Considering the size of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, it didn't take long for people to start asking how regulators missed this one. Looks like there may be an easy answer: Perhaps an official at the Securities and Exchange Commission was blinded by love.
ABC News is reporting that a top SEC "compliance official who worked for the SEC when it found no problems at firm in 2005, later began to date and married Madoff's niece, who was a compliance lawyer for the company."
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The official, Eric Swanson, has since left the agency and maintains that
nothing untoward was going on when he investigated Bernard L. Madoff
Investment Securities LLC or its affiliates. Still the revelation is sure to draw even
more fire on the SEC, which has been feeling the heat as the depth of
the scandal deepens.
And unfortunately, for Swanson and the SEC, Madoff
treated the situation as a big joke, reportedly bragging at a
business round table meeting last year that he had a "very close"
relationship with the SEC, joking that it was so close that "in fact,
my niece even married one."
Madoff did have a close relationship aside from Swanson
because he sat on an SEC advisory board. -
George White
See ABC News story
See more Dealscape posts on Madoff
