An Idiot's Guide to Prosecuting Corporate Frauds

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34997-focus-an-idiots-guide-to-prosecuting-corporate-fraud

Say you’re the newly elected president of the United States, and you want to make prosecuting corporate crime a top priority.

Where do you start? Here would be good.

A new group called Bank Whistleblowers United have just pushed out a comprehensive plan they think would put the executive branch back in the business of enthusiastically identifying, indicting, and convicting financial fraudsters — restoring accountability while protecting the public.

The cumulative credibility of the group’s four founders is extremely strong. Richard Bowen is the Citigroup whistleblower who unsuccessfully warned top management about the rotten condition of loans inside mortgage-backed securities. Michael Winston spoke out about similarly corrupt practices at non-bank mortgage originator Countrywide. Gary Aguirre, a Securities and Exchange Commission attorney, was fired for refusing to let a Wall Street banker out of an insider trading investigation.

And their ringleader is William Black, an outspoken fraud-fighter and longtime white-collar criminologist who was a two-fisted bank regulator during the savings and loan crisis and now teaches at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC).

“The common theme,” Black said with characteristic bluntness, “is the unbelievably pathetic job of the Department of Justice and the FBI.”

One of the first steps the group proposes – echoing the recommendations Senator Elizabeth Warren made last week – involves appointing aggressive leadership at federal agencies with no conflicts of interest with the entities they regulate, and hiring enough staff trained in criminology and financial fraud to attack the problem.

[KG]

1. oh, c'mon are yu some bank griefer? if there was banking fraud, obama's DoJ would have prosecuted it

so obviously there was no fraud. read it right here on DU.

[FrodosPet]

2. There was a LOT of fraud

Unfortunately, a lot of it was legally allowed fraud. Or tracks were covered, documents shredded, or culpability was sent to lower levels.

So you need great forensic accountants, and prosecutors who not only know what violations of the law occurred, but how to explain all this to a jury comprised of people who are not smart enough to know how to get out of jury duty.