A controversy involving the Securities and Exchange Commission’s inspector general attracts Bloomberg Businessweek’s attention:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house cop has castigated the agency for missing the Bernard Madoff fraud, spotlighted employees who viewed online pornography, and called for a criminal probe into the ethics of the SEC’s former top lawyer. His blunt reports have won Inspector General H. David Kotz admiration on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers summon him to testify about his efforts to improve the way the agency does business, and he is praised as a tough investigator who has been zealous in getting to the bottom of the SEC’s lapses in the runup to the credit crisis.
Inside the SEC, it’s not hard to imagine how he’s been received. While inspectors general are rarely beloved, a backlash against Kotz among staff and managers has grown in intensity and spread to the legal community outside the agency.
Whether you think Kotz is justified or overzealous, you might ask the following question: What happens in the hundreds of federal agencies with less attentive inspectors general?
One likely answer: bootlegger and Baptist problems run amok.
