Affaire Madoff: les défaillances de la SEC

D'après le Wall Street Journal, SEC Botched Inquiries into Madoff Scheme, le Rapport de l'enquête interne de la SEC sur l'affaire Madoff révèle des défaillances troublantes:

According to the report, the SEC received six warnings about Mr. Madoff's trading business over 16 years, but failure of staff to follow up adequately -- including to determine whether trades were executed when Mr. Madoff said they were -- and poor communication within the agency's divisions enabled him to continue his scheme.

Les causes sont nombreuses, selon le sommaire du rapport:

The 22-page executive summary said agency staff was too inexperienced or too narrowly focused, and missed opportunities to uncover the fraud. It said the SEC's structure hampered its effectiveness, with two groups of examiners looking separately into Mr. Madoff's business at one point without knowing about the other.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz said "perhaps the most egregious failure" was that the SEC failed to corroborate Mr. Madoff's trading records with those held by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., the clearinghouse for stocks, even after Mr. Madoff handed them his account number.

Il sera intéressant de voir la suite des choses, i.e. les réformes à venir. On peut consulter le rapport ici.