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Administration October 11, 2006
Cox: SEC was Too Slow on Investor Fraud Payments
November 22, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The nation's
chief securities regulator has admitted that his agency has
dallied too long in returning money to defrauded investors
and asserted that fixing that problem is a major priority for
him.
Reported by Fred Schneyer
Christopher Cox, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made the assertion in a letter to US Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan), Dow Jones reported.
“I am attacking this problem head-on,” Cox said in the November 14 Dingell letter. “The process of returning money to injured investors has, in my view, been rendered needlessly complex.”
The SEC, which has levied record-setting fines in recent years, has collected more than $5 billion but has yet to return most of that money to defrauded investors, according to the news report. In fact, a report this summer by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, found the SEC had returned only about 1% of eligible funds to investors.
In his letter, Cox told Dingell he agrees with the GAO’s findings and said the SEC is updating its case-tracking system and preparing training programs for its staff.