Courtesy of Pam Martens
Congressman Brad Sherman Introduces Proposed Legislation at House Hearing on June 19, 2019
On Wednesday, June 19, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets held a hearing on “Putting Investors First: Examining Proposals to Strengthen Enforcement Against Securities Law Violators.” Eight pieces of draft legislation were being vetted to address critical gaps in protecting U.S. investors from financial fraud and make sure wrongdoers paid for their crimes.
Despite the critical nature of the legislation to be discussed at this hearing, it received a news blackout from corporate business media, with the exception of a report that appeared in advance of the hearing by Francine McKenna of the Dow Jones news outlet, MarketWatch.
We knew early on that there was going to be a big push back from Wall Street on this proposed legislation when we saw the name of one of the four witnesses scheduled to testify: Andrew Vollmer, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Vollmer is the former Deputy General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who waltzed in and out of the revolving door at the SEC from the big corporate law firm, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
Law Professor Andrew Vollmer Attacks Proposed Legislation at House Hearing on June 19, 2019
Vollmer was serving as acting General Counsel of the SEC in 2009 when the House Financial Services Committee hauled the leadership of the SEC before a hearing to investigate why it had failed to act on years of written warnings from the financial expert, Harry Markopolos, that Bernie Madoff was running a massive Ponzi scheme. Vollmer refused to answer critical questions from lawmakers on a claim of executive privilege. (See the outrage this invoked from Congressman Gary Ackerman, who called Vollmer the real enemy, in the video below.) Madoff had run his Ponzi scheme for decades and the SEC had failed to act on what turned out to be the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, despite having investigated Madoff on two prior occasions. It closed those matters with no charges brought. Madoff admitted his fraud to his sons in 2008 and they turned their father in.
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