Ethics Newsline®

“There’s no question that the department has been stretched thin when it comes to resources generally, and that has affected white-collar enforcement in a variety of areas.”

– Former U.S. deputy attorney general Paul McNulty, speaking to the New York Times in a piece examining the FBI’s current dearth of funding and staffing to prosecute white-collar crimes amidst financial fraud in the current economic collapse. The Times notes that “more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs,” were shifted to national security duties in the wake of 9/11, leaving the white-collar crime division undermanned. Even as FBI officials realized in 2003 and 2004 that trouble was brewing in the financial sector, the agency’s requests for more staffing and funding were largely spurned. “From 2001 to 2007, the FBI sought an increase of more than 1,100 agents for criminal investigations apart from national security. Instead, it suffered a decrease of 132 agents,” reports the Times. Over those same years, the FBI requested an increase of $800 million in funding for criminal investigations; it received one-sixteenth of that, notes the report.

Source: New York Times, Oct. 18.