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- THE WEEK, Page 14BUSINESSDo Bad Guys Walk?
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- Insiders charge that the S&L cleanup agency is letting friends
- off easy
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- No one expected the Resolution Trust Corporation, the oddball
- agency cobbled together in 1989 to undertake the largest
- federal bailout ever, to liquidate more than 800 savings and
- loans without a hitch. And the dubious were right. From the
- beginning, the RTC, whose charter is to find and prosecute the
- crooked, the greedy and the inept among the nation's thrift
- managers, has been dogged by questions of efficiency, propriety
- and conflict of interest. Last week three RTC attorneys had more
- bad news; they testified on Capitol Hill that they had been
- blocked from prosecuting former S&L officials.
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- "The bad guys walk," said recently demoted RTC attorney
- Bruce Pedersen before the Senate Banking Committee. "They get
- off cheaply or they get off altogether because we're not
- allowed to do our jobs." Pedersen and his associates claimed
- that they were among two dozen lawyers who wanted to pursue
- criminal cases aggressively but were being harassed and driven
- out of the RTC. Another lawyer, Jacqueline Taylor, says she was
- forced to settle a $10 million case for $30,000 for political
- reasons.
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- The RTC also had some good news to report: it has sold off
- more than 600 thrifts and recovered more than $260 billion in
- assets.
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