WASHINGTON, DC – April 23, 2010 – Today, Congresswoman Tsongas called for a criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing at Goldman Sachs.  In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Tsongas and several of her House colleagues asked the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against Goldman Sachs which would go beyond the civil securities fraud charges that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought last week.

“The American people must be secure in the knowledge that their investments, hard-earned money, and retirement savings are not being put at risk by criminal actively on Wall Street,” said Congresswoman Niki Tsongas.  “The fraudulent behavior that Goldman Sachs is alleged to have engaged in is just the latest in the long-line of unscrupulous and deceptive practices that characterized many Wall Street institutions and led to the meltdown in our financial markets. 

“Launching a criminal investigation to augment the charges that the SEC has already filed in this matter would send a powerful message that this type of behavior will not be tolerated.  The fraud charges also underscore the need to pass strong financial regulatory reform. What Goldman Sachs did was illegal, but because of the transparency rules that financial regulatory reform would impose, their fraudulent activity would have been nearly impossible to hide,” Tsongas concluded.

In the letter, the lawmakers state; “As the SEC notes, financial manipulations such as this contributed to the near collapse of the U.S. financial system and cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.  On the face of the SEC filing, criminal fraud on a historic scale seems to have occurred in this instance.  As an ever growing mountain of evidence reveals, this case is neither unique nor isolated.”

Tsongas is also a cosponsor of HR 3995, legislation that would increase the number of SEC, FBI, and Justice Department officials targeted to investigating fraud at the heart of the financial crisis.