During a 2006 examination, an SEC staffer asked Bernie Madoff for information. Madoff replied that he had already provided it to a top agency official. To which the SEC-er responded: “It’s a big organization, we don’t talk to each other.”
That’s according to Madoff’s testimony to SEC investigators. The agency’s inspector general’s office has just released documents that were part of its probe into its failures on the Madoff affair. And they further the picture of a regulator at which the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing, and which depended on inexperienced and over-matched agents to sniff out complex financial frauds like Madoff’s.
You can see all the documents here. And you can see Madoff’s testimony here.
Let us know in comments about anything else that jumps out.
