Practices

Russell Johnston is a partner in and Co-Chair of Seward & Kissel’s Litigation & Investigations Group. As a former regulator and in private practice, he has counseled both institutions and individuals through an array of corporate and financial markets regulatory, compliance, and business dispute matters. He is often sought after to handle complex and sensitive situations and navigate clients through internal investigations, regulatory inquiries, enforcement actions, and compliance program remediation.

He has worked extensively with, and across from, numerous federal, state, and self-regulatory agencies including the DOJ, FRBNY, SEC, FINRA, FinCEN, NYSE, and CFPB among others.  His practice includes matters pertaining to anti-money laundering, anti-corruption, capital markets, conflicts of interest, economic sanctions, employee conduct, insider trading, market regulation, sales practices, trade reporting, firm supervision and supervisory controls.

He also advises multinational corporations, across a wide range of other economic sectors, on managing crises and navigating complex financial crime compliance issues. Russell has led worldwide internal investigations, assisted clients in cooperating with multi-agency regulatory inquiries, conducted extensive transactional diligence, and prepared corporate officers and other insiders for criminal, civil, and congressional hearings. He has also provided financial crime compliance training, best practices, and policy formation to both clients and fellow attorneys, and assisted in the UK Parliament Select Committee’s creation of the Bribery Act.

Previously, Russell served as Senior Counsel in FINRA’s Department of Enforcement as the lead attorney on many of the organization’s most complex and important matters, including the pilot for FINRA’s high-risk broker program, historic multi-agency enforcement actions regarding anti-money laundering violations, sales practice supervision issues, and the most significant penalties and restitution programs emanating from the Puerto Rico debt crisis. He also served as lead counsel on several of FINRA’s earliest fintech-related matters, including the first enforcement action addressing the use of distributed ledger technology, and as the first counsel to FINRA’s funding portal examination program. In addition, he served as counsel on an array of matters addressing member applications, corporate finance, and advertising regulations for broker-dealers of all shape and size.

Representative Experience
  • Securing a declination of enforcement action for a senior executive in an SEC investigation into sales and trading practices.
  • Securing a declination of enforcement action for a regional broker-dealer in a FINRA investigation into advertising regulation policies.
  • Representing a large multi-national corporation through an internal review of its anti-corruption and anti-bribery programs and controls, self-reporting, and assisting in the negotiation of a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ.
  • Securing a declination of enforcement for multiple registered representatives in a FINRA investigation into recordkeeping, trading, and sales practices.
  • Representing a large family office through a multi-agency (DOJ, SEC, and CFTC) investigation into trading and markets practices.
  • Securing a declination of enforcement for a multinational bank and broker-dealer in a FINRA investigation into its AML program.
  • Representing multiple senior executives through an SEC enforcement action related to securities offering and trading activity.
  • Representing a senior executive of a leading market maker through a NYSE investigation into algorithmic trading strategies.
  • Representing a regional bank and broker-dealer through a FINRA investigation into FINRA dispute resolution regulations.
  • Counseling a large multinational bank and broker-dealer through AML program voluntary self-disclosures and remediation processes.
  • Negotiating a ninety percent reduction of a multi-million dollar pre-trial settlement offer for a broker-dealer in regulatory litigation involving FINRA’s corporate finance rules.
  • Representing numerous public companies and individuals through fraud surveillance inquiries conducted by FINRA’s National Cause and Financial Crimes Detection Program.
  • Advising a state-chartered trust to establish KYC procedures and a revised AML program for new business lines involving foreign counterparties.
  • Counseling multiple Senior Executives through internal inquiries, multi-agency investigations, and Enforcement proceedings brought by the DOJ, SEC, and FINRA.
  • Serving as counsel to the Special Investigations Committee of a multinational company and managing its financial crime compliance program remediation.
Publications