Regulators are getting territorial.
The nation’s top bank regulator on Monday — just hours before the Justice Department filed criminal tax evasion charges against Credit Suisse — said financial investigations are a “crowded highway.”
“Each agency should make a frank assessment of whether it brings the right expertise, jurisdictional authority, and appropriate remedies to the table,” Mary Jo White, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in prepared remarks before a speech on white-collar crime.
Regulators need to make sure they avoid “unjust, duplicative outcomes,” the SEC boss, a former federal prosecutor, said.
The comments could be aimed at any number of financial overseers, chief among them US Attorney Eric Holder.
Holder’s Justice Department, just 10 days ago, posted a video on its Web site announcing that no bank is “too big to jail.”
Holder, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara and Ben Lawsky’s Department of Financial Services, New York’s top bank regulator, successfully pressed Credit Suisse to admit it helped US investors avoid taxes.
The bank will pay $2.6 billion in fines.
Regulators are also pursuing a guilty plea from the French bank BNP Paribas for dealing with forbidden countries like Sudan and Iran, which could bar it from operating in the US.
White, in her remarks, joined Holder in agreeing that no bank is too big or complex to be held accountable for any crimes.
Prosecuting banks, as well as any bad apples, is the best way to deter any shifty behavior, she said.
Even so, uncovering enough evidence to charge an individual wrongdoer can be “difficult,” she said.
But that could change soon.
Regulators increasingly rely on whistle-blowers to help build cases against banks, said Andrew Ceresney, co-director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, at a panel discussion following White’s speech.
“When you have a cooperator, it makes your life easier,” he said.
The agency is coming up on the third anniversary of its revamped anonymous whistle-blower program.
In October of last year, the SEC announced it rewarded a single tipster $14 million.