Eric Holder’s Missing Defendants

On Monday, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, announced that Citigroup had agreed to pay seven billion dollars to settle a federal investigation into its packaging and marketing of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The penalties Citi accepted—four and a half billion dollars in fines and two and half billion dollars in restitution to homeowners and other injured parties—were the largest yet to be paid to Justice Department in a civil case, a point Holder stressed. (J.P. Morgan paid thirteen billion, but that was a global settlement covering claims from a number of government entities.)

“This historic penalty is appropriate given the strength of the evidence of the wrongdoing committed by Citi,” he said in a Justice Department news release. “The bank’s activities contributed mightily to the financial crisis that devastated our economy in 2008.”

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