The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced earlier this month that on April 6 and 7, 2016, the Southern District of New York entered final judgments against seven former employees of Direct Access Partners (DAP), a New York-based Wall Street brokerage firm that engaged in a business trading scheme that generated more than $60 million in fees. See January 2016 Red Notice. DAP employees used roughly $5 million of that revenue to bribe a former official at a state-sponsored Venezuelan bank. As a result of the judgments, Iuri Rodolfo Bethancourt, Benito Chinea, Tomas Alberto Clarke Bethancourt, Josephy DeMeneses, Jose Alejandro Hurtado, Ernesto Lujan and Haydee Leticia Pabon are now enjoined from violating Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5.
Additionally, the court ordered Chinea, Clarke, DeMeneses, Hurtado and Lujan to pay $42.5 million in disgorgement and interest. However, those amounts were deemed satisfied by the forfeiture orders resulting from related criminal cases brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for the same conduct.
For additional information, see coverage in the FCPA Blog and the article in The Wall Street Journal.
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