Ryan Rohlfsen

Ryan J Rohlfsen joined the fraud section's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit in 2011.

He was an associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher and Flom in Chicago.

Rohlfsen worked with FCPA unit prosecutor Jason Linder on the 2014 resolution of foreign bribery allegations against Hewlett Packard, which agreed to pay a combined US$108 million to settle civil and criminal allegations.

Rohlfsen also worked on one of the most interesting and politically complicated cases involving the FCPA. The allegations against Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash and associates. Firtash made a fortune as a middleman in the natural gas trade between Ukraine and Russia's Gazprom. Firtash was arrested in 2014 in Vienna, Austria on charges that had been under seal in the Northern District of Illinois since June 2013. The charges related to alleged corruption in a mining deal in India.

But while the Justice Department insisted that Firtash's arrest was unrelated to the upheaval in Ukraine and the tensions with Russia, few analysts believed it. Going after corruption in the gas trade, which has kept Europe dependent on Russia, has long been a policy goal of the US.

Firtash fought extradition from Austia and won in March 2015. An Austrian court ruled that the US case against him was politically motivated.

According to information found online, Rohlfsen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Drake University in Iowa in 1996, and earned his law degree from Drake in 1999, where he was a staff editor for the Drake Law Review and was Drake National Appellate team captain. While in law school, Rohlfsen served as a law clerk for the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Iowa and as a clerk to the US District Judge Charles Wolle of the Southern District of Iowa. Also, while in law school, he prosecuted cases for the State of Iowa, and represented the State Appellate Defender's office, arguing before the Iowa Supreme Court and Iowa Court of Appeals.

He is a member of the Order of the Coif, the Order of the Barristers and the Missouri Bar.

Rohlfsen left the fraud section to become a partner at Ropes & Gray in Chicago in February 2015.