Prometheus 6

Last month, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, an independent group formed with the blessing of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., called for a sweeping overhaul of securities market rules, including greater protection of companies, their directors and employees, and their outside auditors from regulators, investigators and civil suits.

At the same time, there are growing calls to scale back the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the legislation aimed at increasing corporate accountability in the aftermath of the Enron collapse.

It's "at the same time" because it's the same guys doing it, as part of a coordinated strategy. And because the boys in The Committee got the hook-up

The committee has no official standing, but the identities of its leaders and its formation with an endorsement from Mr. Paulson have created an expectation that it may map out the Bush administration’s final two years of strategy in capital markets.

...all they have to do is suggest and the Bushista Boys jump right on it.

U.S. Moves to Restrain Prosecutors
By LYNNLEY BROWNING

The Justice Department placed new restraints on federal prosecutors conducting corporate investigations yesterday, easing tactics adopted in the wake of the Enron collapse.

The changes were outlined in a memorandum written by Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general. Under the revisions, federal prosecutors will no longer have blanket authority to ask routinely that a company under investigation waive the confidentiality of its legal communications or risk being indicted. Instead, they will need written approval for waivers from the deputy attorney general, and can make such requests only rarely.

The new guidelines will help companies defend themselves by “making it easier for corporations to say no, and not having to worry about that decision being held against them,” said Andrew Weissmann, who headed the Justice Department’s Enron task force and is now in private practice.

Another substantial change introduced yesterday prohibits prosecutors from considering, when weighing whether to seek the indictment of a company, whether it is paying the legal fees of an employee caught up in the inquiry.

The revised guidelines follow criticism from legal and business associations and from federal judges, senators and former top Justice Department officials that the tactics used in recent years against companies like the drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb and the accounting firm KPMG were coercive and unconstitutional.

“I don’t know if there are going to be more or less prosecutions,” said Stephen J. Bronis, executive director of the white-collar crime committee of the American Bar Association, “but there are hopefully going to be less abusive ones.”

Frederick P. Hafetz, a criminal defense lawyer, said yesterday that the courts were unlikely to view the new guidelines as a basis for appeal by individuals or companies convicted under the old ones.

Mr. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, said in a brief interview that the revisions “do not create any legal rights.”

Still, they are being made at a time when companies are seeking — and receiving — greater protection from criminal and regulatory scrutiny.