Cuomo Letter on Merrill Investigation

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has publicly released a letter, dated February 10th, to Barney Frank. The letter updates Rep. Frank on the progress of the New York AG's investigation of 2008 bonus grants at Merrill Lynch & Co. It is pretty shocking - in October the New York AG sent Merrill a letter asking for details of the company's 2008 bonus program. Cuomo says Merrill gave him boilerplate assurances and then "secretly" and "prematurely" handed out over three billion dollars in bonuses. Most of the money went to 700 employees (out of 39,000). Four employees got $121 million each and four others got $62 million each.

Coumo suggests that this could not have been done without the conniavance of Bank of America. He also wants to investigate whether the bonus grants were "timed to force taxpayers to pay for them."