Probes Reporter Submits Report To Congress On SEC’s Failures To Comply With Freedom Of Information Laws by John P. Gavin, CFA, Probes Reporter
The SEC has decided that you have no business seeing the one report they write which summarizes why an SEC investigation was opened, the work that took place, and the conclusions reached.
It’s called a Case Closing Recommendation.
Want to see what a real, unredacted SEC “Case Closing Recommendation” looks like?
We’ve posted three of them for you. We think it is wrong for the SEC to block access to these reports.
We included them as critical exhibits in a report we prepared in response to queries from the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.
Our report, titled “A Failure of Transparency: The Securities and Exchange Commission and a Pattern and Practice of FOIA Violation” – and the Case Closing Recommendations – are now posted at our site.
I’ve been working for more than 15 years to pry high-quality investigative records out of the SEC. It’s been a long, expensive, and at times lonely fight.
Now that a House committee is paying close attention, I see a chance to make some meaningful progress.
I need your help right now!
Here’s what you can do (please) —
- Forward this to everyone you know, especially those in the media. The more pressure we can put on the SEC to comply with the FOIA, the better.
- Use one of the social media links I included here to help spread the word.
- The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding hearings on FOIA abuses in a couple of weeks. I would like to be invited to testify to tell the Congress about the SEC’s abuses of the FOIA. If you have any connections who can help, please send them my way.
It is rare we get this kind of opportunity with the SEC and the FOIA. Take a look at what we’ve posted and please do what you can to help.
I’ll close with this excerpt from my letter to The Economist published last fall,
“If the SEC simply complied with the FOIA, transparency would be improved. Investors in capital markets would benefit as regulators and the regulated would be held more accountable.”
I look forward to any help you can give. As always, I thank you for your support.
– John
John P. Gavin, CFA
Probes Reporter
