Pravin Bandari Rao

Pravin Rao is a partner in the Litigation practice at Perkins Coie law firm and Chair of the firm's Investigations & White Collar Defense practice. He is uniquely positioned as a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, as well as an SEC Enforcement Branch Chief, to provide comprehensive representation and counseling to clients on a wide variety of complex criminal and civil regulatory matters, including assisting individuals and FORTUNE 500 companies respond to government inquiries and conduct internal investigations. Recently, Pravin was appointed to be FCPA Monitor of a large multinational corporation to oversee its governance reforms in connection with a deferred prosecution agreement and settlement with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pravin has also served as a court-appointed examiner in a federal bankruptcy proceeding where he was tasked with investigating a company managing over $100 million in pension assets.

Pravin developed a unique perspective from conducting parallel investigations with the SEC, CFTC, and other regulators in complex cases involving large publicly traded companies, officers and directors, broker-dealers and hedge funds. Pravin has tried 10 jury trials and argued 11 appeals in federal courts, and served as “first chair” in numerous trials and over 25 appeals in state courts.

Before becoming a federal prosecutor, Pravin served as an Enforcement Branch Chief with the SEC, where he directed numerous high profile investigations and litigation involving revenue recognition, financial statement and disclosure fraud, insider trading, investment advisory fraud, prime bank and Ponzi schemes, market manipulation, failure to supervise, broker dealer misconduct, and record-keeping, reporting and registration violations. He has maintained his ties to the SEC, having served as Regional Chair of the Association of SEC Alumni.

Pravin is a frequent commentator in the press on the government's fraud enforcement efforts and the SEC, especially where these topics intersect the criminal arena, and has been quoted in BusinessWeek, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and other TV and print media.  He writes regularly on these same subject areas and is regularly invited to speak to in-house counsel and industry groups.  Pravin has also been retained as an expert witness in civil litigation involving securities issues and in a FINRA arbitration