Profile: Gordon A Greenberg

Business Crime

Biography: Business Crime

Gordon A Greenberg is a partner-in-charge of the Los Angeles office of McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Gordon is a trial lawyer with more than 25 years of experience handling a wide range of international business crime investigations and trials. Often, Gordon defends clients in high stakes 'bet your company' matters that have civil, criminal and international components.

Gordon was a federal prosecutor, serving as the chief of the financial investigations unit in the Los Angeles US Attorney's Office, and was also a state and special federal prosecutor in Chicago. As a prosecutor, he tried several precedent-setting cases that include US v Cuevas, the first extradition of an individual from Switzerland to the United States for money laundering-related offences, and US v Barry Minkow, ZZZZ Best, et al, one of the largest securities and money laundering cases tried on the West Coast in the 1980s.

Mr Greenberg is acknowledged by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of the top 50 trial lawyers in Los Angeles and is recognised in his field of practice in The Best Lawyers in America. He achieved the highest possible rank in white-collar and government litigation in the 2005 and 2006 editions of Chambers USA.

Representative matters handled by Mr Greenberg include: defending a big four accounting firm in customs proceedings concerning international money laundering; representation of a foreign government entity being investigated in the US for false statements to US banking regulators; representing the former president of one of the largest telecommunications companies in criminal and SEC actions alleging managed earnings and securities and financial statement fraud; representation of a former chairman of the board of a publicly traded hospital supply company in civil and criminal proceedings concerning alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; representing a high ranking political figure during a congressional inquiry related to foreign political contributions; representation of an international telecommunications company during an investigation for alleged payments to foreign government officials; representation of a US company during criminal proceeding for alleged illegal foreign tax shelters; representing executives of the world's largest shipping company during an investigation into political contributions; and defending the largest money-order provider in money laundering forfeiture proceedings.

Gordon is active in local and national bar associations and recently served as the chairman of the Los Angeles County Bar Association's white-collar crime committee. He also served as a faculty lecturer to the Federal Judicial Center, the organisation that provides federal judges with continuing legal education.

Mr Greenberg was educated at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he received his JD (with honours) in 1980, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a BA in 1976.