Congressional Investigations into Tax and Financial Abuse

Please join ACS in welcoming Elise Bean, Co-Director of the Levin Center at Wayne Law, for a discussion on “Congressional Investigations into Tax and Financial Abuse.”

Elise became counsel to U.S. Senator Carl Levin from the District of Michigan on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 1985. In 2003, Levin appointed Bean as staff director and chief counsel of the committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which she retired from at the end of 2014. Elise recently published the book Financial Exposure: Carl Levin's Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse (2018) with Palgrave MacMillan.

During her tenure, Bean handled a variety of investigations, hearings and legislation, including matters involving offshore tax abuses, money laundering, foreign corruption, unfair credit card practices, health care fraud, abuses involving derivatives and structured finance, and shell companies with hidden owners. Investigations headed by her included inquiries into the 2008 financial crisis, HSBC money laundering problems, London whale trades at JPMorgan Chase, collapse of Enron, and offshore tax avoidance by Apple, Microsoft and Caterpillar.

In 2016 and 2015, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by International Tax Review of the year's top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2013 and 2011, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington's 100 most powerful women. In 2010, she was selected by the National Law Journal as one of Washington's most influential women lawyers.

Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in 1978 and earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. She served as a law clerk to former Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court Alex Kozinski, who later served as the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She worked for two years as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Frauds Section. 

Hosted by the American Constitution Society.

Coffee and Snacks will be provided.