SEC – The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed fraud charges against four former officers of Wilmington Trust for intentionally understating past due bank loans during the financial crisis. The former Delaware-based bank holding company was acquired by M&T Bank in May 2011 and paid $18.5 million in September 2014 to settle related SEC charges of improper accounting and disclosure fraud.
The SEC’s complaint, filed in federal district court in Wilmington, Delaware, alleges the four took part in a scheme to mask the impact of real estate market declines on the bank’s portfolio of commercial real estate loans. According to the SEC’s complaint, the former officials improperly excluded hundreds of millions of dollars of past due real estate loans from financial reports filed by Wilmington Trust in 2009 and 2010, violating a requirement to fully disclose the amount of loans 90 or more days past due.
