Oversight of The Troubled Asset Relief Program - Special Inspector General For TARP (SIGTARP)

Special Inspector General For TARP (SIGTARP)

The EESA created the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), and the Special Inspector General is appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Special Inspector General's purpose is to monitor, audit, and investigate TARP-related activities, including those of the Treasury in the administration of the program, and report findings to Congress every quarter. Christy Romero was sworn-in as the current Special Inspector General on April 9, 2012, having been nominated by the President on February 1, 2012, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 29, 2012.

Eric Thorson is the Inspector General of the US Department of the Treasury and was originally responsible for the oversight of the TARP but expressed concerns about the difficulty of properly overseeing the complex program in addition to his regular responsibilities. Thorson called oversight of TARP a "mess" and later clarified this to say "The word 'mess' was a description of the difficulty my office would have in providing the proper level of oversight of the TARP while handling its growing workload, including conducting audits of certain failed banks and thrifts at the same time that efforts are underway to nominate a special inspector general."

Former Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky was confirmed by the Senate on December 8, 2008, and was sworn into office on December 15, 2008. Mr. Barofsky stepped-down from the post on March 30, 2011. Prior to assuming the position of Special Inspector General, Mr. Barofsky was a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for more than eight years. Mr. Barofsky received the Attorney General's John Marshall Award for his work on the Refco matter. Mr. Barofsky also led the investigation that resulted in the indictment of the top 50 leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on narcotics charges, a case described by the then Attorney General as the largest narcotics indictment filed in U.S. history.

Under the leadership of Mr. Barofsky, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has quietly turned into a full-fledged financial law enforcement agency. It has 45 investigators who are empowered to carry guns and badges, and 27 vehicles with sirens and lights spread out in its branch offices across the United States. SIGTARP agents are empowered to make arrests. The agency is currently engaged in 142 ongoing criminal and civil investigations, and it has already recovered assets worth $151.8 million. By the summer of 2010, SIGTARP agents were participating in raids alongside other U.S. law enforcement agencies. They worked with FBI agents in a raid on Colonial Bank in Orlando, Florida in an investigation into possible TARP-related fraud.

In January 2012, Special Inspector General Christy Romero said some $133 billion remained to be repaid by participants in the program, of which some at least is not likely ever to be repaid or recouped. That figure was offset partly by some $40.3 billion income and profits from repaid loans and investments; however new home-foreclosure bailout programs that could last as late as 2017 could also cost an additional $50 billion or more.