Friday, February 14, 2014
Page 3
Nathan Hochman Elected as President of City Ethics Commission
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Nathan Hochman, a partner at Bingham McCutchen in Santa Monica, was elected yesterday as president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.
Hochman, in a press release from Bingham, was quoted as saying:
“I am deeply honored to have been elected to this position. I look forward to working with the Commission on its vital mission of ensuring fair and ethical city elections and operations.”
In 2011, Hochman was selected by then-City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, and later confirmed by the City Council, to assume a post on the commission.
The commission is charged with administering the public matching funds program, receiving expenditure statements from candidates and office holders, auditing campaign committees, and investigating complaints regarding violations of campaign finance and lobbying laws.
Hochman’s practice focuses primarily on white collar criminal defense and tax matters. He is co-chair of the firm’s White Collar Investigations and Enforcement Group.
He has assisted clients with unreported foreign bank accounts in entering and completing the Internal Revenue Service’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative Program, which offers reduced civil penalties and potential for criminal pardons.
Prior to joining Bingham, Hochman was an assistant U.S. attorney general in charge of the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, a position he was appointed to by then-President George W. Bush in 2007.
He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1997, where he served as the office’s environmental crimes coordinator, before joining the Los Angeles Disaster Fraud Task Force.
Hochman left the U.S. Attorney’s Office to join a law firm co-founded by his father, Bruce Hochman, a leading California tax attorney who died in 2001. He left that firm, which came to be known as Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez, to accept the appointment as assistant attorney general.
He has received the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award for superior performance as an assistant United States attorney, the Inspector General’s Award of Excellence, the Federal Bar Association’s Young Federal Lawyer Award, and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association’s Prosecutorial Award.
Hochman graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received his law degree from Stanford. After law school, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the Central District of California.
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