Mediaboss Marketing

Thursday, October 23, 2014 - 5:52am

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that he found it "frustrating" that the Justice Department hasn't been able to carry out criminal prosecutions of executives whose risky banking practices blamed for the global financial crisis.

As Holder wraps up nearly six years at the helm of the Justice Department, the attorney general has drawn criticism for his department's record on white collar crime.

Holder frustrated no person went on trial for financial crisis

Some critics say the department failed by not bringing charges as a deterrent against shoddy practices on Wall Street. Some fault him for instead extracting billion dollar settlements from the world's biggest banks.

Holder has defended the department's record saying the settlements are one way to prod shareholder to hold management more accountable.

Still, in an exclusive interview with CNN on Monday, Holder acknowledged that the lack of criminal prosecutions of executives "is something that is frustrating."

"The American people should understand we looked at those matters, tried to come up with ways in which we could hold people and institutions accountable," Holder told CNN. "We have prosecuted certain institutions. We have gotten record amounts of money in and we've used that money for appropriate remedial measures so that people can stay in their houses, have their mortgages reduced. So a lot of good has come from our efforts in that regard."

Holder noted that he has called for Congress to change federal law to encourage white collar whistleblowers from inside Wall Street to help the Justice Department bring cases.

There are, he said, "a number of measures that I think Congress might change so that the prosecution of these kinds of cases is not as difficult as they are."

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