SEC Prosecutor Says SEC Top Brass Are Corrupt [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/sec-prosecutor-says-sec-top-brass-are-corrupt

SEC Prosecutor Says SEC Top Brass Are Corrupt
By Eric Zuesse


April 11, 2014 | Bloomberg News reported, on April 8, that a Securities and Exchange Commission prosecuting attorney, James Kidney, said at his recent retirement party on March 27, that his prosecutions of Goldman Sachs and other mega-banks had been squelched by top people at the agency, because they "were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases." He suggested that SEC officials knew that Wall Street would likely hire them after the SEC at much bigger pay than their government remuneration was, so long as the SEC wouldn't prosecute those megabank executives on any criminal charges for helping to cause the mortgage-backed securities scams and resulting 2008 economic crash.

His "remarks drew applause from the crowd of about 70 people," according to the Bloomberg report. This would indicate that other SEC prosecutors feel similarly squelched by their bosses.

Kidney's speech said that his superiors did not "believe in afflicting the comfortable and powerful."

Referring to the agency's public-relations tactic of defending its prosecution-record by use of what he considered to be misleading statistics, Kidney said, "It's a cancer" at the SEC.