U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) will chair a Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on “Mortgage Fraud, Securities Fraud, and the Financial Meltdown” on Wednesday, Dec. 9.
The hearing will examine the role criminal financial fraud played in the current economic crisis as well as efforts taken by law enforcement to bring its perpetrators to justice.
The hearing will have three witnesses: Robert Khuzami, the Securities and Exchange Commission's recently appointed director of enforcement; Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general of the criminal division at the Department of Justice and Kevin Perkins, the FBI's assistant director in charge of its criminal investigative division.
Since President Obama signed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act into law in May — which Kaufman co-sponsored — there has been a steady stream of lower level prosecutions. Given the magnitude of the crisis and its cost to taxpayers, however, Kaufman plans to ask Khuzami, Breuer and Perkins about the strategy underlying investigative priorities all along the chain.
