COMPANIES In an extraordinary admission, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is blaming his own agency for missing numerous chances to detect what could be the world’s biggest fraud.
Discussing his decision to launch an internal investigation into how the SEC missed an alleged $50bn “Ponzi” scheme run by New York broker Bernard Madoff, Christopher Cox said on Wednesday that “over a period of several years, nearly a decade, credible information was on multiple occasions brought to the agency, and yet at no point taken to the next step.” He added: “We need an answer to these questions.”
