SEC Inspector General David Kotz says agency mishandled Bernard Madoff investigations

Chicago Tribune / Business
September 3, 2009
The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found the agency consistently mishandled its five investigations of Bernard Madoff's business, despite ample complaints over 16 years about what turned out to be a multibillion-dollar fraud.
The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff's business, "almost immediately caught [him] in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies" and rejected whistleblowers' offers to provide additional evidence, the 450-page report by Inspector General David Kotz says.
Kotz's inquiry was intended as an investigation into the SEC's conduct in the Madoff affair and doesn't make recommendations for actions the agency should take.