Scarboro to Simpson Thatcher

Earlier this week, law firm Simpon Thatcher announced (here) that Cheryl Scarboro, Chief of the SEC's FCPA Unit, will join the firm as a partner in its Government and Internal Investigations Practice.

The firm's release notes that "[a]s head of the SEC’s FCPA practice, Ms. Scarboro played a role in all of the SEC’s recent major FCPA cases and acted as the SEC liaison with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and regulators around the world."

Pete Ruegger, Chairman of the firm’s Executive Committee stated that Scarboro's "extensive experience in high-profile SEC investigations and enforcement actions, particularly involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, will enhance our talented Government and Internal Investigations Practice Group" and Paul Curnin, Co-Head of the firm's Litigation Practice added as follows. "In recent years, the SEC and other regulatory bodies have increased their focus on identifying violations under the FCPA. Cheryl’s experience and insight developed over her 19 year tenure at the SEC will be extremely beneficial to our clients.”

Scarboro's departure is the latest in a clear trend of high-profile SEC or DOJ FCPA enforcement attorneys, who enforce this niche law in often aggressive and novel ways, depart for high-paying jobs in the private sector to provide FCPA defense and compliance services - a niche legal practice that has expanded in response to enforcement - as noted by Simpson's release. For other recent examples see here, here, and here.

So will say this is just how Washington works, others will say this is a pressing public policy issue deserving of attention. As explained in this piece, I fall into the latter camp and expressed my concerns (as noted in the article) when interviewed by the Government Accountability Office in March in connection with its Congressionally mandated study examining issues related to employees leaving the SEC to work for related private sector entities.

Dionne Searcey at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (here) notes as follows. "When Scarboro joined the SEC 19 years ago the FCPA was barely a twinkle in enforcement authorities’ eyes. But in recent years amid an uptick in FCPA investigations as well as a huge increase in fines for offenses, Scarboro has had a hand in every major FCPA investigation the agency carried out and has worked closely with the Justice Department’s FCPA team."

Samuel Rubenfeld at the Wall Street Journal Corruption Currents blog (here) notes as follows. "Scarboro is the latest SEC official to leave the enforcement world for private practice, marking a practice known as the “revolving door” that has received harsh criticism from activists and others."

Joshua Gallu at Bloomberg notes (here) that "under Scarboro’s watch, the SEC focused corruption probes to look across industries and regions it considered more prone to bribery, instead of targeting individual firms."

Luke Balleny at Trustlaw (a Thompson Reuters on-line publication) recently let me play U.S. Attorney General in a Q&A (here) and asked me how I would change FCPA enforcement. One suggestion I had was to require all FCPA Unit enforcement attorneys to sign a pledge whereby the enforcement attorney agrees, post-DOJ employment, not to provide FCPA defense or compliance services for a five-year time period - a suggestion I would also extend to SEC FCPA enforcement attorneys.