Courtesy of Pam Martens
Robert Rubin, Former Treasury Secretary and Citigroup Executive Committee Chair
On March 11, 2016, the National Archives released a trove of documents related to the work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and their investigation of the causes of the 2007-2010 financial crisis. As a result of reviewing those documents, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a September 15, 2016 letter to the Inspector General of the Justice Department and to then FBI Director James Comey seeking to find out why the Justice Department had not prosecuted any of the individuals or corporations that were referred to it by the FCIC.
Senator Warren indicated in her letter to James Comey that her staff had “identified 11 separate FCIC referrals of individuals or corporations to DOJ in cases where the FCIC found ‘serious indications of violation[s]’ of federal securities or other laws consistent with this statutory mandate. Nine specific individuals were implicated in these referrals — yet not one of these nine has gone to prison or been prosecuted for a criminal offense.”
Warren asked Comey to “promptly facilitate the release of any and all materials related to the FBI’s investigations and prosecutorial decisions regarding these referrals.”
It’s been more than a year since Warren sent her letters to the DOJ’s Inspector General and to the FBI – and the sound of silence on this critical matter has been deafening.
Wall Street On Parade decided to file its own Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Justice Department in the matter. To be certain that the Justice Department would not decline the FOIA on the basis that we were seeking too broad a search, we narrowed our inquiry to the three former Citigroup executives whom the FCIC had made referrals to the Justice Department: former Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, Robert Rubin – who served as the former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton; former Citigroup CEO Charles (Chuck) Prince; and former Citigroup CFO Gary Crittenden. The Justice Department responded as follows:
…
