The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission set up by Congress released more than its final report last week. It also posted online a trove of investigative documents:
Lawyers for companies at the center of the crisis have wondered what might become of the documents, given that, as The National Law Journal reported in August, they had been internal to the companies and could be of interest to the plaintiffs’ bar.
Many of those companies have already been battling proposed securities class actions.The archive appears on the Web site of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and hundreds of documents are already up, including testimony and court filings.
[...] Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman and a former California state treasurer, said the commission would be posting more, including “research and investigative documents, audio and transcripts.”
Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, criticized that plan. “The commission’s final report and its pledge to post raw materials — apparently including information obtained from companies as well as other government agencies — is an astounding abuse of process that would effectively create a government-sanctioned Wikileaks,” Rickard said in a formal statement today.
The Institute for Legal Reform was founded to protect corporations from getting sued, and that's really all you need to know.
