Matteson Ellis

Matteson Ellis founded and leads Miller & Chevalier's globally recognized Latin America practice. He guides clients on cross-border internal investigations and corporate compliance strategies to address bribery and corruption/U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA) allegations, fraud, economic sanctions, business and human rights (BHR)/forced labor, multilateral development bank (MDB) sanctions, workplace misconduct (including sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation), anti-money laundering (AML), conflicts of interest, and other sensitive ethics and compliance matters. Legal and compliance departments, boards of directors, audit committees, and private equity firms regularly look to Matt to lead independent investigations, perform compliance due diligence in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and build corporate compliance strategies to align with the expectations of the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other global regulators. 

As a multilingual attorney, Matt has performed on-site investigations in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa. He is a recognized leader in Latin America, having been selected as a Chambers Global and Chambers Latin America Band 1 attorney for corporate crime and investigations in the region for more than a decade. One client tells Chambers Latin America, "He literally wrote the book on Latin American corporate crime," and another states, "He is one of the best compliance lawyers I have ever worked with, not just for his knowledge of the field, but also his accuracy and decisiveness in implementing compliance matters in complicated markets." Matt is regularly named one of Latin America's top 100 lawyers by Latinvex, which recognizes him as "the leading expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Latin America." 

Matt previously worked as a Litigation Specialist and Investigator at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and currently advises companies on development bank investigations and sanctions proceedings. He is one of the few private sector U.S. attorneys with firsthand insight into navigating World Bank and IDB investigations. Matt also works at the forefront of BHR law, helping legal and compliance teams perform conflict-area human rights due diligence, investigate forced labor and harassment allegations, and structure supply chain integrity mapping and due diligence strategies. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and spent several years in Latin America working for a Fortune 50 multinational corporation and a government ethics watchdog group. Matt has published various books and articles and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post on his area of expertise.