrating acquired businesses into your compliance program. Failing to do so places one at great peril and will garner little sympathy from the government in the event problematic conduct occurs.
This is the latest in a lengthy series of enforcement actions emphasizing the peril of including in separation agreements provisions that in any way limit or provide disincentives to employees’ ability to participate fully in the SEC's whistleblower program, including fully collecting any bounties to which they are entitled.