The image above is not related to this story specifically, though it was sent to the SEC by a fund manager back in 2009.
A year after it was warned that it might be violating federal law, the Securities and Exchange Commission is still breaking the law by destroying records of closed enforcement cases, a lawyer in the agency’s enforcement division has alleged.
In addition, the purging of files has involved a wider range of investigative documents than previously reported, according to a signed statement by the enforcement lawyer.
The new allegations are contained in a statement dated Tuesday by Darcy Flynn, a longtime SEC employee involved in managing records for the enforcement division.
Flynn’s lawyer, Gary Aguirre, sent the statement and an accompanying narrative to SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro and SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz. Aguirre also addressed copies to several lawmakers, calling on Congress to step in.
Flynn is under “standing orders to direct the destruction of records” that the SEC is legally required to preserve, Aguirre wrote.
A year ago, after Flynn first alerted it to a potential problem, the National Archives, overseer of federal record-keeping, asked the SEC to explain the apparently unauthorized destruction of government records. The SEC told the National Archives that it was preserving the records then in question while it worked to sort out the issue.
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Matt Taibbi first broke this story a few weeks ago:
Matt Taibbi: SEC Is Covering Up Wall Street Crimes