Wall Street execs being investigated
Citing Wall Street’s “troubling return” to risky conduct that preceded the 2008 financial collapse, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that federal authorities are poised to file criminal charges against an undisclosed number of individuals at various financial institutions.
In a speech at New York University’s School of Law, Holder said there are “investigations open right now that are focused on the conduct of individuals at specific financial institutions.”
The attorney general did not identify the targets of the ongoing inquiries. Yet he said the suspect activity that is beginning to re-emerge on Wall Street “raises troubling questions anew about the extent to which these activities may involve criminality and may be prosecutable as fraud.”
“In some instances, it is simply not possible to establish knowledge of a particular scheme on the part of a high-ranking executives who is far removed from a firm’s day-to-day operations,” he said.
“It would be going too far to suggest reversing the presumption of innocence for any executive, even one atop the most poorly run institution,” he said. “But we need not tolerate a system that permits top executives to enjoy all of the rewards of excessively-risky activity while bearing none of the responsibility.”
Source: Usatoday
