Ninety-year-old Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is not going into retirement quietly.
Last week he lashed out at Mayor Bloomberg, calling the billionaire mayor’s comments about his office having secret office bank accounts “chicken —t.”
Shortly before Morgy hurled angry salvos at City Hall, the legendary lawman took on those calling for less financial regulation and hinted that despite a Wall Street meltdown, it could be that nobody will go to jail.
As he prepares to leave office on Dec. 31 after 35 years as DA, he sat down with The Post to answer some questions about white collar crime:
Q: Why haven’t there been more indictments? People are annoyed that taxpayers are bailing out banks, that many got rich by selling junk mortgages and bankers took extreme risk that resulted in companies going bust and thousands losing their jobs. Why haven’t more executives been prosecuted for fraud?
A: I can understand why people are angry. There was a bail out. But this is a nation of laws … It’s one thing to know someone committed fraud and it’s another to prove it. Still, we’ve had our cases: Madoff and a $100 million mortgage fraud case.
Q: What’s the biggest problem that needs to be fixed to stop massive fraud?
A: There wasn’t the supervision there should have been. Unregulated markets will get into trouble. The derivatives market should not have been allowed to exist without supervision. Derivative sales should be registered and supervised.
Q: Why isn’t this happening?
A: We need a tougher attitude. Banks doing business in secrecy jurisdictions with access to US markets should agree in writing to observe US laws. We could stop a lot of nonsense overnight if we took this position. The counter argument is that these banks would take their business elsewhere. So let them.