SEC subpoenas JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse mortgage debt records

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) declined to comment Friday on a Bloomberg news report, suggesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed records from the investment bank to see if it failed to use funds recovered from originators to pay off its own debt obligations. Bond insurer MBIA Insurance Co. also indicated in court documents that the SEC  subpoenaed records from Credit Suisse [CS]] as part of a similar investigation, Bloomberg reported. The crux of both investigations is  a deliberate probe to see if Credit Suisse — and Bear Stearns, which was acquired by JPMorgan three years ago — demanded originators reimburse them for selling bad mortgage debt and then, in turn, failed to meet their own contractual obligations to reimburse other parties. The SEC declined to comment and would not confirm the investigation on Friday. Credit Suisse also declined to comment on the report. The report comes at a time when the litigation storm over the selling and insuring of mortgage debt continues to pick up speed as originators, banks and  insurers battle over who will end up holding the bag  on bad debts stemming from the mortgage securitization process. As an insurer, MBIA, itself, is already facing a major legal action filed  by the nation’s largest banks, including Bank of America [[BAC], JPMorgan Chase and others. The plaintiffs in that case alleged that the New York Insurance Department and its former superintendent, Eric Dinallo, approved “one of the largest fraudulent conveyances in history” by allowing MBIA to create a second mortgage insurer, using $5 billion siphoned from the company’s original insurance subsidiary. The alleged objective of the spin-off was to shield MBIA from  potential payouts tied to claims stemming from the  2008 financial crash. Write to: Kerri Panchuk.

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