(Bloomberg) -- The former European head of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group told a U.S. judge that he shouldn’t be sent to prison for his minor role in a bribery scandal, because the public shame was punishment enough for his crime of lying to investigators.
Michael L. Cohen, 48, was the only employee charged in a federal bribery probe of more than $100 million that was paid to government officials across Africa. Och-Ziff agreed in 2016 to pay $400 million in fines and co-founder Dan Och paid a $2 million penalty. Cohen is slated to be sentenced Nov. 19.
“The stress, embarrassment and uncertainty of the criminal investigation have hung over Mr. Cohen’s life and that of his family for seven years,” and even his children have been “taunted that their father is a ‘crook,’” defense lawyers Paul Schoeman and Ronald White said in a letter to the sentencing judge.
Cohen should be sentenced to probation, his attorneys told U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York. His “personal reputation is in tatters” and he has “suffered significant personal, professional and financial punishment” because he will never again work in the asset management industry, they said.
In May, Cohen admitted to lying to prosecutors investigating Och-Ziff’s payments, after the government dropped nine other charges including wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he faced 10 to 16 months behind bars under sentencing guidelines. His lawyers said court probation officials calculated a sentence of zero to six months.
Original Charges
Cohen, once a rising star at Och-Ziff, was originally accused of enriching himself at the expense of a large charity that was a client. The U.S. said he brokered the sale of shares in an African mining company owned by a business associate who’d owed him money for a yacht. Cohen was originally charged with failing to disclose that the sellers of the mining shares owed him millions of dollars, according to the government.
Cohen, an American living in London, admitted in May that he lied to government agents in 2013 about backdating a letter to hide his interest in the proposed investment in the African mining company. Two days after his 2013 interview, Cohen corrected his misstatement and later personally reimbursed the charity $8.73 million on Och-Ziff’s behalf, his lawyers said.
Och-Ziff, which used to be one of Wall Street’s most prominent hedge-fund management firms, changed its name to Sculptor Capital Management this year. Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Sculptor, declined to comment.
The case is U.S. v. Michael L. Cohen, 17-cr-0544, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn)
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