07/27/2009
Be Careful What You Wish For: Best Practices For Preparing and Responding to Investigations by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the TARP (Bloomberg Law Reports)
To quote the late Barry Goldwater, "a government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." Companies that have received some portion of the billions in government funds committed through the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("TARP") may be getting the financial resources they needed, but the intense public and political scrutiny accompanying the commitment of these funds has led the government to embark on an ambitious course of audits and criminal investigations.
With the unprecedented outlay of taxpayer funding through the various programs under the TARP umbrella, companies and their counsel are entering a new era in which government investigations of a size, speed, and aggressiveness not previously encountered could become the norm. Traditional best practices for responding to government investigations are still important, but now is the time to review the unique challenges presented by the enforcement regime of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("SIGTARP").
View the article