Financial Crisis Spawns New Task Force

The government has created a new task force to coordinate its efforts to fight fraud stemming from the massive financial crisis.

The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, led by the Department of Justice, will include representatives from dozens of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, and inspectors general.

In announcing its creation this week, Attorney General Eric Holder said the group's mission is "not just to hold accountable those who helped bring about the last financial meltdown, but to prevent another meltdown from happening."

The task force, which replaces the Corporate Fraud Task Force established in 2002, will build on existing efforts to combat mortgage, securities, and corporate fraud. The group will hold its first meeting sometime in the next month. The Department of Treasury, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Securities and Exchange Commission will serve on the steering committee.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the task force's creation makes clear that the Obama Administration "is going to act aggressively and proactively in a coordinated effort to combat financial fraud."

However, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, now a partner at Jenner & Block, says the creation of such task forces, "while certainly signaling an increase in attention to the particular area, may not in fact result in increased prosecutions or even investigations."

"Sometimes a task force has only a cosmetic effect," says Weissmann, who served as director of the Enron Task Force. "If well done, a task force can help to coordinate information and investigations, increase resources, and provide consistency in prosecutorial decision making. Only time will tell which of the paths the new task force will go down."

Meanwhile, SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami noted that, in fiscal 2009, more than 150 of the SEC's enforcement cases were filed in coordination with criminal charges filed by the Department of Justice and others, up 30 percent from last year.

"The Task Force should only increase those numbers and provide even greater opportunities for close collaboration and information sharing among law enforcement authorities," he said.

As previously reported, Khuzami announced a revamp of the SEC's enforcement unit earlier this year, including the creation of specialized units to focus on areas such as derivatives and securitized products; broad-based insider trading; and market manipulation and fraud among hedge funds and investment advisers, among others.

Some of the other groups participating in the task force include the Department of Homeland Security; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; the Federal Trade Commission; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Internal Revenue Service; the Secret Service; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.