Lawsuit Against Banking Lawyer for Reckless Misconduct
A prominent banking lawyer is fighting for his professional life against the potential “professional death sentence” he may receive.
This trial starts with the idea of “reckless misconduct”. And the result of this trial can set tidal waves going in the legal community as to whether lawyers may be held responsible and liable for investigations into corporate wrongdoing they work on.
Carlos Loumiet, the banking attorney, is charged that his “reckless misconduct” resulted in a report that may have concealed banking fraud crimes. When Carlos was at his former law firm, Greenberg Traurig, he was investigating problems with foreign loan swaps at now closed Hamilton Bank.
The charges against Mr. Loumiet come from regulators feeling that he concealed crimes of Hamilton Bank officers. They are seeking to have him barred from offering legal services to financial institutions and a civil penalty of $250,000.
”This is a professional death sentence,” said Alan Greer, who is Carlos Loumiet’s attorney, in his opening statement.
The attorneys for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency insist that U.S. laws make lawyers liable for their reports. ”This case is about the reckless misconduct of Carlos Loumiet,” said Lee M. Straus, special counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency .
Mr Straus feels that the reports overseen by Loumiet ”whitewashed” the events that went on at the bank and that this happened and that the attorney made the same mistakes again in a second report.
