FINANCIAL TIMES: The Department of Justice has opened a criminal probe into JPMorgan Chase’s sale of mortgage-backed securities, a new front in the government’s examination of the largest US bank by assets.
JPMorgan, which has come under unprecedented scrutiny from regulators after it lost $6bn in a trading debacle last year, said on Wednesday it was “responding to parallel investigations” – civil and criminal – into its sale of mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007.
Investigators from the civil division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California told JPMorgan in May that they had “preliminarily concluded that the firm violated certain federal securities laws” when it sold subprime loans packaged into securities, the bank said in the filing. A spokeswoman for the attorney’s office declined to comment… (more)
