More than 2,400 enforcement matters and over $20 billion in orders. That was the tally the Securities and Exchange Commission attached to Gurbir Grewal when it announced on Oct. 2, 2024 that its enforcement director would leave. His last day was Oct. 11.
Grewal had run the division since July 2021. Reuters described a three-year stretch in which the agency pressed Wall Street and crypto firms harder than they were used to, and drew open resentment from both camps for it.
The cases
Crypto took up a large share of the docket. According to the SEC, the division authorized more than 100 actions over compliance failures in that sector, among them cases against the operators of the world’s largest crypto trading platforms and the biggest in the United States. Reuters named the targets: Binance and Coinbase, sued for facilitating illicit offerings to retail investors. The agency also charged FTX as part of a wider government action over the exchange’s multibillion-dollar fraud, and sued its auditor for negligence.
The best-known sweep had nothing to do with crypto. In December 2021 Grewal directed a recordkeeping initiative aimed at broker-dealers, investment advisers and credit ratings agencies that let staff conduct business over personal devices and messaging apps. Reuters said the “off-channel” campaign produced over $2 billion in civil fines against dozens of firms, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. By the SEC’s count, more than 100 firms were charged, and each one admitted it had broken federal securities law. The sweep was still generating cases when Grewal left, and it had pulled in hedge funds, private equity funds and ratings agencies.
Individuals did not escape. The division secured more than 340 industry bars against people, and whistleblower awards passed $1 billion. Reuters also listed a court fight with Elon Musk over his failure to appear for testimony in the agency’s Twitter takeover probe, and charges against Carl Icahn for disclosure failures. On the gatekeeper side, the SEC pointed to a fraud by one audit firm that touched more than 1,500 SEC filings, which it called one of the largest wholesale failures of its kind.
From Jersey City to Washington
Grewal did not chase the job. The New York Times reported in July 2021 that SEC officials approached him after the previous enforcement director quit within days of taking the post. He was then New Jersey’s longest-serving attorney general in decades, and he planned to commute from Bergen County, where his wife, a doctor, and their three daughters lived.
He was born in Jersey City to Indian immigrants. Before the attorney general’s office, which he held from Jan. 2018 through June 2021, he was Bergen County prosecutor, and earlier an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey, where he headed the Economic Crimes Unit, and in the Eastern District of New York. He holds a law degree from William & Mary and a Georgetown foreign service degree.
He was also the first Sikh in the country to serve as a statewide attorney general, and he did not hide what that had cost him. In 2018 he described death threats and slurs, among them “towel head” and “terrorist.” Of his visibility in high-profile jobs, he told the Times: “Maybe, maybe it makes it easier for a kid who looks like me.”
The Times noted that critics were not hard to find even then. Some defense lawyers and criminal justice advocates thought his New Jersey policies well-meant but timid. The attorney general’s 750 lawyers also made a smaller shop than the SEC enforcement division he was about to join.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler gave his own verdict at the exit: Grewal “has led a Division that has acted without fear or favor, following the facts and the law wherever they may lead.” Grewal, for his part, wrote that he was “incredibly proud of all that we’ve accomplished.” Deputy Director Sanjay Wadhwa took over as acting director, and a source told Reuters that Grewal was bound for private practice.
Sources
- US securities regulator's top cop to leave agency (Reuters)
- SEC Announces Departure of Enforcement Director Gurbir S. Grewal (SEC press release 2024-162)
- What Gurbir Grewal Learned as the Nation's First Sikh Attorney General – The New York Times
