In what prosecutors call one of the nation's biggest prosecutions of the asbestos industry, a business executive has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for illegally removing asbestos from more than 1,000 buildings throughout New York State.
The failure to bring big prosecutions under the UK Bribery Act 2010 is particularly damning.
"But since there have been almost no big prosecutions, there's very little evidence that it has stopped bad actors from behaving badly".
Even so, unless American banks are genuinely squeaky clean or some big prosecutions are in the works, claims of uneven treatment will persist.
In an interview with Reuters, Haag, who took over the job last August, said big prosecutions send a message, and it is important for her office to send them.
The case against Mr. Farkas, the former chairman of the mortgage firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, stands as the single-biggest prosecution stemming from the financial crisis.
"If you look at the last couple of years and say, 'This is the big-ticket prosecution that came out of the crisis,' you realize we haven't gotten very much," said David A. Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
That comment — an acknowledgment, for the first time, that Mr. Holder has not pursued big bank prosecutions out of fear of possibly harming the financial system — raises a variety of questions, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column.
