Federal Prosecutions of Corporate, Financial and White-Collar Crimes Fall to Six-Year Low; Congress Increases Funding & DOJ Increases Criminal Probes
Brad Heath points out a disturbing trend in today's USA Today--federal prosecutions of serious corporate, financial and other white-collar crimes have fallen to new lows. In this age of Enron, Madoff and massive failures of financial institutions, this is a serious breach of the public trust. The article contains a chart which shows that, in fiscal year 2009, the Department of Justice opened only 63 new corporate fraud prosecutions. That is barely one case per year per district and represents a 55% decrease since 2003. Securities fraud charges have decreased 17% and bankruptcy fraud cases have decreased 44% over the same period. The article cites Professor Ellen Podgor of Stetson University College of Law and creator of White Collar Crime Prof Blog who attributes the decline was the result of the Bush administration's push of federal prosecutors and the FBI to focus on terrorism and national security.
However, relief appears to be on the way. The article states that lawmakers have put new pressure on DOJ officials, who have launched thousands of new criminal probes into financial crimes. Congress has approved extra money to target financial crime, and Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new task force to target financial fraud last month. As if to herald a change of direction, prosecutors in New York also announced indictments yesterday against Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon, claiming that the case is the largest hedge fund insider trading case ever. The article also states that the FBI currently has more than 2,800 open mortgage fraud cases..
