A partner in the litigation department, Mark Mendelsohn is co-chair of the anti-corruption and FCPA group, and a member of the white-collar crime and regulatory defence, internal investigations and securities litigation practice groups. Prior to joining Paul Weiss, Mark served as the deputy chief of the fraud section of the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and is internationally acknowledged and respected as the architect and key enforcement official of DOJ’s modern Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement programme. Mark's practice emphasises white-collar criminal matters, internal corporate investigations and compliance counselling. He regularly represents clients in FCPA and corruption-related internal investigations, designing and implementing compliance programmes, transactional anti-corruption diligence, and responding to and defending against government investigations, prosecutions, and trials on behalf of both business entities and individuals.
As deputy chief of the fraud section from 2005 to 2010, Mark was responsible for overseeing all DOJ investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA, and for supervising a team of trial attorneys with respect to investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of federal white-collar crimes including money laundering, mail and wire fraud, procurement fraud, Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations, and violations of economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations, including with respect to the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme. Mark led an effort to forge closer working relationships with foreign regulators in connection with transnational bribery cases, resulting in coordinated settlements with the Munich Public Prosecutor in Germany in the Siemens prosecutions and coordinated settlements with the UK's Serious Fraud Office in the BAE and Innospec prosecutions, among others.
During his tenure administering the DOJ's FCPA enforcement programme, the DOJ brought more than 50 prosecutions against corporations for violations of the FCPA and related offences, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in criminal penalties. During that same period, the DOJ brought approximately 80 prosecutions against individuals. Among the notable prosecutions were the following: US v Siemens AG, et al; US v Kellogg Brown & Root, LLC and US v Albert “Jack' Stanley”; US v Congressman William J Jefferson; US v BAE Systems plc; US v Baker Hughes, et al; US v Titan Corp; US v Statoil ASA; US v Monsanto; Lucent Technologies, Inc; US v Willbros Group, Inc, et al; US v Christian Sapsizian, et al; US v Viktor Kozeny and Frederick Bourke, Jr; US v Gerald and Patricia Green; US v Innospec, Inc; and US v Daimler AG.
Mark has been recognised by Ethisphere Institute in 2011 as a "Top Gun" among "Attorneys Who Matter", in 2009 as a "Government Star" among "Attorneys Who Matter In Corporate Compliance", and in 2007 and 2008 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics". In 2010 and 2011, Mark was selected as one of the Lawdragon "500 Leading Lawyers in America". Mark is also ranked by Chambers as an international trade/FCPA expert.
Mark has spoken frequently as a faculty member, panellist and keynote speaker at numerous FCPA, anti-corruption, corporate compliance, securities fraud, money laundering, and white collar crime programmes and conferences. He teaches international criminal law as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and has also been an adjunct lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. Mark is a member of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and a member of the board of directors of Transparency International – USA.
WWL says: White-collar crime and anti-corruption specialist Mark Mendelsohn is a highly adept practitioner who regularly assists companies and banking clients to investigate and recover misappropriated assets.
This biography is an extract from Who's Who Legal: Asset Recovery which can be purchased from our Shop.