The evidence of criminality by senior executives in Countrywide and Bank of America has been repeatedly provided to all relevant law enforcement agency in recent years.  However, under the US justice system, bankers are effectively immune for both past and future criminality.

Conditions in Europe under the current financial crisis are not much different.

LINKS:

[1] 11-12-04 Prosecuting Wall Street_ 60 minutes

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57336042/prosecuting-wall-street/?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo

[2] 11-08-08 PRESS RELEASE: Los Angeles Superior Court – Widespread Corruption and Refusal of the US Government to Take Action_Presentation in the 16th World Criminology Congress

http://www.scribd.com/doc/62137835/

[3] 11-08-08 PRESS RELEASE: Fraud and Corruption in the US Courts are Tightly Linked to Failing Banking Regulation and the Global Economic Crisis – presentation in the 16th World Criminology Congress, Japan

http://www.scribd.com/doc/62153608/

[4] 10-05-05 Countrywide, Bank of America [NYSE;BAC], and its President Brian Moynihan Compilation of Records Evidence of Racketeering

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30975368/

[5] 10-05-05 Chairs of US Congress Committees of the Judiciary and Banking Are Requested to Join Senator Feinstein’s Inquiries on Comptroller of the Currency

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30979882/

[6] 10-07-06 Complaint Filed with US Attorney Office Los Angeles Against Moynihan Bank of America [NYSE:BAC] Bryan Cave LLP Alleging Racketeering

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33971099/

[7] 10-07-06 Complaint Filed with US Attorney Office, Los Angeles, Against Brian Moynihan, Bank of America [NYSE:BAC], Bryan Cave LLP, Alleging Racketeering and Large Scale Financial Institution Fraud

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33971099/

December 4, 2011 7:03 PM 

Prosecuting Wall Street

170 Comments

Watch the Segment »

Two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. So why haven’t the companies or their executives been prosecuted? Steve Kroft reports.

Web Extras

Prosecuting Wall Street, pt. 1

Prosecuting Wall Street, pt. 2

The business model: Risky loans

More »

(CBS News)  

Two whistleblowers offer a rare window into the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, and Richard Bowen, a former vice president at Citigroup, tell Steve Kroft the companies ignored their repeated warnings about defective, even fraudulent mortgages. The result, experts say, was a cascading wave of mortgage defaults for which virtually no high-ranking Wall Street executives have been prosecuted.

The following is a script of “Prosecuting Wall Street” which aired on Dec. 4, 2011. Steve Kroft is correspondent, James Jacoby, producer.

It’s been three years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy, and much to the consternation of the general public and the demonstrators on Wall Street, there has not been a single prosecution of a high-ranking Wall Street executive or major financial firm even though fraud and financial misrepresentations played a significant role in the meltdown. We wanted to know why, so nine months ago we began looking for cases that might have prosecutorial merit. Tonight you’ll hear about two of them. We begin with a woman named Eileen Foster, a senior executive at Countrywide Financial, one of the epicenters of the crisis.

Behind the financial crisis: A fraud investigator talks

Steve Kroft: Do you believe that there are people at Countrywide who belong behind bars?

Eileen Foster: Yes.

Kroft: Do you want to give me their names?

Foster: No.

Kroft: Would you give their names to a grand jury if you were asked?

Foster: Yes.

But Eileen Foster has never been asked – and never spoken to the Justice Department – even though she was Countrywide’s executive vice president in charge of fraud investigations. At the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide Financial was the largest mortgage lender in the country and the loans it made were among the worst, a third ending up in foreclosure or default, many because of mortgage fraud.

It was Foster’s job to monitor and investigate allegations of fraud against Countrywide employees and make sure they were reported to the Board of Directors and the Treasury Department.

Kroft: How much fraud was there at Countrywide?

Foster: From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was– it appeared systemic. It, it wasn’t just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals.

Kroft: What you seem to be saying was it was just a way of doing business?

Foster: Yes.

In 2007, Foster sent a team to the Boston area to search several branch offices of Countrywide’s subprime division – the division that lent to borrowers with poor credit. The investigators rummaged through the office’s recycling bins and found evidence that Countrywide loan officers were forging and manipulating borrowers’ income and asset statements to help them get loans they weren’t qualified for and couldn’t afford.

Foster: All of the– the recycle bins, whenever we looked through those they were full of, you know, signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied, you know, or faxed and then the– you know, the creation thrown– thrown in the recycle bin.

Kroft: And the incentive for the people at Countrywide to do that was what?

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Joseph Zernik, PhD
Human Rights Alert (NGO)
  
The 2010 submission of Human Rights Alert to the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations was reviewed by the HRC professional staff and incorporated in the official HRC Professional Staff Report with a note referring to �corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California.� 
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WHAT DID THE EXPERT SAY ABOUT THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS?
* Foreclosure fraud: The homeowner nightmares continue
CNN (April 7, 2011)
* About 3 million homes have been repossessed since the housing boom ended in 2006� That number could balloon to about 6 million by 2013 
Bloomberg (January 2011)
* ”…a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences.” 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50753639/
Prof Paul Krugman, MIT (2011)

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