{"id":48,"date":"2013-05-03T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/?p=48"},"modified":"2014-09-08T15:40:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T19:40:23","slug":"doj-using-wwii-era-act-to-extend-statutes-of-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/2013\/05\/03\/doj-using-wwii-era-act-to-extend-statutes-of-limitations\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Using WWII-Era Act to Extend Statutes of Limitations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502.html\" target=\"_blank\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>, the Justice Department has invoked the 1948 Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act (the \u201cWSLA\u201d) in an effort to aggressively extend and suspend statutes of limitations in alleged financial crimes.<\/p>\n<p>Pursuant to the WSLA, \u201c[w]hen the United States is at war\u2026. the running of any statute of limitations applicable to any offense involving fraud \u2026 against the United States \u2026 shall be suspended until 5 years after the termination of hostilities. 18 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/18\/3287\" target=\"_blank\">U.S.C. \u00a7 3287(c)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The Justice Department has invoked the WSLA \u201c12 times between 2008 and 2012,\u201d and in matters wholly unrelated to wartime activities or contracting. <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502.html\" target=\"_blank\">WSJ<\/a>. The government has justified these efforts to make expansive use of the WSLA on the ground that \u201cprosecutors diverted resources from white-collar cases to focus on national security after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502.html\" target=\"_blank\"> WSJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors have had some success with this argument\u2014Judge Sim Lake of the Southern District of Texas permitted a prosecution against BNP Paribas SA (that would have otherwise been time-barred) to proceed under the WSLA. Judge Lake highlighted the breadth of the WSLA\u2014that it &#8220;expressly applies to &#8216;any statute of limitations applicable to any offense.'&#8221; <em>United States v. BNP Paribas SA<\/em>, 2012 WL 3234233 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 6, 2012) [via <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324345804578422862246279502.html\" target=\"_blank\">WSJ<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department has invoked the 1948 Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act (the \u201cWSLA\u201d) in an effort to aggressively extend and suspend statutes of limitations in alleged financial crimes. Pursuant to the WSLA, \u201c[w]hen the United States is at war\u2026. the running of any statute of limitations applicable to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/2013\/05\/03\/doj-using-wwii-era-act-to-extend-statutes-of-limitations\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;DOJ Using WWII-Era Act to Extend Statutes of Limitations&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48],"ppma_author":[246],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-daniel-walworth"],"authors":[{"term_id":246,"user_id":61,"is_guest":0,"slug":"dwalworth","display_name":"Daniel R. Walworth","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2015\/01\/walworthdaniel-125x150.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":"","9":"","10":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/whitecollarcriminallaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}