Courtesy of Pam Martens.
U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, Announcing the $7 Billion Settlement With Citigroup on July 14, 2014
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced its long anticipated $7 billion settlement with Wall Street mega bank, Citigroup, over its sale of toxic mortgage-backed bonds to investors, which included pensions, charities, cities, states, hospitals and FDIC-insured banks and others. The Justice Department informed us that it had collected “nearly 25 million documents” for this one investigation.
The material facts the Department of Justice released to the public in its skimpy 9-page Statement of Facts (SOF) set a new low for bare bones disclosures. Instead of Appendix 1 being filled with incriminating emails or whistleblower letters proving Citigroup’s intent to defraud, it was instead a meaningless listing of deal names which tell the public absolutely nothing. Why would a serious law enforcement agency release such a worthless document to the public?
To grasp exactly what is going on here, one need look no further than the evidentiary record produced for public benefit by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the matter of JPMorgan’s London Whale derivative bets gone bad with depositors’ money. The public was presented with a 306-page report, 98 pages of meaningful exhibits including internal emails with names, and two volumes of testimony under oath.
Adding further insult to public sensibilities, the Justice Department correctly summed up the impact of the wrongdoing by Citigroup, writing: “…our teams found that the misconduct in Citigroup’s deals devastated the nation and the world’s economies, touching everyone.”
And yet, all the devastated nation gets from those 25 million documents is one snippet from one internal email with no name included. The Justice Department writes:
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