Is a perjury charge the prize at the end of the Merrill bonuses rainbow?
Congress seems to think so, per Bloomberg:
March 12 (Bloomberg) — House Democrats have begun an investigation into whether Merrill Lynch & Co. misled Congress about its plan to grant bonuses.
Representative Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the investigation also will review the veracity of statements made by other financial institutions to House investigators after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday filed court papers accusing the company of making “misleading” statements to Congress.
Towns, a New York Democrat, said the court filings “raise the disturbing possibility that Merrill Lynch executives may have obstructed this committee’s investigation into executive compensation practices and the awarding of bonuses at the company.
“We will not hesitate to exercise every means at our disposal to protect the integrity of the congressional investigation process,” Towns said in a written statement.
Although Bank of America, of course, responded that Merrill was a separate company at that point, this is just more bad news for BoA, which would like nothing more than to move on from the Merrill purchase.
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Chris Geidner is the senior political writer at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found