Richard Bowen, Citigroup Whistleblower and Business Ethics Speaker
Richard Bowen was a business chief underwriter at Citigroup who discovered that billions of dollars annually of defective mortgages were being sold to investors in securitizations as quality mortgages. He warned management repeatedly for 18 months about possible unrecognized financial losses. Richard then warned Citi’s board of directors and requested an outside investigation, resulting in his being placed on administrative leave and instructed not to return to the bank. Months before the bank bailouts, Richard provided evidence to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and gave a nationally televised testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, where he witnessed coordinated efforts to hide key parts of his testimony from the American public. Richard’s story has been widely reported in the news media including the 60 Minutes story, 'Prosecuting Wall Street'. His story also features in the newly published book by Tom Mueller, ‘Crisis of Conscience, Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud’. Richard is presently a professor of accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas and is a respected speaker in the field of business ethics.