Investigations to watch in a second term

In any election, new politics and policies are often debated in much detail. The impact of the presidential election on law enforcement will be more subtle, however, especially after there was little discussion about policing the markets during the campaign. The re-election of President Obama will result in less drastic changes than if Mitt Romney had won, but there will be turnover at several agencies. In addition, there is an inevitable reshuffling of positions as some senior law enforcement officials switch to lucrative posts in the private sector. This comes as law firms will happily pay top dollar for the access and credibility that a former official can bring.

A change in leadership at any given agency often has little effect, at least in the short term, on the day-to-day work in investigations and prosecutions. For example, the wide-ranging investigation of hedge funds that led to the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, Rajat Gupta and a host of others for insider trading began under the Bush administration and came to fruition in October 2009. The change in the Justice Department leadership had no appreciable impact on the investigation.

I doubt there will be any new, sweeping investigations or legislation involving white-collar crime in the President’s second term, barring another economic cataclysm or a hidden corporate fraud. Nevertheless, there are three topics I expect that the administration may address, or be forced to address, in the coming four years:

Foreign bribery

In a speech the day before the election, Lanny A Breuer, the head

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