The Criminal Lawyer

A couple of weeks ago, we were at a luncheon with some white-collar defense attorneys, listening to a presentation by the acting U.S. Attorney, Lev Dassin. Mr. Dassin let us know that, although he couldn’t spill any particulars, there are a number of ongoing investigations at the Southern District of New York right now, which he expected to provide a lot of work for us later this year.

He also confirmed our impression that there is a lot of political pressure right now, causing prosecutors and law enforcement to focus more assets on white-collar crime. Many see the current economic downturn as the result of Wall Street skullduggery, so law enforcement is being tasked with doing something about it.

Our biggest fear is that people who did nothing illegal may get caught up in the frenzy to blame people for the recession. A federal criminal investigation is a serious matter, and even people who did nothing wrong can wind up in prison because of how they behaved during the investigation.

Still, a lot of white-collar crime is now coming to light these days, because of the hurting economy. Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent investments are being caught out left and right, as investors start trying to pay bills by cashing out their accounts, only to discover that their money isn’t there.

Furthermore, PricewaterhouseCoopers today published a white paper, “Boom Time for White Collar Crime,” predicting that the economy will cause greater numbers of people to commit white-collar crimes, such as embezzlement and fraud.

PwC partner Andrew Gordon told GAAP web that “sales targets seem ever more out of reach, bonuses are under threat, and people’s reputations and livelihoods are at stake. Together, these can be powerful motives for individuals to cross the line.”

The white paper predicts an increase in specific types of fraud: data theft by criminal organizations, “rogue traders” in corporate finance departments, and fraudulent mis-reporting of business numbers to make companies appear better to investors. The paper also sees more Ponzi schemes and fraudulent investment schemes collapsing as investors try to cash out.

So criminals caused a bad economy which is causing more criminals? That sounds a little simplistic.

Of course, the economy didn’t go south because a few Wall Streeters went around defrauding investors. The economy tanked for a lot of reasons, but mostly because lenders stopped believing they’d get paid back. Institutions with the most leverage — financial institutions particularly — got their margins called and couldn’t get new credit, a deadly combination. No amount of government stimulus would change that, without a condition that capital infusions to lenders must turn into loans. The government didn’t make such conditions, so lenders just hoarded their cash to sit out the storm. The credit market, already dying, was pretty much killed. The U.S. Congress and the new Administration have since then acted fairly consistently to prevent lenders from regaining sufficient confidence to start lubricating the economy again. In modern economics, perception is everything — if you are perceived to have liquidity, even if you are at risk, you will have liquidity (see JPMorgan Chase this time last year), but if you are perceived to be at risk even though you aren’t, your liquidity dries up (see Bear Stearns this time last year). Once lenders start perceiving that they will get their money back, things will start picking up. This crisis of confidence was caused, not by white-collar criminals, but by Clinton-era directives to make mortgages to people who can’t pay them, by borrowers and lending agents who cashed in on the resulting laxness, and by an ever growing house of cards that was destined to collapse.

So the economy didn’t go south because of criminals. Similarly, a worse economy doesn’t necessarily translate into more crimes being committed. People who would steal in bad times would have stolen in good times, too. White-collar types aren’t exactly Jean Valjean, stealing a crust of bread so their families don’t starve. No, white-collar crime requires a combination of opportunity and character traits, neither of which correlate with economic pressures.

What is true, however, is that more white-collar prosecutions are going to happen because an under-informed public and its politicians are screaming for blood. Unfortunately, we do not believe that all prosecutors out there understand the complexities and realities of the financial world well enough to accurately sift the guilty from the merely unlucky. Some innocent people are going to get caught in this ever-widening net.

The ICC has, at long last, issued a warrant for Sudan’s military dictator, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although the anticipated charge of genocide was left out, it remains a historical moment, as this is the first time the ICC has charged the current leader of a state, albeit a failed state.

To recap, in November, we noted that the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor was calling for al-Bashir to be charged personally with multiple counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Al-Bashir had seized power of the Sudan in 1989, and ruled ever since as the military dictator of one of Africa’s most ruthless regimes. In the Darfur region of western Sudan, a war had raged for about five years, with government troops and proxy fighters committing massive bloodshed against rebel groups as well as civilians and entire villages seen to be sympathetic to the rebels. Despite enormous outcry from the rest of the world, and pressure from the U.N. and powerful nations, al-Bashir had shown no inclination to temper or cease the bloodshed. On the contrary, it appeared that his regime had only ramped up the violence in a war that is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of human beings through murder, combat, starvation and disease. But after Moreno-Ocampo started calling for ICC charges to be brought against him, al-Bashir called for a unilateral cease-fire in an attempt to get the U.N. Security Council to defer any legal action.

Later, we reported that Moreno-Ocampo warned the Security Council that any criminal charges could cause al-Bashir to launch a violent reprisal against peacekeepers and civilians, and so the U.N. would need to be prepared to take action. Meanwhile, the African Union and the Arab League asked the Security Council to defer the prosecution, on the curious grounds that prosecuting war crimes and genocide were not helpful to the peace process.

It was beginning to look like the Security Council was going to go along with the crowd, and defer any prosecution indefinitely — even though doing so would have created a terrible precedent of appeasement and keeping out of situations like Darfur. So it was an act of unexpected conviction for the ICC to be permitted to go ahead and issue its warrant for al-Bashir.

The warrant doesn’t charge everything that Moreno-Ocampo had called for, notably omitting the charge of genocide. Still, it does charge the sitting head of state with “intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property.”

Issuing a warrant is one thing. Executing said warrant, however, is an entirely different matter. When will the ICC get its chance to arrest al-Bashir? Moreno-Ocampo stated “as soon as al-Bashir flies outside Sudan, he could be arrested.” The odds of al-Bashir doing any such thing are vanishingly small.

So significant odds were overcome, courage was demonstrated, and a significant new precedent has been set in International Criminal Law. But practically speaking, there is little chance that anything will come of it. 300,000 are still dead, countless injured and suffering, and 2,700,000 refugees (according to the U.N.’s Darfur numbers), without any international action to punish those who committed the crimes.

It’s not over yet…

A “Martha Stewart moment” is that unhappy moment during a white-collar investigation when one’s client misleads the investigators. A client who may have escaped prosecution entirely has now practically ensured that she will be prosecuted. If his client must speak with investigators, a good attorney tries to prepare her well, to prevent any Martha Stewart moments from happening.

During the recent SEC investigation of a possible $8 billion fraud at Stanford International Bank, they interviewed Stanford Financial Group’s chief investment executive, Laura Pendergest-Holt (pictured). She was accompanied to the interview by Proskauer Rose partner Thomas Sjoblom, a very good and experienced attorney.

Last Thursday, the investigation went criminal, as Pendergest-Holt was charged with a federal crime. She’s alleged to have had a Martha Stewart moment, lying to the SEC about her knowledge of Stanford’s investments, and about not meeting with other Stanford people to prepare for her meeting with the SEC.

How could that happen, when she had such a good lawyer?

The answer appears to be (first pointed out by Zach Lowe) that Sjoblom wasn’t actually her lawyer. He represented Stanford, not its executive.

This is something that comes up all the time in the white collar world. When a corporation is under investigation, it hires lawyers to protect its interests. The interests of its executives and employees are not always the same — in fact they are rarely the same — and so to avoid potential conflicts of interest they usually get separate counsel.

If the same law firm represented a corporation and its CIO, somewhere down the line the CIO might decide that it’s in her interest to testify against the company. That would cause a conflict of interest, so the company will usually insist that she get her own lawyer.

If the corporation’s attorneys speak with the CIO, they must make it very clear that they only represent the company, and do not represent the individual. In this case, Sjoblom made it very clear at least twice during the SEC meetings that he was Stanford’s lawyer and not Pendergest-Holt’s. It is not yet known whether he made this clear to Pendergest-Holt (he did not return Lowe’s calls seeking comment, but commenting is probably improper anyway), though it is hard to imagine that he did not do so.

Sjoblom had a bit of a dilemma in that situation, regardless. As Stanford’s lawyer, he probably needed to get information from Pendergest-Holt. And he probably needed to cooperate fully with the investigators. He would have had to make it perfectly clear to her that, as he did not represent her, anything she said to him would not be privileged. (Well, Stanford could assert a privilege perhaps, but Pendergest-Holt could not.)

If Pendergest-Holt reasonably believed that Sjoblom represented her, and then Sjoblom shared her information with Stanford or the SEC, then Sjoblom could well be liable in a civil suit. Again, there is no reason to believe that such is actually the case, and this is only mentioned to stress the challenges presented to the corporation’s attorney in a situation like this.

How does the company’s lawyer get information out of its CIO, then? If the lawyer tells the CIO he doesn’t represent her, and nothing she says is going to be confidential, and in fact he’s obligated to share her information, then she’s not going to want to talk. The solution is simple and cold: the lawyer must inform the CIO that if she doesn’t talk she will be fired.

Given all the warnings that must have been given, alerting her that Sjoblom did not represent her, it is strange to see that she didn’t get her own counsel. Nevertheless, Pendergest-Holt somehow appeared before the SEC without being represented by her own lawyer. She didn’t have someone watching out for her own interests, and now she’s been arrested and charged with a federal crime as a result.

She has lawyers now, of course. She is represented by the firm of Parsons Behle & Latimer in the civil SEC matter, and by Houston’s Dan Cogdell in the criminal matter. Still, we have to wonder why she waited until it was too late before she got her own counsel.

Memo to executives and employees: Get your own lawyers!