WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission general counsel Mark Cahn has told SEC staff to stop destroying case records following accusations of illegal purging.
Cahn sent a memo to staff informing them of the new policy in the wake of an accusation the SEC was illegally destroying records that could point to the regulator as being soft on Wall Street malfeasance, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
"The decision to stop destroying these records is a key step to opening the windows into the SEC to see how it operates," said Gary Aguirre, a former SEC official who is representing Darcy Flynn, the enforcement lawyer who has twice raised a stir at the SEC over the issue of purging pertinent records.
"The SEC windows have been sealed closed and shuttered for too long," Aguirre said.
John Nester, a spokesman for the Wall Street regulatory agency, said the SEC was attempting to develop a new policy that covers how long SEC case records will be kept.
The old policy was on hold "out of an abundance of caution," Nester told the Post.
