Justice Dept. to Probe Former Examiner at Riggs

[seemslikeadream]

By Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page E01

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has asked the Justice Department to review whether a former federal bank examiner of Riggs Bank broke ethics laws after he left government and went to work at the bank.


R. Ashley Lee was the top federal bank examiner in charge of supervising Riggs. When he retired, he took a job as executive vice president at Riggs. The comptroller's office, in a July 20 letter, asked federal prosecutors whether Lee violated laws that prohibit federal employees from dealing with their former agencies on matters they worked on while in government.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a Treasury unit that regulates federally chartered banks, sent the referral to the fraud and public corruption section of the U.S. attorney's office in the District last week, following revelations at a Senate hearing days earlier of alleged misconduct by former examiner Lee and of other issues at Riggs.

A Senate report said Riggs employees helped former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars.

The report asserted that, about a month before accepting a job with Riggs, Lee had kept details about Riggs's relationship with Pinochet out of the Riggs case file. Two other bank examiners have said Lee instructed them to keep the material out of the files, but Lee testified that he didn't remember giving such an instruction. Leaders of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations have said they will ask the Justice Department to determine whether anyone lied under oath about what happened.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22136-2004Jul28.html

[struggle4progress]

1. kick for Bushista money-laundering

:kick: