An investigation of United States
has found that the country's top financial regulator,
the Securities and the Exchange Commissioner SEC,
fail to uncover the 65 billion dollar fraud
carried out by the convicted financier Bernard Madoff
over a 16-year period,
despite 5 separate investigations
in his business dealings.
Greg Wood reports.
The report by the SEC's expected general David Kotz
reads like a catalog of bungled opportunities
to catch Bernard Madoff,
long before he owned up
to the largest fraud in US history.
He was investigated five times.
SEC staff caught him in lies
but failed to follow them up.
They rejected offers from whistleblowers
to provide additional evidence.
Many of the investigators were inexperienced.
The scale of the SEC's incompetence
is laid bare by this report.