The SEC announced today that LeeAnn Ghazil Gaunt has been named the new chief of the Enforcement Division's Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit. Gaunt has worked in the SEC's Boston Regional Office for 13 years, including 10 in supervisory roles, and has worked in the Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit since its inception in 2010.

The Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit focuses on misconduct in the municipal securities market or related to public pension funds, including offering and disclosure fraud, tax or arbitrage-driven fraud, pay-to-play and public corruption violations, public pension accounting and disclosure violations, and valuation and pricing fraud. Gaunt fills the vacancy created by the departure of Elaine C. Greenberg, the first-ever chief of that unit. Greenberg left the SEC at the end of July 2013 to join law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP as a partner in its Washington, D.C. office. 

The SEC stated that among other matters, Gaunt previously supervised the agency's pay-to-play enforcement action against Goldman Sachs and an executive vice president in 2012 (which settled in May 2013), as well as a pay-to-play matter involving municipal securities dealer Southwest Securities.

Topics