Here Comes ANOTHER JUDGE!
by ilene - August 26th, 2009 4:18 pm
Good to see, hints of justice within the normal functioning of government.
Here Comes ANOTHER JUDGE! (BAC)
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
It just keeps getting better and better!
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge ordered Bank of America to explain why it agreed to pay $33 million to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit if it believed it properly disclosed bonuses it authorized for Merrill Lynch & Co employees.
A day after receiving arguments from both sides about the proposed settlement, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff questioned the bank’s willingness to settle, saying that if it was "to curry favor with the SEC or to avoid retaliation by the SEC, the court needs to know the specifics."
The judge, however, also questioned the SEC effort to end its civil case, suggesting it might be unreasonable to let off company executives and their lawyers without penalty.
Let’s dig into some specifics from the order itself:
"… Where shareholders have been victimized by the violative conduct, or by the resulting negative on the entity following its discovery, the Commission is expected to seek penalties from culpable INDIVIDUAL OFFENDERS acting for the corporation."
BINGO. Yet as this fine was "agreed" to be paid by the very people injured, in that it is coming from the company coffers rather than officers directly, it is exactly identical to fining the victim of a robbery when assessing the penalty, and what’s worse, they didn’t get a vote on being fined!
"In its August 24th submission, the SEC repeatedly reconfirms its central assertion that "Bank of America’s [proxy] statement was materially false and misleading…"…… Yet the same submission asserts that the SEC, despite its 2006 policy quoted above, decided not to bring individual charges against culpable individual offenders because the company’s witnesses "stated that they relied entirely on counsel to decide what was or was not disclosed in the proxy statement"…..
This is puzzling. If the responsible officers of the Bank of America, in sworn testimony to the SEC, all stated that "they relied entirely on counsel,", this would seem to be either a flat waiver of privilege or, if privilege is maintained, then entitled to no weight whatever, since the statement cannot be
Tags: Bank of America, checks and balances, civil case, company executives, federal court, Judicial system, lawyers, SEC, settlement
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