Richard Bowen was a business chief underwriter at Citigroup who discovered that billions of dollars annually of defective mortgages were being sold to investors in securitizations as quality mortgages. He warned management repeatedly for 18 months about possible unrecognized financial losses. Richard then warned Citi’s board of directors and requested an outside investigation, resulting in his being placed on administrative leave and instructed not to return to the bank.
He provided evidence of the massive fraud to the SEC three months before the bank bailouts and gave nationally televised testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, where he witnessed coordinated efforts to hide key parts of his testimony from the American public. His story was featured in the 60 Minutes story “Prosecuting Wall Street,” which aired December 4, 2011 with an audience of 12 million viewers and has since been re-aired on CBS and CNBC eight times. Richard is presently a professor of accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas and is a well-known speaker on ethical leadership and the financial crisis. www.richardmbowen.com