On November 15, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced its 2022 enforcement statistics. Notable amongst the data was the news that the SEC had filed 760 total enforcement actions in fiscal year 2022, a nine percent increase over the prior year, and imposed a record $6.44 billion in monetary sanctions, including civil penalties, disgorgement, and pre-judgment interest, up from $3.852 billion in fiscal year 2021. The total includes $4.19 billion in civil penalties, also a record high, and $2.25 billion in the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, about six percent less than the year before.
The SEC’s Director of Enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, explained at the Securities Enforcement Forum that these results marked a notable shift in the way the SEC has pursued violations in the last fiscal year. In particular, in the five years prior to fiscal year 2022, the SEC’s Division of Enforcement (“Enforcement Division”) had sought more than twice as much in disgorgements as it did in penalties. Grewal further noted that the decrease in disgorgement and rise in penalties should be understood to demonstrate that “the potential consequences of violating the law are significantly greater than the potential rewards” and that “the risk-reward calculation is not what it was even a few years ago” because “the Enforcement Division is working with a sense of urgency to protect investors, hold wrongdoers accountable and deter future misconduct in our financial markets.” That...
WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to undermine faith in U.S. elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, p...