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Bhargavi Kalaga

Bhargavi focuses on public policy and government affairs, guiding clients through regulatory challenges and policy matters from our Washington office.

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On February 24, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement announced sweeping revisions to its Enforcement Manual (the Manual). A central feature of the revisions is a redesigned Wells process, which gives investigation targets a chance to be heard before the Commission authorizes an enforcement action. Most notably, the revised manual instructs staff to provide Wells notice recipients with “salient, probative evidence” before a response is due, addressing the information imbalance that has traditionally characterized SEC investigations. Then, on May 18, 2026, the SEC announced a second major pro-defendant shift: it rescinded Rule 202.5(e)—the decades-old “no-deny” policy that had required settling defendants to agree not to publicly deny the agency’s allegations as a condition of settlement.

The Supreme Court recently and unanimously held in Ellingburg v. United States[1] that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA) qualifies as “criminal punishment” subject to the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause. While this narrow ruling only prohibits restitution judgments for convictions that predate the MVRA, Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurrence advocating for a more expansive view of the Ex Post Facto Clause that reaches nominally civil as well as criminal laws.

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On March 10, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a new Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (“CEP”), which now governs all corporate criminal matters handled by DOJ except for antitrust violations. This new policy creates a single set of standards for voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation across the Department.

After years of regulatory uncertainty, the SEC and CFTC are moving toward a unified approach to digital asset oversight, launching a joint harmonization initiative to align definitions, streamline compliance, and reduce fragmentation. For crypto and financial services firms, this effort signals clearer pathways for product development and cross‑market operations—though lasting certainty will hinge on sustained…