Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, now serving a 24-year prison sentence for misleading his company’s investors, intends to seek a retrial, his lawyer said.

“Mr. Skilling intends to file a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence,’’ Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling’s lead attorney, said in a filing last week in federal court in Houston. The filing didn’t give details of the nature of the new evidence, and Petrocelli didn’t immediately respond today to requests for comment.

via Enron Ex-CEO Seeks Retrial on ‘New Evidence,’ Lawyer Says – Bloomberg

Now, a recent study co-authored by Frank D. Hodge of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business has confirmed that video can make bad news worse. The study, published in The Accounting Review, examined the impact of using video to announce financial restatements. Hodge and his co-authors, W. Brooke Elliot of the University of Illinois and Lisa Sedor of DePaul University, discovered that announcing restatements via video is beneficial only when top management, according to Hodge, “accepts responsibility for the restatement.”

via Apologizing for Bad News? Be Careful with the Video — CFO Magazine

Taxpayers pay for snagging insider traders. They could get a better return on their investment. If the government concentrated on socking insider traders with big money penalties, it would spend less, make more, and still police the markets. That would be, in the parlance of Wall Street, a good deal.

via Rajat Gupta’s trial: The case for civil charges against him – Slate Magazine.

Two insider trading defendants have tried to use “Robin Hood” or “Mother Teresa” defenses in their cases recently, without much success.

via The ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Mother Teresa’ Defenses in Insider Trading Cases – Compliance Week

Rajat Gupta has been forewarned that he cannot beat insider trading charges by trumpeting his philanthropy history any more than Mother Teresa could use her missionary work to fend off bank robbery charges.

“If Mother Teresa were charged with bank robbery, the jury would still have to determine whether or not she committed a bank robbery,” US District Judge Jed Rakoff told the lawyers of former Goldman Sachs’ Indian American director ahead of his May 21 trial.

via Rajat Gupta cannot take a Mother Teresa defence — The Economic Times

Throughout the week over at Securities Docket I highlight the most interesting columns and blog posts from around the web on the subjects of SEC enforcement and securities litigation. Here is a digest of my picks for the week ending May 11.

via Web Watch: Best of the Week Ending May 11 – Compliance Week

Nearly five years ago, we talked about the requirements for an effective compliance program. By boiling down relevant parts of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines, we came up with ten elements that still work.

via What Is An Effective Compliance Program? — The FCPA Blog

Although the DOJ doesn’t tell us who it decides not to charge, the McConnell and Simon data does. The DOJ doesn’t charge corporations that have an effective compliance program. The most recent example was Morgan Stanley.

That raises questions about why some business groups are fighting so hard against the FCPA. Wouldn’t it be easier for their members to have effective compliance programs? And wouldn’t that be better for everyone?

via How To Avoid Prosecution — The FCPA Blog

The story of one man prosecuted by the SEC and the DOJ for an FCPA violation may run a little below the radar these days, when allegations of bribery by manufacturing, retail, and entertainment companies plaster the headlines.  The guilty plea entered by an ex-Morgan Stanley executive, Garth Peterson, however, holds a very important lesson for companies that do not wish to see their own names on the broadsheets above a story about corruption enforcement actions. The lesson is simple: robust corporate compliance can protect a company even when a high-level employee commits brazen acts of bribery.

via A Man Overboard Will Not Sink the Ship: How Robust FCPA Compliance Can Keep a Company Out of Hot Water Even When An Executive is Neck Deep —  Global Trade Law Blog

A judge ruled that a trustee may try to claw back fictitious profits only from the last two years before the epic Madoff fraud was disclosed in December 2008, a ruling likely to affect claims against hundreds of former customers of Bernard Madoff….

In his latest opinion dated April 30, the judge threw out claims by Picard seeking to claw back six years or more of profits, as he did in the case of Wilpon and Katz, whose potential liability was reduced to $386 million from $1 billion. The opinion applies to “innocent investors” who were not accused by the trustee of knowing about the fraud, as he has with a number of sophisticated investors such as banks and funds.

via Judge trims Madoff trustee’s profit clawback suits — Reuters