Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Corporate Crime Task Force Created

It was announced on November 17th that President Obama's administration has created a Corporate Crime Task Force. U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, "Mortgages, securities and corporate fraud schemes have eroded the public's confidence in the nation's financial markets and have led to a growing sentiment that Wall Street does not play by the same rules as Main Street."

The L.A. Times reported, "The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force will attack what Holder called "unscrupulous executives, Ponzi scheme operators and common criminals" in much the same way that a similar task force created in 2002 by former President George W. Bush went after corporate malfeasance following the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc."

The article continued: "The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act authorized $245 million annually in 2010 and 2011 to hire hundreds of prosecutors, agents and other federal officials to pursue financial fraud. It also strengthened and expanded money laundering laws and other statutes to apply to fraud committed by private mortgage lenders."

Is this something that should worry executives and corporate boards? Or... is this much ado about nothing?

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