H. David Kotz

Who is H. David Kotz?

H. David Kotz, also known as Harold David Kotz, is a director in the Financial Institutions practice at Berkeley Research Group.

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 from December 2007 until January 2012, when he resigned in the midst of questions about his tactics and conduct. 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 ethics rules by overseeing probes that involved people with whom he had conflicts of interest, due to personal relationships.