On May 9, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein provided remarks at the American Conference Institute’s 20th Anniversary New York Conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and announced a new policy designed to promote coordination and limit the imposition of multiple penalties on a company for the same conduct, which he referred to as “piling on.” Click here for more.

On April 24, 2018, the Supreme Court held in Jesner et al. v. Arab Bank, PLC that the Alien Tort Statue (“ATS”), which has been extensively used during recent decades by foreign plaintiffs to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for alleged international human rights law violations, may not be used to impose liability on foreign corporations. Click here for more.

Volatility has returned to markets and it is timely to review options for dealing with distressed debt raised by PRC businesses through an offshore structure. PRC debt (including offshore debt) stands at record levels. Any inability to effect a voluntary refinancing of the PRC offshore debt due to mature in the coming years is likely to result in increased restructuring activity, particularly if credit conditions tighten and/or Chinese regulatory consents to refinance on a long-term basis are not forthcoming.

On April 10, the Federal Reserve proposed a significant integration of its stress testing regime with its ongoing supervisory capital requirements, by introducing a new “stress capital buffer” and a new Tier 1 leverage buffer requirement for the 39 firms subject to the Federal Reserve’s annual CCAR supervisory stress tests. The next day, the OCC joined the Federal Reserve in proposing to scale back the buffers related to the “enhanced” supplementary leverage ratio applicable to the 8 U.S. GSIBs and their subsidiary national and state member banks.

Driven by daily headlines about massive breaches of personal data, U.S. states have been increasing their adoption of cybersecurity laws since 2003. These laws require companies to notify regulators, users, or sometimes both, when personal data has been compromised. This month, Alabama became the last U.S. state to adopt such a law (the Alabama Data Breach Notification Act), coming on the heels of South Dakota, which passed its own legislation in March.

On April 6, 2018, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a number of Russian individuals, including some with close connections to President Putin and previously identified as part of the Treasury Department’s so-called Oligarch’s Report. OFAC also sanctioned several Russian companies. These individuals and companies were added to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list under the Ukraine/Russia sanctions program and were undertaken as part of a broader U.S. Government initiative to put more pressure on Russia and the Putin government.

Below are links to a full month’s worth of posts from the Cleary Enforcement Watch blog.

Joon Kim, former Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has rejoined the firm’s New York office as a partner in the enforcement and litigation group. From March 2017 to January 2018, Joon served as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As the most senior federal law enforcement officer in the district, he oversaw all criminal and civil litigation conducted on behalf of the United States and supervised the work of approximately 220 Assistant U.S.

As anticipated, the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has begun to pull back the covers on its views toward cryptocurrencies (also known as "virtual currencies") within the existing regulatory landscape of US sanctions. Virtual currencies are “digital representations of value” that can function as a means for online payments.

On March 14th, the Senate passed a significant regulatory relief bill, the “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,” in a bipartisan 67-to-31 vote. The Bill, if ultimately enacted, would result in the first major revisions to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. It would leave the architecture and major features of DoddFrank intact, but would significantly recalibrate Dodd-Frank requirements in several areas important to banking organizations.