SEC Announces Departure of Acting Enforcement Director Sanjay Wadhwa

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Sanjay Wadhwa, the Acting Director of the Division of Enforcement, will depart the agency, effective January 31, 2025, after more than 21 years of service with the Commission.

"I thank Sanjay for leading the Division of Enforcement and his dedication to the SEC, which began as a staff attorney more than 20 years ago," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. "He has led a division that has acted without fear or favor, and he has earned the deep respect of his colleagues during his more than two decades of service. I wish Sanjay all the best in his next pursuits."

"I am grateful to Chair Gensler for giving me the opportunity to help lead the talented staff of the Enforcement Division, and I am proud of the Division's collaboration with colleagues throughout the agency to advance the Commission's mission to protect investors and promote fairness and integrity in the marketplace. Throughout my long tenure at the Commission, I have been inspired by my colleagues and their unwavering dedication to public service," said Mr. Wadhwa. "And, we have been effective. During my time as Deputy and Acting Director, I have been gratified to see market participants stepping up their compliance efforts to embrace our shared goal of protecting investors. While the capital markets will always benefit from robust enforcement, the agency's effectiveness at combatting securities law violations is enhanced with buy-in from market participants."

Mr. Wadhwa has served as Acting Director of Enforcement since October 2024 and, before that, served as the Division's Deputy Director since August 2021. During that time, Mr. Wadhwa oversaw the filing of more than 2,600 enforcement actions, resulting in orders for more than $20 billion in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties, and the return of billions of dollars to harmed investors. In his roles as Acting Director and Deputy Director, Mr. Wadhwa emphasized fostering a culture of compliance by market participants through vigorous enforcement of the securities laws while also crediting parties that cooperated with the Division's investigations. Those efforts bore fruit, as the Commission obtained orders for record amounts of financial remedies while at the same time an increasing number of market participants self-reported, remediated, and took other proactive steps to cooperate with the Division's investigations.

Earlier in his SEC career, Mr. Wadhwa served as 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. He oversaw hundreds of investigations including several groundbreaking ones. For example, he led the agency's sustained and successful efforts to root out institutional insider trading, which resulted in successful enforcement actions against hedge fund advisers such as Galleon Management and S.A.C. Capital and prominent Wall Street figures such as Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon founder, Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKenzie Consulting and a former Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble board member, and Steven A. Cohen, the founder of S.A.C. Capital. Mr. Wadhwa also oversaw the agency's industry-wide investigation from 2016 to 2020 into abusive American depositary receipts pre-release practices, which resulted in monetary penalties against banks and broker-dealers exceeding $430 million. At the start of his tenure with the Commission, Mr. Wadhwa was the lead investigative attorney in the Commission's enforcement actions against all seven specialist member firms of the New York Stock Exchange, twenty individual NYSE specialists, and, subsequently, fourteen specialist firms on several regional and options exchanges.

Prior to joining the SEC as a staff attorney in 2003, Mr. Wadhwa served as a tax associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Mr. Wadhwa has a B.B.A. from Florida Atlantic University, a J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston, and an LL.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law.