Press

PRESS

July 09, 2009

CREW Asks Treasury and NEC to Disclose Who Attended Meetings Developing Financial Regulatory Reform

FOIA Requests (Legal Filings), Federal Agencies, Department of the Treasury, Financial, Disclosure, FOIA, Transparency, Press Releases

US Department of the Treasury

Washington, D.C. - Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent requests to the Department of the Treasury and the National Economic Council (NEC) seeking records related to development of the financial regulatory reforms recently proposed by President Obama.

News reports indicate that senior administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and NEC Director Lawrence Summers, held numerous meetings in the months before the reforms were proposed with financial industry lobbyists and executives, and representatives of financial industry trade associations, consumer groups, and labor unions.

CREW seeks records related to those meetings, documents provided to government officials, and documents produced by the government related to the reforms. As CREW explained in its requests, these records will contribute to the public’s understanding of the influence that these individuals and groups had on the formulation of the reform plan. The requests sent to the Department of Treasury are Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As the White House does not consider the NEC to be an agency subject to FOIA, the request sent to the NEC seeks a discretionary disclosure of records. Read CREW's requests in the Related Documents section on the right.

Click here to read the documents CREW received in response to this request.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions. For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact David Merchant at 202.408.5565 or dmerchant@citizensforethics.org