CEBC IN THE NEWS

Assistant U.S. Attorney
Pushes Business Ethics

Published April 2005 in Finance and Commerce.

By Michelle Lore

Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry J. Shea has prosecuted several high profile cases of white-collar crime in recent years, including Patrick Forciea, the owner of a minor league hockey team who pleaded guilty to fraud offenses last year; Katun Corporation and several of its executives, who also were found guilty of fraud in 2004; and Ashland, Inc., which pled guilty to environmental violations in 2002. Shea has also prosecuted several attorneys, including David Moskal, who was imprisoned in 1998 for defrauding vulnerable clients.

But for the last eight months, much of Shea’s time has been dedicated to education and prevention of the underlying causes of white-collar crime. While maintaining a half-time position with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, since September Shea has been volunteering as an executive fellow at the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC), a local nonprofit organization that helps leaders create and sustain ethical business cultures.

Shea has spent most of his career working in the public sector. He says working with the CEBC is simply another way to serve the community.

“I view my time at the center similar to my time here at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that it’s all ultimately public service,” Shea said in a recent interview. “And I strongly believe that there is no greater reward for an attorney than to be able to say at the end of the day ‘I helped make things in my community a little bit better today.’ That’s what I view both of my jobs to be all about.”

Center of Activity

The CEBC was founded by a group of Minnesota CEOs who were committed to high standards of business conduct and to the leadership role business plays in addressing community challenges. While it has undergone some changes in its name and some reframing of its mission statement over time, the organization has been around in one form or another for more than 26 years.

Since 1988, the center has been affiliated with the University of St. Thomas and just last summer entered into a permanent joint venture with the school. The center’s current mission of assisting in the creation of ethical business cultures extends to the enterprise, community and global levels. In working towards that mission, the organization:

• promotes awareness — through research publications and public forums — of the importance of business ethics and corporate citizenship;

• helps business build ethical cultures through training and workshops; and

• educates the next generation of leaders in collaboration with the University of St. Thomas.

Shea first got involved with the CEBC in the summer of 2003, when he worked with the center and the University of St. Thomas to organize a symposium on white-collar crime and personal responsibility. In 2004, he helped organize another program focusing on white-collar crime and organizational responsibility.

Last summer, Shea decided he wanted to do more, feeling strongly that his background as a white-collar prosecutor would be an asset to the center.

“It takes more than punishment to achieve justice and that’s what I’ve learned in the last few years of my career,” Shea observes.

“And that’s what I think the center represents. There is a way to get out and proactively try and address the issues of ethics and fair treatment before people step over the line, before they violate the law. You do that through pointing out to them not only the consequences of misconduct, but more importantly the positive benefits of operating in an ethical and honest manner.”

After clearing it with his boss, U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger, Shea negotiated an eight-month part-time position with the CEBC. To Shea’s delight, the position has been extended to 12 months and will continue through August.

“I think it’s always good for any professional, but certainly a prosecutor, to step away from the role of being a government attorney and get a broader perspective on how the world operates,” he says.

Shea’s dedication to the CEBC really stems from his strong support of the organization’s activities and mission. He believes that it is not enough to make people professionally competent in order to prepare them for positions of leadership and management in an organization.

“The Center for Ethical Business Cultures recognizes that to have effective business leadership, you have to have people who have a moral compass, who have a sense of what is right and what is not right in how you conduct your everyday business activities,” Shea observes.

Teach them Young

Much of Shea’s work with the CEBC revolves around teaching and educating students, often at the high-school level. He stresses the importance of making an impression on people when they are young.

“If you really want to make an impact on the way our companies do business, you need to address it at the most basic educational level,” Shea says. “I would submit that business school and law school is too late, and that is why my effort has been, in large part, to go back to the high-school level and start teaching kids about ethical decision making.”

Shea believes it’s important to integrate ethical principles into everything that is taught to students and to reinforce those principles in a way that the students will build on them.

“A snapshot [of right and wrong] is very rarely going to change how you are going to act five years down the line, but something that is taught as a course of conduct, hopefully, will be with you five or 10 years down the line,” he says.

Besides educating students, Shea has been busy organizing seminars, participating in panel discussions and writing about business ethics. Last month, Shea organized a well-attended forum on the role of the prosecutor in protecting the marketplace. The forum featured Heffelfinger, Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar and Chief Deputy Attorney General Kris Eiden. The event also included a panel of corporate attorneys who discussed their company’s ethics and compliance practices.

Shea is convinced that his experience with the CEBC has been worthwhile and he intends to stick with it in some capacity after his official position ends.

“I am fortunate to be able to have this opportunity and I’ll never be able to totally walk away from it,” he says.

Public Servant

While Shea’s younger brother Patrick always knew he wanted to be a lawyer, Shea wasn’t so sure. He had taken forensics classes during high school and college, but he also liked analysis and public speaking. Knowing that he was committed to four years of active duty with the Army after his college graduation, Shea eventually decided that the best way he could serve the Army was as a lawyer.

Once he applied to law school and was given the opportunity to attend Harvard, Shea’s fate was sealed. He delayed his Army obligation and spent three years studying the law. After graduation, Shea was given another golden opportunity — to work at the Pentagon.

“I worked for the Army General Counsel and it was a tremendous experience in terms of the responsibility I had and the challenges [involved],” he says.

In 1985, Shea headed to Minnesota, where he spent a short time practicing law with Leonard Street and Deinard. He decided to get back into public service work, however, and accepted a job as an assistant U.S. Attorney the following year.

Eventually, Shea began getting involved in the prosecution of white-collar crime, handling several large, high-profile trials, including one involving Midwest Federal Savings and Loan that took six months.

“At the end of that, I was burned out,” Shea recalls, noting that when Leonard Street asked him to come back around that time, he accepted. He admits that when he said goodbye to the people at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, however, he didn’t believe it would be forever.

Once back in private practice, Shea handled commercial litigation cases, an area he found both interesting and challenging. But after a couple of years, he found himself missing the public sector.

“For me [private practice] just didn’t have the same major appeal,” he says. “I had been [with U.S. Attorney’s Office] for six years, where I like to believe I was always on the right side and if I wasn’t on the right side, I could do something about it. You can’t do that in private practice, and I missed that.”

When Shea returned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1994, he was made section chief of the economic crimes unit, a position entailing primarily supervisory responsibility, although he continued to try cases when he could.

In 1998, Shea made another major personal decision. Believing that he needed to address his “crazy schedule” and spend more time with his family, Shea requested and was granted permission to work on a part-time basis.

“I was the first male ever to do part-time work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” he says.

“It was not an easy decision, but it worked out great for the government because it meant they really were paying me for a job where I was working still mostly full time. But I had the flexibility to go to the kids’ schools, to help out on stuff at home. It was a good deal for everybody.”

Shea went back to a full-time position when Heffelfinger became U.S. Attorney in 2001, and continued in that capacity until last summer, when the opportunity to work part time with the CEBC presented itself. Shea discussed the opportunity with Heffelfinger, ultimately convincing him it was a good idea.

“I told him that there is another opportunity here that would be good for the office. It would be good for the justice department’s mission and I think it would be good for me to go and volunteer my time,” Shea says. “That’s how I am over at the center now.”

© Copyright 2005 Finance and Commerce. All rights reserved.

Center for Ethical Business Cultures

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Phone: 651 962 4120 or 800 328 6819 Ext. 2-4120 ▪ Facsimile: 651 962 4042

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