no bank executives jailed

U.S. Congressman Asks FBI to Release Notes from Financial Crisis Banker Investigations

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These agreements were created 100 years ago to give juvenile defendants and first-time offenders a chance to for rehabilitate themselves. Only in the last 20 years have DPAs migrated to the field of corporate criminals, treating them like kids who’ve just gone down a bad path in life.

The Justice Department is leaning on these toothless agreements more and more. Of the DoJ’s 283 deferred prosecution agreements since 2000, half have come since 2010, Reilly found in a working paper for BYU Law Review.

Why has the DoJ been so keen on deferred prosecution since 2010? It coincides exactly with investigations into the 2008 financial crisis.

– From the 2014 post: The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

This is a really good move by Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey. Indeed, the American public certainly has a right to know the details of why the U.S. government allowed Wall Street executives to walk away free, with zero accountability and wealthier than ever before.

Bloomberg reports:

FBI files on the firms that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis should be released to help the public understand why no senior executives were charged, a U.S. congressman from New Jersey said.

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Barclays Director Caught Giving Plumber Trading Tips in Exchange for Home Renovations

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Now regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had something else on their screens: details of each other’s client orders. Sharing that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., UBS AG and Barclays Plc, manipulate prices to maximize their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes.

At the center of the inquiries are instant-message groups with names such as “The Cartel,” “The Bandits’ Club,” “One Team, One Dream” and “The Mafia,” in which dealers exchanged information on client orders and agreed how to trade at the fix, according to the people with knowledge of the investigations who asked not to be identified because the matter is pending. Some traders took part in multiple chat rooms, one of them said.

“Some of these problems developed over many years without anybody speaking up,” said Andrew Tyrie, chairman of Britain’s Commission on Banking Standards and Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee. “This is remarkable. It suggests something very wrong with the culture at these institutions.”

–  From the 2013 post: Meet the “Bandits’ Club” – The TBTF Wall Street Cartel Rigging the FX Market

Serious question: Is there any illegal activity that someone at Barclays hasn’t been accused of engaging in?

Bloomberg reports:

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Former Federal Reserve Employee Who Leaked Information to Goldman Sachs Avoids Jail

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“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
– George Orwell’s Animal Farm

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed its employees to stay on the job despite internal investigations that found they had distributed drugs, lied to the authorities or committed other serious misconduct, newly disclosed records show.

Lawmakers expressed dismay this year that the drug agency had not fired agents who investigators found attended “sex parties” with prostitutes paid with drug cartel money while they were on assignment in Colombia. 

Of the 50 employees the DEA’s Board of Professional Conduct recommended be fired following misconduct investigations opened since 2010, only 13 were actually terminated, the records show. And the drug agency was forced to take some of them back after a federal appeals board intervened.

In one case listed on an internal log, the review board recommended that an employee be fired for “distribution of drugs,” but a human resources official in charge of meting out discipline imposed a 14-day suspension instead. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an “improper association with a criminal element” or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.

– From the post: Two-Tiered Justice: How DEA Agents Commit Egregious Acts with Zero Accountability

If you attempted to create the ideal privileged, untouchable, crony mutant in a test tube you might come up with a Federal Reserve employee who stole government information and leaked it to Goldman Sachs. You’d assume that someone with such a pedigree couldn’t possibly be sent to jail under America’s two-tiered Banana Republic justice system — and you’d be absolutely right.

Reuters reports:

A former Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee was spared prison on Wednesday, disappointing prosecutors who said his leaking of confidential documents to a friend at Goldman Sachs Group Inc justified time behind bars.

Jason Gross, 37, was fined $2,000 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein in Manhattan and sentenced to a year of probation with 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of theft of government property.

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How the U.S. Government is Raiding a Citizen Victim Relief Fund to Pay for General Expenses

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One of the primary “talking points” used by the Department of Justice to defend its practice of systematically deeming corporate criminals above the law via its used of deferred prosecution agreements, has been an emphasis on how much money it has earned in fines from criminal corporations. These fines were supposed to be distributed to help victimized American citizens. Not any more.

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

WASHINGTON—The government’s just-approved budget deal takes $1.5 billion from a fund for crime victims and uses it instead to help pay for federal spending, drawing on a growing reserve collected from settlements with banks and major corporations.

The unprecedented transfer, part of closed-door negotiations between the Obama administration and congressional leaders, has raised the ire of advocates. They say it violates the integrity of a decades-old program that funds safe havens for domestic violence victims, counseling for abused children and financial aid for murder victims’ families, among other programs.

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