Securities and Exchange Commission

SEC vs Seyed Taher Kameli: final decision on EB-5 case

Feb25

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Seyed Taher Kameli On January 24, 2022, Seyed Taher Kameli, without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations of fraud, agreed to the entry of a final judgment in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois. As summarized in the SEC’s press release, the second amended complaint, filed in May 2019, alleged the following facts: “Kameli and his companies, Defendants Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC and American Enterprise Pioneers, Inc. (“Defendants”), claimed to at least 226 foreign investors that each of their

February 25, 2022

SEC and CFTC Record Similar Data with Two Different Systems

Oct28

Written by Taher Kameli & Chathan Vemuri Over the past several years, experts have called for the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to harmonize their regulatory standards in order to minimize duplicative or contradictory regulatory reporting requirements.[1] Not doing so has led to market participants creating “two different reporting systems and/or processes – one for the CFTC and one for the SEC” despite both require the reporting of similar data.[2] The obstacles posed to cross-jurisdictional transparency in following the regulatory rules and the

October 28, 2020

SEC Right to Disgorgement Recognized by The Supreme Court

Sep25

Written by Taher Kameli & Chathan Vemuri The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has long argued that as part of penalties sought from parties accused of unlawful activities in violation of securities laws, the SEC had a right to disgorge from the profits of the liable party as part of the remedies it could seek.[1] Disgorgement refers to a remedy by which parties who profited from illegal or wrongful conduct (“ill-gotten gains” so to speak) must return those profits that they made from that conduct to those they harmed in order to make them whole.[2]

September 25, 2020

Confirmation of SEC’s Disgorgement in Liu v. SEC

Aug31

Written by Taher Kameli & Julie Seong A recent the United States Supreme Court decision confirmed that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can seek disgorgement of ill-gotten gains as an equitable remedy in SEC enforcement actions in federal court. Liu v. SEC was a case involving the SEC and married couple Charles Liu and Xing Wang, who was ordered to pay the $26.7 million they had collected from immigrants and misappropriated. On June 22, 2020, the Supreme Court’s Liu v. SEC ruling upheld the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to recover ill-gotten gains from those who commit financial

August 31, 2020