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Business Crimes BulletinAdministrative LawFeaturesLitigationRegulationWhite Collar Crime

Compliance Officers: Law Enforcement Partners or Targets?

By Jonathan B. New and Patrick T. Campbell
March 01, 2018

In May 2014, Andrew Ceresney, then-Director of Enforcement of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in his keynote address at Compliance Week 2014, stated, “ …. legal and compliance officers who perform their responsibilities diligently, in good faith, and in compliance with the law are our partners and need not fear enforcement action.” Andrew Ceresney, Director of Division of Enforcement, SEC, Keynote Address at Compliance Week 2014 (May 20, 2014). In the same speech, however, Ceresney articulated the circumstances under which the SEC would bring actions against compliance officers, personally: “[W]hen the [SEC] believes … compliance personnel have affirmatively participated in the misconduct, when they have helped mislead regulators, or when they have clear responsibility to implement compliance programs or policies and wholly failed to carry out that responsibility.” Id.

In the years since that speech, law enforcement's ambivalence toward compliance officers has only become more pronounced. Compliance officers' potential exposure has become most apparent in the area of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulation and enforcement.

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