Legal News

Now Hiring: TARP, FCPA ?Cops? Looking For a Few Good Lawyers

By Ashby Jones

Amid all the hemorrhaging of jobs in the legal sector, we bring you a sliver of good news. According to the Journal’s Amir Efrati, reporting from the ABA’s white-collar conference in San Francisco, two high-profile prosecutors are looking for new blood and told white-collar defense lawyers they should expect to see more business soon.

There Will Be (TARP) Fraud: On Thursday, Neil Barofsky, the new special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, aka the TARP Cop, practically guaranteed the white-collar bar lots of work in the coming months as the government finishes unloading nearly $3 trillion dollars to the private sector. (Click here for a WSJ story on Barofsky in Friday’s Journal; here for a LB post on his appointment.)

Barofsky, looking straight-up dashing in the attached picture, said up to 10%, or $300 billion, of the total could be vulnerable to fraud by banks, hedge funds, mortgage servicers and others that take funds. The fraud could take several forms, he said, from companies misrepresenting their condition to the Treasury Department in order to get funds or, once they have the money, using it improperly. “Is it good for business? I think it is,” he told a group of several hundred white-collar lawyers. “Fraud is going to hit and we’ll be all over it,” he said.

His office currently has 25 employees but Barofsky said he expects it to grow to between 100 and 125.

Don’t Forget the FCPA: Meanwhile, the DOJ’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Cop, Mark Mendelsohn, is looking for attorneys join his cause against bribery of foreign officials by U.S. companies.

Fresh off yesterday’s arrests of two individuals in the U.K. for their alleged involvement in the Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton case, Mendelsohn told a crowd of 500 he is looking for two new FCPA prosecutors to handle more FCPA work. The DOJ brought 16 FCPA enforcement actions against companies and individuals in both 2007 and 2008, up from a handful just several years ago.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).