Christy Romero, special inspector general with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The little-known federal agency is compiling a growing list of criminal convictions.
Not "the girl next door..."
Give 'em hell Christy.
No one deserves it more.
***
***
"Politics, Economics And The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"Pope Francis Links"
G.K. Chesterton - The Anarchy of the Rich - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/gk-chesterton-anarchy-of-rich.html
***
A bank executive in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison. Another from Orlando received eight years. In Stockbridge, Ga., a top bank officer is serving 12 years.
At a time when the government is being criticized for not holding senior bank executives liable for crisis-era crimes, a little-known federal agency is compiling a growing list of criminal convictions.
More business news
Five Nelson Mandela tributes that will change how you think
These five reflections on Mandela go beyond the deluge of celebrity essays and standard-fare obituaries.
New American Airlines CEO vows to make merger work
American Airlines and US Airways seem an unlikely couple, even to the man who will lead the combined company after their merger on Monday.
Since 2008, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has pursued criminal charges against 107 senior bank officers, most of whom have been sentenced to prison. Created to supervise the government bailout of the auto and financial industries, the agency has found dozens of cases of bank executives who misused bailout funds.
SIGTARP has a staff of 170, a budget of $41 million and an enforcement track record that rivals agencies twice its size. The agency’s work has resulted in $4.7 billion in restitution paid to the government and victims. Lawmakers are holding SIGTARP up as a model and questioning why other agencies are not producing similar results.
In October, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) lauded the work of the inspector general in a letter asking financial regulators to disclose the extent of their efforts to pursue cases against individuals.
Although Warren credited the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission for achieving “landmark settlements” with banks for crisis-era misdeeds, she said that “a great deal of work remains to be done” at the agencies.
SIGTARP has a strong record, but the office has mainly taken down community bankers, not Wall Street titans, for brazen acts of fraud, some observers say. “The amount of direct evidence of banker wrongdoing in these smaller bank cases is easier to show,” said Mark Williams, a former bank examiner who teaches finance at Boston University.
Still, he said, “these SIGTARP cases set an important precedence that bad banker behavior will not be tolerated and [will be ] aggressively prosecuted.”
SIGTARP’s success is in part due to the criminal authority it received from Congress. Unlike regulators, the inspector general can issue search warrants, seize property and make arrests, much like the FBI.
It is ultimately up to the Justice Department to determine whether to pursue criminal charges, but the inspector general can move a case along faster, said Michael J. Rivera, a former chief counsel with the inspector general and now an attorney at Venable law firm.
The agency is largely charged with ensuring that the 763 financial institutions that received funds from the $700 billion TARP program use the money properly.
Tricks and false statements
Cases pursued by SIGTARP tend to fall into several categories, including bankers using accounting tricks to hide losses on loans, enriching themselves at the expense of the institution and making false statements about the condition of the bank, said Christy L. Romero, who heads the agency.
“Essentially, we’re looking for lies and greed,” she said. “Usually, people have gone to such great lengths to try to hide the schemes that we find that they end up violating several laws, which leads to long sentences.”
No comments:
Post a Comment