SEC Enforcement Director: Who’s Next?

• Gurbir Grewal, SEC’s enforcement director, will be leaving on October 11.
• Sanjay Wadhwa will be sworn in as the acting enforcement director.
• Under Grewal, the SEC authorized 100 enforcement actions against crypto firms.

Gurbir Grewal, the enforcement director for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is leaving the agency on October 11. His replacement will be deputy enforcement director, Sanjay Wadhwa.

In a press release, the SEC stated that Grewal, who has been the SEC’s enforcement director for three years, worked closely with Wadhwa to lead the Division of Enforcement “that has acted without fear or favor,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

Also of note is that Wadhwa, who has worked for the SEC for more than two decades, will be taking over while Sam Waldon, currently Enforcement’s Chief Counsel, becomes the new acting deputy enforcement director.

Wadhwa has been the deputy enforcement director since August 2021. Before that, he was the Senior Associate Director of the Division of Enforcement in the New York Regional Office (NYRO), Deputy Chief of the Market Abuse Unit, and Assistant Director in NYRO.

Gensler said that he has enjoyed working with Grewal and called him “an accomplished public servant” who always prioritized protecting investors and making sure market participants comply with the agency’s long standing securities laws.

For his part, Grewal noted the agency’s accomplishments over the past three years, including “recalibrating penalties and remedies” and “confronting emerging risks to holding issuers, insiders, and gatekeepers accountable.”

Notably, under Grewal’s leadership, the SEC has pursued 2,400 enforcement matters and obtained $20 billion in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. In addition, the agency has awarded $1 billion to whistleblowers during this period.

SEC’s Crackdown on Crypto

The SEC has taken actions against major firms in the crypto space, including digital asset trading platforms Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, FTX, and others, along with crypto entities eToro, Mango Markets, and Galois Capital. The agency also recently settled with Terraform Labs, the firm behind the UST stablecoin and LUNA.

Read also: SEC May Appeal Ripple Ruling, While XRP Co-Founder Moves Millions

The press release from the SEC stated that the agency has taken over 100 enforcement actions “addressing widespread noncompliance in the rapidly growing crypto space” during Grewal’s tenure. The regulator targeted these crypto businesses for not complying with the registration provisions of the federal securities laws.