MikeLigalig.com

By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK | Sun Aug 4, 2013 10:28am EDT

(Reuters) - As the head of litigation for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Matthew Martens' main job is to oversee other lawyers. In his three years at the agency, he had not tried a case himself.

That is, until the SEC decided to bring a civil fraud suit against former Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre, the highest profile case to emerge from the agency's investigations into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

Martens, 41, tried the case himself and on Thursday secured a big win. A federal jury in Manhattan found Tourre liable on six of the seven charges against him.

Martens said in an interview it was important that a case deemed significant by the agency should garner attention from the top. He said the verdict should rebut critics of the SEC's trial record, which has taken hits amid setbacks last year in other financial crisis cases.

"If this doesn't convince people we can win these cases, I don't know what would," Martens said.

The SEC accused Tourre, 34, of misleading investors in a synthetic collateralized debt obligation called Abacus 2007-AC1. The SEC said Tourre failed to disclose that Paulson & Co Inc, the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, helped choose subprime mortgage securities linked to go into Abacus and also that the fund planned to bet against it.

During the trial, the 20th of his career, Martens told jurors, "Wall Street greed drove Mr. Tourre to lie and deceive."

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