Court Orders SEC to Produce Documents on How Off-Channel Communications Fines Were Determined

Judge Orders SEC to Hand Over Texting Fine Data

A Florida federal court has awarded the American Securities Association a key victory in the group’s years-long challenge against the Securities and Exchange Commission for refusing to produce documents under the Freedom of Information Act related to how the agency calculated fines for off-channel communication violations.

ASA “has scored a partial win in a long-running fight against the Securities and Exchange Commission over what it argues has been an unfairly opaque process implemented during an industry-wide crackdown on recordkeeping violations,” Valerie Mirko, partner and leader of the securities regulation and litigation practice at Armstrong Teasdale in Washington, told ThinkAdvisor in an email Wednesday.

In a March 5 order, Judge Steven Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida directed the SEC “to disclose sections of 52 spreadsheets used by enforcement staff to size monetary penalties against broker-dealers that either were under investigation or had settled over recordkeeping failures,” Mirko said.

Exxon Planned Texas Move Shows Delaware No Longer Corporate King

New Jersey-based Exxon Mobil Corp.’s proposed plan to reincorporate in Texas, announced Tuesday, is an inflection point in the state’s bid to dethrone Delaware as the nation’s hub for corporate registrations.

Texas’ comprehensive overhaul of its corporate laws pulled the company to the Lone Star State. Unlike high-profile movers such as Tesla Inc. and Zynga Inc., Exxon wasn’t driven out of its home state by a protracted legal battle or another push factor.

The outcome of Exxon’s shareholder vote on the reincorporation proposal will send an important signal to other non-controlled public companies considering whether to take advantage of Texas’ business-friendly legal environment.

Smartmatic Files Motion To Dismiss For “Vindictive And Selective Prosecution”

In October 2025, Smartmatic was criminally charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, money laundering conspiracy, and money laundering in connection with an alleged bribery scheme involving the former Chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Philippines. (See here for the prior post).

The allegations involved the same core conduct alleged in a 2024 FCPA enforcement action (still pending) involving two company executives, among others.

The criminal indictment against Smartmatic was notable in that 2010 was the last time a business organization was criminally indicted for FCPA offenses (as opposed to a criminal information / complaint resolved through a plea agreement or deferred prosecution agreement; non-prosecution agreement; or declination with disgorgement).

Yesterday, Smartmatic moved to dismiss the indictment on the basis of “vindictive and selective prosecution.”

Sam Bankman-Fried Shouldn’t Get New Trial, Prosecutors Argue

Prosecutors say FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial should be rejected because he has failed to show how his conviction was unfair.
Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty in 2023 of fraud and conspiracy in the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

In a self-penned court filing in February, Bankman-Fried said new witnesses could refute the prosecution’s case that he defrauded FTX’s customers. He claimed that two former FTX executives who didn’t testify at trial, Daniel Chapsky and Ryan Salame, could counter the prosecution’s narrative about the exchange’s financial condition.

Hong Kong arrests hedge fund and brokerage staff in $300mn insider trading probe

Hong Kong authorities have arrested eight staff at securities brokerages and a hedge fund and raided their offices in one of the city’s biggest insider-trading probes in years.

Senior executives at two licensed securities firms and a hedge fund were arrested on suspicion of bribery and insider trading, Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Securities and Futures Commission said on Thursday.

The commissions said they had also searched the companies’ offices and the personal residences of the arrested staff.

Authorities allege that brokerage executives accepted bribes of more than HK$4mn (US$512,000) in exchange for supplying confidential information on upcoming share placements, from which the hedge fund then profited to the tune of HK$315mn.