The official from the Justice Department who had been supervising the market-rigging cases against the traders from JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank AG, has now taken his exit to join a private law firm. Bloomberg Law reports.
Avi Perry, the ex-Department of Justice official, has joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan as a partner co-chairing securities litigation and a new practice group focusing on commodities and derivatives.
In the previous two years, Perry led the fraud section’s market integrity and major frauds unit. Alongside his managerial responsibility of about 45 prosecutors, he was the lead trial lawyer for a significant case that culminated in the conviction of JPMorgan’s former head of the precious metals desk for manipulating the gold futures market.
Perry will now be working in partnership with his previous supervisor from the Justice Department, Robert Zink, who has deep expertise in corporate and white-collar defense.
Upon the exit of Perry, Anna Kaminska has been named as the acting chief. Kaminska had joined this unit in 2013 after moving from the law firm Proskauer Rose.
During Perry’s tenure with the department, the unit’s number of convictions from individuals rose significantly, from around 50 to over 100, according to last year’s year-in-review report of the fraud section.
Under Perry’s supervision, the team successfully gathered a significant case against JPMorgan. Using testimonies from Wall Street insiders, along with the trading data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the team claimed that traders spoofed futures, rigging the market with false orders to manipulate buyers and sellers, thereby favoring the bank.
Following this, JPMorgan in 2020 paid over $920 million in penalties to settle allegations of market rigging for precious metals and Treasuries futures.
Perry was known for utilizing data analytics in market manipulation cases, an approach prior used extensively in comprehending health-care fraud. His team used similar techniques in the spoofing investigations and more recently in ongoing inquiries into improper stock sales by corporate executives.