Federal bank examiners could get new post-employment restrictions

[seemslikeadream]

September 21, 2004
By Molly M. Peterson, CongressDaily


Prompted in part by conflict-of-interest allegations stemming from the Riggs Bank investigation, Senate Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and ranking member Carl Levin, D-Mich., Monday introduced a bill calling for a "cooling off period" before certain federal bank examiners could go to work for financial institutions they had previously supervised.
The Coleman-Levin bill would require senior examiners who retire from their jobs at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other federal banking regulatory agencies to wait at least one year before taking positions at the banks for which they once had oversight responsibility.

House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations ranking member Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced a similar bill last week. Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., is co-sponsoring that bill.

A one-year cooling-off period is among the recommendations included in a staff report Levin issued last July, following the subcommittee's year-long investigation into allegations that Riggs Bank had violated anti-money laundering laws. Comptroller of the Currency John Hawke also has urged lawmakers to enact a one-year cooling off period.

The report raised conflict-of-interest questions about a former OCC examiner who took an executive level job with Riggs shortly after retiring from OCC in 2002.

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