Skip to content
A top FBI official who helped to lead the government’s international anti-corruption efforts is leaving for a private consulting firm, the agency has confirmed.
George “Ren” McEachern, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Washington, DC, field office, will be departing the agency at the end of the year for a job as managing director of Exiger’s global investigations practice, the firm said on 20 December.
McEachern will begin at Exiger on 8 January, Richard Plansky, Exiger’s managing director and global head of investigations, told GIR Just Anti- Corruption.
Plansky said McEachern, who served for 12 years at the FBI, brings “a wealth of experience and a very unique perspective to the table.” At Exiger, he will focus providing strategic advice, investigative and compliance services to clients facing bribery and corruption issues throughout the world, he said.
Exiger is an investigations consultancy that was founded by Michael Cherkasky, who currently serves as a monitor for HSBC under a major money laundering-related settlement reached between the British bank and the US Department of Justice in 2010.
McEachern’s focus at the FBI is on investigations relating to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and international kleptocracy. He oversaw the creation and expansion of dedicated international anti-corruption squads based in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
While the move was heralded by the FBI and the DOJ as a significant increase in the resources allotted to battling foreign corruption, the expansion was built in part on provisionary funding provided by the DOJ’s Three Percent Fund. The fund, which continues to support positions at both the DOJ and FBI, must be renewed each year, and limits the agencies to offering certain positions on a temporary basis.
In November, McEachern participated in a GIR Live webinar titled “How to Trace Dirty Money.” McEachern said lawyers in the private sector were increasingly complicit in corruption schemes.
Article courtesy of GIR Just Anti-Corruption.
