Brooklyn US Attorney, Breon Peace, has announced he will step down on January 10, concluding his tenure as a federal prosecutor. During his time in office, he handled prominent cases including the sex-trafficking trial of singer R Kelly, a fraud indictment against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and the criminal conviction of a US Congressman.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Peace, 53, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, said, “Serving as United States Attorney has been the honour of a lifetime.”
The announcement said that First Assistant US Attorney Carolyn Pokorny will take over as head of the Brooklyn office, often known as the Eastern District of New York.
He is scheduled to leave before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office on January 20. He was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Handled Significant Cases During His Tenure
Peace’s office brought and won a number of major cases during his tenure. In August, former US Representative George Santos pleaded guilty to improperly using campaign funds.
Former Mexico’s top public security official, Genaro Garcia Luna, was sentenced to more than 38 years in jail in October for discreetly protecting “El Chapo” and the Sinaloa drug organisation. In 2022, hip-hop artist Kelly received a 30-year jail term for sex trafficking.
The Brooklyn office also won significant cases involving foreign bribery, including the conviction of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Roger Ng in 2022 for his involvement in the looting of Malaysian fund 1MDB, the conviction of former Mozambique finance minister Manuel Chang in August for his involvement in a $2 billion scam and the conviction in February of former Vitol Group oil trader Javier Aguilar, who was found by a jury to have planned a complex scheme to bribe officials in Mexico and Ecuador.
The office also extracted financial penalties on businesses under Peace. In order to settle US and Swiss accusations that it paid bribes to Ecuadorian government officials, European oil trader Gunvor Group Ltd agreed to pay more than $660 million in March. It was one of the largest penalties ever for a commodity trading business.
In October, RTX Corp consented to pay a minimum of $300 million to resolve a federal investigation involving illicit arms sales in the United States. One of UBS Group AG’s biggest unresolved legal difficulties as it integrates the purchase of Credit Suisse was resolved in 2023 when the bank agreed to pay $1.44 billion to settle criminal and civil lawsuits to conclude prolonged disputes over US mortgage-backed securities.
Charged Indian Billionaire As Well
In November, Peace’s office charged Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, with defrauding US investors by hiding a bribery scheme to obtain contracts from the Indian government. Last month, Adani declared that he was pursuing legal action “to reconfirm our absolute commitment to world-class regulatory compliance.”
After serving as a federal prosecutor in the Brooklyn office from 2000 to 2002, Peace returned to Cleary Gottlieb in 2003 to focus on white-collar criminal defence after serving as an acting professor of law at New York University School of Law. He was elected as the firm’s first African American partner in 2007.
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