Brigida Benitez focuses her practice on internal corporate investigations and commercial and civil litigation. She draws on more than 30 years of experience representing clients in high stakes, complex matters and helping them navigate significant challenges arising from business disputes, compliance issues, and employee misconduct. Her clients have included financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, universities, international development firms, and individuals, as well as boards of directors and special committees. Brigida has litigated high-profile cases in trial and appellate courts throughout the United States, including the US Supreme Court. She has also conducted internal investigations into sensitive, business-critical issues, such as bribery and corruption under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other anti-bribery laws, financial fraud, employee misconduct, ethics issues, code-of-conduct violations, accounting irregularities, and whistleblower complaints.
Brigida also represents clients in all phases of World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) proceedings. This includes audits, investigations, litigation of allegations, and arguments before the World Bank Sanctions Board and the IDB Sanctions Committee. She has also advised clients on compliance with anti-corruption guidelines and represented clients before the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development in sanctions-related matters. Before joining Steptoe, Brigida served as Chief of the Office of Institutional Integrity of the IDB, a senior management position reporting directly to the IDB President and the Audit Committee of the Board of Executive Directors. In this role, she oversaw investigations into fraud and corruption in IDB-financed activities while implementing compliance policies and procedures related to anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, and offshore financial centers. She also helped develop the General Principles and Guidelines for Sanctions used by the IDB and the World Bank and oversaw the implementation of the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions, adopted by the IDB, the World Bank, and several other leading multilateral development banks. In addition to her investigations and litigation practice, Brigida serves as Steptoe’s general counsel and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. Brigida is a former president of the DC Bar, the largest unified bar association in the United States, with more than 100,000 members worldwide. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where she taught a course on international business litigation and federal practice. Recognized as a leader in the legal community, she has been named a “Woman of the Year” and one of the “100 most influential US Hispanics” by Hispanic Business magazine, as well as one of the “25 Most Influential Hispanic Lawyers” by Latino Leaders magazine.