Saturday, February 18, 2012

Will anybody be indicted?

Citibank has just paid another fine. This time the $158,000,000 fine was assessed because Citi tried to cheat the FHA.  Citi passed bad loans - some of which were fraudulent - to the FHA, which insured these loans and allows Citi to avoid the risk of default by the homeowner. 

The FHA has standards for these loans. Citi essentially ignored these standards. In some years, almost half of the loans Citi had passed to the FHA defaulted. Citi did establish a quality control unit for these loans, but did almost everything in its power to emasculate the unit.

While the government has reserved the right to pursue criminal charges, do you think any Citi bigwig will face retribution?

No comments: