Excerpt from Washington Post: (click for entire article)
Federal and state regulators filed civil fraud charges Thursday against Bank of America and its former chief executive and former chief financial officer in the broadest action brought to date against a major player in the financial crisis. The bank agreed to pay $150 million to settle some of the charges.
Regulators accused Bank of America and its former top executives -- chief executive officer Ken Lewis and chief financial officer Joseph Price -- of lying to investors in fall 2008 about mounting losses at Merrill Lynch, the troubled investment bank it was acquiring, and billions of dollars in bonuses paid to employees. Regulators also charged that the bank misled federal officials by falsely claiming it would back out of a deal to buy Merrill Lynch without billions of dollars more in bailout funds.
The actions represent the culmination of long-running investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Neil Barofsky, the Treasury Department's special inspector general for the financial bailout.
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