2020 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

All Content > Impact/Investigative > Northeast

Awarded to

Kevin Wack, Staff Reporter, American Banker
Alan Kline, Senior Editor, American Banker
Jesse Eisinger, Senior Reporter, ProPublica
Nick Varchaver, Senior Editor, ProPublica

Entry details

How Trump’s political appointees thwarted tougher settlements with two big banks

Issue or publication date: Aug. 2, 2019
Publication name: American Banker and ProPublica
Publishing company: SourceMedia
Website home page: www.americanbanker.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

American Banker is the essential resource for senior executives in banking and financial services, keeping its users updated on vital developments and focusing sharply on their most important concerns — innovation, transformation, and disruption; technology, regulation, and reform. Financial industry professionals turn to American Banker, every day and throughout the day, to stay maximally informed — drilling down on complex issues, keeping up with breaking news, and downloading research and data. Paid subscribers and registered visitors engage deeply with an authoritative community of analysts, practitioners and innovators through opinion content, research panels, social media, and live events.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

There’s seldom been a more high-impact story in American Banker’s more than 175-year history than its expose on the Justice Department’s settlements with two large banks over charges of fraud. Working in partnership with ProPublica, the two reporters successfully pierced the cone of silence at DOJ to find out why and how Trump political appointees had overruled career prosecutors to reduce the fines and severity of punishments against Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland. The reporting reveals the power wielded by former high-ranking DOJ lawyers who, after being hired by the two banks, won meetings with top political appointees at the Justice Department, and provides a window into how the Trump administration has eased up on corporate wrongdoers.

The story is a triumph of dogged reporting. Reporters Kevin Wack and Jesse Eisinger worked for weeks to coax sources to tell them the full story. The story drew a heated response from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who in August demanded more information about the settlements from Attorney General William Barr. It was widely cited in other media and drew follow-up coverage by Bloomberg. A Washington Post op-ed, meanwhile, praised the collaboration between the two organizations as a blueprint for mainstream news outlets and “plugged-in trade journals” and as “a needed step for sharper coverage of business and finance in the struggling media landscape.”

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Entry URL(s), if applicable:
https://www.americanbanker.com/news/how-trumps-political-appointees-thwarted-tougher-settlements-with-two-big-banks

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