“I’m delighted to have the opportunity to help [PricewaterhouseCoopers] as it strives to continually improve audit quality,” she said in a news release.
Company spokesman Steven G. Silber said her role “as envisioned will not require her to spend time before the SEC.”
The SEC’s revolving door factors into pending reviews by the Government Accountability Office and the SEC’s inspector general, H. David Kotz.
In a letter last year, Kotz said he was investigating allegations “that a prominent law firm’s significant ties with the SEC, specifically the prevalence of SEC attorneys leaving the agency to join this particular firm, led to the SEC’s failure to take appropriate actions.” That probe is still open.
In a probe last year of Robert Allen Stanford’s alleged $8 billion fraud, Kotz said an SEC official named Spencer Barasch blocked an investigation of Stanford for seven years. Then, after leaving the SEC, in 2005, Barasch did work for Stanford, the inspector general reported.
“Every lawyer in Texas and beyond is going to get rich over this case. Okay? And I hated being on the sidelines,”Barasch said, according to the report.
An SEC ethics official concluded Barasch was prohibited from representing Stanford, the report said.
In a statement Thursday, the managing partner of the law firm where Barasch now works said the firm believes he acted properly.
“He did not violate conflicts of interest,” Bob Jewell of the firm Andrews Kurth said.
Staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
Loading...
Comments