Byron Stephen Georgiou is an American financial lawyer, investor and political activist. In 2009 he was appointed to the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). He was a candidate for the US Senate from Nevada in 2011.
Georgiou received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1970, attending on a full academic scholarship, and his JD in 1974 from Harvard Law School.
Georgiou worked on behalf of farmworkers via the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in the late 1970s, and as a counselor to California Governor Jerry Brown in the early 1980s before going into private practice in San Diego (1983–94). [1] In 2009 he was “of counsel” with the law firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman and Robbins, LLP [2] and related San Diego firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP. [3]
Georgiou "helped lead a team of 30 lawyers to recover $7.5 billion for investors bilked in the Enron fiasco." [2] With Coughlin Stoia and Robbins Geller since 2000, he has had a leadership role in the litigations prosecuting financial fraud on behalf of defrauded investors at Enron, WorldCom, Dynegy, AOL Time Warner, and UnitedHealth. [1] [3] He is currently president of Georgiou Enterprises, which has wide-ranging interests including partnerships in several private equity firms, a portfolio of carbon emission reduction projects in China that generate carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol, environmental cleanup of deep coal mining sites, residential and commercial real estate and golf course management and development, and the provision of customer services at regional shopping centers throughout America. [1] He also serves on the advisory board of Harvard Law School's corporate governance program [4] and contributes to its blog. [2]
Georgiou was one of three appointees by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the FCIC, along with fellow Nevada resident Heather Murren and Sen. Bob Graham, (D-FL). At the time of Georgiou's appointment to the commission, concerns were raised about a conflict of interest, pointing to Coughlin Stoia lawsuits against big Wall Street firms. A report at the time said Georgiou had no equity in the firm and no financial stake in the lawsuits. Lucian Bebchuk, who runs the Harvard Law corporate governance program and consulted with Georgiou on the financial-fraud issues, said Georgiou brought "a rich experience and broad perspective" to the commission assignment, at the same time. [2] In the opening FCIC session in September, 2009, "Commissioner Georgiou highlighted the importance of untangling the 'too big to fail' phenomenon. He emphasized that the Commission should probe the role played by financial instruments and policies which allowed the creators of securities to abandon responsibility for the ultimate performance or failure of assets." [5]
In 1990 he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the Democratic primary he was defeated by incumbent Jim Bates 63% to 37%. [6]
In March 2011, Georgiou officially entered the race for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, claiming he had received "significant encouragement to run both at a local and national level." [7] He was the first Democrat to file his candidacy for the seat, which opened upon the announced retirement of Republican incumbent John Ensign. [8] On August 8, 2011, Georgiou ended his campaign, saying that he could "more effectively contribute to resolution of the serious economic issues facing our state and nation" through his work in the private sector than in the Senate. [9]
In 2015, Georgiou was serving as CEO and chairperson of the Board of Xtreme Green Electric Vehicles, Inc. in Las Vegas. [10]
Georgiou has lived in the Las Vegas Valley since 2005 [2] with his wife, Dr. Thérèse Collins. The couple has three daughters. [1]
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 is a United States federal law that mandates certain practices in financial record keeping and reporting for corporations. The act,, also known as the "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" and "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" and more commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, SOX or Sarbox, contains eleven sections that place requirements on all U.S. public company boards of directors and management and public accounting firms. A number of provisions of the Act also apply to privately held companies, such as the willful destruction of evidence to impede a federal investigation.
In criminology, corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation, or by individuals acting on behalf of a corporation or other business entity. For the worst corporate crimes, corporations may face judicial dissolution, sometimes called the "corporate death penalty", which is a legal procedure in which a corporation is forced to dissolve or cease to exist.
John Eric Ensign is an American veterinarian and former politician who served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 2001 until his resignation in 2011 amid a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his attempts to hide an extramarital affair. A member of the Republican Party, Ensign previously represented Nevada's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Following his resignation from the Senate, Ensign returned to Nevada and resumed his career as a veterinarian.
Arthur Levitt Jr. is the former Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served from 1993 to 2001 as the twenty-fifth and longest-serving chairman of the commission. Widely hailed as a champion of the individual investor, he has been criticized for not pushing for tougher accounting rules. Since May 2001 he has been employed as a senior adviser at the Carlyle Group. Levitt previously served as a policy advisor to Goldman Sachs and is a Director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
Phillip Nicholas Angelides is an American politician who was California State Treasurer and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Governor of California in the 2006 elections. Angelides served as the chair of the Apollo Alliance and of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
James Hubert Bilbray was an American politician, lawyer, and postal executive who served as the U.S. representative for Nevada's 1st congressional district from 1987 to 1995. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
William "Bill" Shannon Lerach is an American disbarred lawyer who specialized in private Securities Class Action lawsuits. The $7.12 billion he obtained as the lead plaintiff's attorney in the case against Enron is currently the largest sum ever recovered in a group of securities class-action lawsuits in U.S. history. In 2007 he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to two years imprisonment. In 2009 he was disbarred from practicing law in California. As part of the settlement, Lerach would not cooperate as a witness and his law firm would be protected from any further prosecution. Over the course of his career, it has been estimated that Lerach recovered upward of $45 billion on behalf of defrauded investors. Lerach has stated that about 85% of his cases were brought due to insider trading, which he described as “footprints in the snow.”
Daniel G. Bogden is an American attorney who served as United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. When news of widespread fraud within the company became public in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.
Mark Eugene Amodei is an American lawyer and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Nevada's 2nd congressional district since 2011. The only Republican in Nevada's congressional delegation since 2019, Amodei served in the Nevada Assembly from 1997 to 1999 and in the Nevada Senate, representing the Capital District, from 1999 to 2011.
The McKesson & Robbins, Inc. scandal of 1938 was one of the major financial scandals of the 20th century. The company McKesson & Robbins, Inc. had been taken over in 1925 by Phillip Musica, who had previously used Adelphia Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company as a front for bootlegging operations. Musica, a twice-convicted felon, used assumed names to conceal his true identity in taking control of the two companies: Frank D. Costa at Adelphia Pharmaceutical and F. Donald Coster at McKesson & Robbins. Although he was successful in expanding the company's legitimate business operations, Musica recruited three of his brothers, also working under assumed names, one outside the company and two inside it, to generate bogus sales documentation and to pay commissions to a shell distribution company under their control. Eventually, McKesson & Robbins treasurer Julian Thompson discovered the distribution company was bogus. It was determined that about $20 million of the $87 million in assets on the company's balance sheet were phony.
Heather Miller is an American businesswoman. She is a private investor, former Wall Street securities analyst. She served as a Congressional appointed commissioner on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2009 and the President's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity in 2016.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) was a ten-member commission appointed by the leaders of the United States Congress with the goal of investigating the causes of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The Commission has been nicknamed the Angelides Commission after the chairman, Phil Angelides. The commission has been compared to the Pecora Commission, which investigated the causes of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and has been nicknamed the New Pecora Commission. Analogies have also been made to the 9/11 Commission, which examined the September 11 attacks. The commission had the ability to subpoena documents and witnesses for testimony, a power that the Pecora Commission had but the 9/11 Commission did not. The first public hearing of the commission was held on January 13, 2010, with the presentation of testimony from various banking officials. Hearings continued during 2010 with "hundreds" of other persons in business, academia, and government testifying.
See also: 2012 United States Senate elections
Dan Newman is an American political consultant, who has served as campaign manager, communications director, press secretary, and consultant to dozens of campaigns around the country. He is a partner in SCN Strategies, with Ace Smith and Sean Clegg.
The John Ensign scandal related to revelations in 2009 of an extramarital affair between United States Senator John Ensign from Nevada and campaign aide Cynthia Hampton from 2007 to 2008 and actions taken by Ensign to keep the affair secret. He was investigated for potential violations of federal rules about conflict of interest after he arranged for Doug Hampton, Cynthia's husband and formerly a top staffer in his Washington, D.C. office, to gain a private lobbying job and apparently used his federal position to benefit Hampton's clients.
Andrew Patrick Gordon is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada.
"Tone at the top" is a term that originated in the field of accounting and is used to describe an organization's general ethical climate, as established by its board of directors, audit committee, and senior management. Having good tone at the top is believed by business ethics experts to help prevent fraud and other unethical practices. The very same idea is expressed in negative terms by the old saying "A fish rots from the head down".
Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is an American law firm headquartered in San Diego, California. It is a plaintiffs law firm specializing in securities litigation and shareholder rights cases.
Bradley J. Bondi is an American lawyer, law professor, and partner at Paul Hastings LLP, where he is the Global Co-Chair of the firm's Investigations and White Collar Defense practice. He has also served on the executive staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was appointed to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis to investigate its causes.