NEW YORK — A former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who recommended questioning discrepancies in records from Bernard Madoff’s firm in 2004 says supervisors derailed her efforts by excluding her from key conference calls with the now-convicted Ponzi-scheme fraudster.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot said her absence from the conversations meant she couldn’t ask questions that could have contributed to uncovering the fraud years earlier. Her version of the events reveals possible gaps in the 477-page report by SEC inspector general H. David Kotz on the agency’s repeated bungling of its multiple Madoff probes. Walker-Lightfoot says the report too broadly paints the examiners as inexperienced and of limited expertise and focuses too little on the actions of higher-ups and the culture of the organization. Dow Jones Newswires
