H. David Kotz

H. David Kotz, also known as Harold David Kotz (born June 24, 1966), is a managing director at Berkeley Research Group. While Inspector General at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Kotz investigated why the SEC failed to detect the $19 billion Madoff fraud.

Kotz was a litigation associate at three law firms from 1990–99, and then a labor attorney at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1999–2002. He worked at the Peace Corps as a lawyer handling labor and violent crime matters, as well as Inspector General, from 2002–07.

He then was Inspector General at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from December 2007 until his resignation in January 2012. At the SEC, his department conducted investigations about improprieties, conflicts of interest, and the SEC's failure to uncover Ponzi schemes. He referred 30 cases to the Justice Department; 2 were prosecuted, leading to 1 conviction. In 2012, an independent review of his conduct by the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service concluded that Kotz violated conflict of interest rules by conducting investigations on persons with whom he had a personal relationship.

One conflict involved Kotz accepting three tickets to a football game at a subsidized cost from a financial adviser. Provided by Wikipedia