Matt Taibbi: How The SEC Covers Up Wall Street Crimes
Brand new for Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi.
A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals.
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI."
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.
The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commission's records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission's improprieties.
As a federally protected whistle-blower, Flynn is not permitted to speak to the press. But in evidence he presented to the SEC's inspector general and three congressional committees earlier this summer, the 13-year veteran of the agency paints a startling picture of a federal police force that has effectively been conquered by the financial criminals it is charged with investigating. In at least one case, according to Flynn, investigators at the SEC found their desire to investigate an influential bank thwarted by senior officials in the enforcement division – whose director turned around and accepted a lucrative job from the very same bank they had been prevented from investigating. In another case, the agency farmed out its inquiry to a private law firm – one hired by the company under investigation. The outside firm, unsurprisingly, concluded that no further investigation of its client was necessary. To complete the bureaucratic laundering process, Flynn says, the SEC dropped the case and destroyed the files.
Much has been made in recent months of the government's glaring failure to police Wall Street; to date, federal and state prosecutors have yet to put a single senior Wall Street executive behind bars for any of the many well-documented crimes related to the financial crisis. Indeed, Flynn's accusations dovetail with a recent series of damaging critiques of the SEC made by reporters, watchdog groups and members of Congress, all of which seem to indicate that top federal regulators spend more time lunching, schmoozing and job-interviewing with Wall Street crooks than they do catching them. As one former SEC staffer describes it, the agency is now filled with so many Wall Street hotshots from oft-investigated banks that it has been "infected with the Goldman mindset from within."
The destruction of records by the SEC, as outlined by Flynn, is something far more than an administrative accident or bureaucratic fuck-up. It's a symptom of the agency's terminal brain damage. Somewhere along the line, those at the SEC responsible for policing America's banks fell and hit their head on a big pile of Wall Street's money – a blow from which the agency has never recovered. "From what I've seen, it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction," says Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose staff has interviewed Flynn. "It doesn't make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what time frame and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law."
Continue reading at Rolling Stone...
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Taibbi discusses Wall Street and the SEC.
Video - Matt Taibbi talks to Cenk about the revolving door between Wall St. and the regulatory agencies - Feb. 16, 2011
Taibbi's devestating new article in Rolling Stone talks about the corrupt and cozy relationship that characterizes the revolving door between banks on Wall Street and the agencies that exist to regulate them. In the clip above, Taibbi sits down with Cenk. Read an excerpt from the Rolling Stone opus in the link below, and enjoy this, the absolute money quote:
"You Put Lloyd Blankfein In Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison For One Six-Month Term, And All This Bullshit Would Stop, All Over Wall Street," Says A Former Congressional Aide, "That's All It Would Take, Just Once"
Aug 19, 2011 at 4:00 PM
Reader Comments (39)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/06justice.html
and this:
Mukasey Recuses Himself in Madoff Probe
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/mukasey_recuses_himself_in_madoff_probe/
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124241028545124563-lMyQjAxMDI5NDEyNTQxMTUwWj.html
http://www.senseoncents.com/2011/08/sec-attorney-darcy-flynn-blows-whistle-on-wall-street-washington-incest/
Matt Taibbi reveals financial crisis smoking gun
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/52269749
Ratings agencies are expected to provide solid guidance about investments. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi joins Chris Hayes to explain how newly-revealed documents reveal corruption and dishonesty at the core of our financial industry.
Bank Whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann & Matt Taibbi on How JPMorgan Chase Helped Wreck the Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQISNV4T7QA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkQQoGUj6VY
-----keep on keeping on!----
My humble thanks for your kind benediction, sir. Things are indeed good my way. I hope the same is true for you.
https://twitter.com/rcwhalen/status/531810180879503360
Speaking of which, Alayne Fleischmann's story (told by Taiibbi, id.) appears only to have just begun...
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/11/jpmorgans-9-billion-witness-puts-government-testimony-by-her-boss-into-question/
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106
As for Lynch, yeah, she's the prosecutor who came up with the outrageous settlement for HSBC's crimes. The nefariousness of that agreement isn't well understood--yet (heh heh). In any case, she's been vetted by the criminal banking cabal.
the block were obviously cars that were forfeitures. Deal of the day was an upscale Beemer that was dressed out that went for $3500.00. I would assume Lynch is going to pass muster despite the fact that she is a minority.
She is quite qualified as a bitch of Satan and I shit you not. Doing God's work not withstanding. I hope it bites them in the ass...
Some progressive sites are lamenting her possibly being held up as a result of team reds bias against blacks. Some are even decrying their lack of passing along legislation because the president is black. Meh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-1wf8MkRLr0#t=755
No new info here. What a shame. Even a 10-minute pre-interview of the guest could've advanced the ball at least a couple of inches. But oh-no. Instead, we're treated to a watered-down rehash of Taibbi's piece, delivered at a very nasally 90 dB and devoid of any human interest, followed by an infomercial for some inchoate get-Max-rich crowd-funding scheme.
Yawn.
Ohhhhhhh, really? Impressive that sub-maggots could achieve such a new low.
Stacy produces and edits and does everything else on that show except for its signature screeching, and she's the foil for half of that. With that much help, I'd have a mattress a few feet off screen myself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW4o2eRvzx4
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