Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Schapiro announced that former prosecutor Robert Khuzami, who is currently at Deutsche Bank AG, was named director of the division of enforcement. He replaces Linda Thomsen, who plans to return to private practice.
Since 2004, Khuzami has been general counsel for the Americas at Deutsche Bank, supervising more than 100 lawyers. Before that, he was global head of litigation and regulatory investigations.
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Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Khuzami served as a federal prosecutor for 11 years with
the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he learned a thing or two about Ponzi schemes.
As
chief of that office's securities and commodities fraud task force for
three years, he prosecuted numerous matters, including insider trading,
Ponzi schemes, accounting and financial statement fraud, organized
crime infiltration of the securities markets, and initial public offering and investment
adviser fraud.
In fact, during his tenure as a prosecutor, Khuzami helped convict Patrick Bennett, chief
financial officer of Bennett Funding Group Inc., in a $1 billion Ponzi
scheme that was uncovered in 1996. The experience from the Bennett case likely will go a long was as he joins the SEC's division that is preparing cases against Bernard
Madoff for an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and Texas billionaire R.
Allen Stanford, who is accused of an $8 billion fraud. - Baz Hiralal
