White collar crime expert Professor William Black thinks the nation’s top bankers continue to get away with massive financial crime. The most recent $10 million fine of former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis for fraud illustrates the ongoing problem.
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Professor Black says, “He’s not paying $10 million. Bank of America is paying the $10 million. So, he could care less, and he didn’t have to admit anything. And, unlike the typical Securities and Exchange settlement, he didn’t have to agree not to disparage the settlement. So, immediately he disparaged the settlement as a bunch of junk that wasn’t true. . . .
In this case, the fact came out that Lewis testified, the subject of this complaint was allegedly securities fraud at hiding the losses at Merrill Lynch which was acquired by B of A and said hey, it’s not me, it’s Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson . . . who ordered me to cover this up.
Professor Black goes on to say, “So the web is very tight and very protective of all these people, and they will trade off any amount of money in settlement that will be paid by the bank to insure the officers, even the ex-officers never have to pay and never are prosecuted. Even today, we are well into 2014, and the Department of Justice record is intact. There have been zero prosecutions of the elite officers who led the epic epidemic of fraud. It was the most destructive in world history, zero of them even unsuccessfully prosecuted, much less prosecuted.”
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