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Congressmen sound off against SEC in Madoff affair
2009-01-05
WASHINGTON - Republican and Democratic House members said Monday that the alleged $50 billion fraud involving Wall Street figure Bernard Madoff reflects deep, systemic problems at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Inspector General H. David Kotz said he is so concerned about the SEC's failure to uncover Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme that the IG is expanding the inquiry called for last month by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. Cox had pushed the blame squarely onto the SEC's career staff for the failure to detect what Madoff was doing. At the first congressional hearing on the scandal, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., called for Congress to create a regulatory structure "for the 21st century." The House Financial Services Committee is trying to determine how, despite warnings back to at least 1999 to SEC staff members, Madoff continued to operate his alleged scheme. "Clearly, our regulatory system ... failed miserably and we must rebuild it now," said Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., said the Madoff scandal is like "the cherry on a bad sundae." Kotz said that he will examine the operations of the SEC's enforcement and inspection divisions and will make recommendations, steps beyond what Cox had called for. "I am a human face on this tragedy," said Allan Goldstein, a retired New York textile distributor who was expected to testify at Monday's hearing. Goldstein, 76, said he lost his entire life savings with Madoff and had to cash in his life insurance policies to cover his mortgage. "Everything I worked for over a 50-year career is gone," Goldstein said in an e-mail message from his attorney's firm. He said he had no reason to question the steady returns of 8 percent to 12 percent a year that Madoff's firm told him he was earning. The Securities Investor Protection Corp. and the trustee handling the liquidation of Madoff's firm said Monday they mailed more than 8,000 claim forms to customers on Friday. Besides individuals, others who lost money were big hedge funds, international banks and charities. Lawmakers jumped on the opportunity to show concern in the first congressional hearing since the scandal broke with Madoff's arrest on Dec. 11. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., insisted that all five SEC commissioners should tender their resignations to President-elect Barack Obama. Republicans warned against rushing to new regulation as a response to the SEC breakdown. "While the failures of regulatory and private-sector due diligence exposed by the Madoff matter are obvious, they do not lead me to conclude at this stage of the inquiry that what is needed are broad new legislative or regulatory mandates on the rest of the securities industry," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the senior Republican on the panel. "What we may have in the Madoff case is not necessarily a lack of enforcement and oversight tools, but a failure to use them," he said. The Madoff scandal allegedly involves a Ponzi scheme, in which people are persuaded to invest in a fraudulent operation. The early investors are paid their returns out of money put in by later investors. It is named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant to Boston who worked as a waiter, bank teller and nurse before he talked investors into sinking their money into a complex -- and, it turned out, bogus -- scheme involving postal currency. His swindle in 1919-20 cheated thousands of people out of $10 million. He was sent to prison for mail fraud and, in 1934, deported.
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