Profile

Raymond Banoun is one of the leading white collar crime and business fraud litigators in the nation. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he was named an “FCPA Master” by Main Justice Anti-Corruption (now GIR) and has been recognized among the top white collar litigators in the country by Legal 500, US News and World Report, Chambers USA, Lawdragon, Best Lawyers in America, Who's Who Legal, and the International Who's Who of Business Crime Defence Lawyers. He represents corporations and financial institutions, their audit committees, law firms, and executives in all aspects of criminal and civil enforcement matters; in federal and state investigations, and in pre- and post-indictment litigation in many federal and state courts. He has served, and serves, as outside compliance counsel to several international companies, and has served as a monitor as part of a Department of Justice non-prosecution agreement. He regularly conducts compliance audits, formulates compliance programs, and advises with respect to their implementation and related governance issues.

Ray also has represented clients in multi-national government investigations involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other anti-bribery laws, money laundering and asset forfeiture, foreign bank secrecy, data privacy and blocking statutes, the anti-fraud provisions of the securities and commodities statutes, economic sanctions, export control and anti-boycott laws and regulations, criminal tax and antitrust violations, banking, healthcare, government procurement, and bankruptcy fraud. He has conducted numerous internal investigations involving allegations of questionable payments, in multiple countries, and is intimately familiar with foreign data privacy laws. He has made voluntary disclosures to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and negotiated a number of declinations, deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements. He has represented companies and their executives and audit committees before the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorneys' Offices throughout the country, the divisions of enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and FinCEN, the Internal Revenue Service, the various Inspectors General, Department of Defense suspension and debarment boards, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank Integrity group, and Congressional Committees.

He is well-versed in the money laundering laws of the United States and other countries, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bank Secrecy Act and has co-authored a treatise entitled Money Laundering, Terrorism and Financial Institutions, published by The Civic Research Institute. He has conducted audits of U.S. and foreign financial institutions to ensure compliance with such laws, and devised remedial plans, policies, procedures, and forms to comply with laws and regulations in this area. He is also knowledgeable of foreign secrecy and confidentiality laws, European and other data privacy and blocking statutes, international mutual assistance and tax treaties. His expertise in these areas extends to Switzerland, England, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Panama, and several other countries.

Prior to establishing Banoun Law PLLC, he was a partner for 25 years, and the founder of the White Collar Group at Cadwalader, where he also served as the Managing Partner of the Washington, DC office for 10 years. He was previously a partner at the Washington, D.C. firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn where he chaired the Business Fraud Group. He also served for 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he headed the Fraud Division, and for three years as a Special Assistant to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. He also clerked for the late U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene.

He served as Chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section's White Collar Crime Committee, and as Chair of the Business Crimes Committee of the International Bar Association's Section of Business Law. He is the founder and chair of the highly acclaimed American Bar Association's annual National Institute on White Collar Crime, currently in its thirty-first year.