The FBI is investigating Lehman Brothers and three other contributors to America’s financial crisis to determine whether they put pressure on ratings agencies to award top ratings to securities they issued.
Concerns that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or Lehman may have sought to encourage agencies to inflate their ratings — by offering higher fees or the promise of more work — form part of a broad inquiry by the bureau.
The agencies are widely regarded as having failed debtholders by attributing the top ratings to many securities that turned out to be extremely risky and have lost investors hundreds of billions of dollars.
The FBI, which is also investigating whether any of the four institutions deliberately misled investors about the true health of their assets, is expected to demand that they “hold all papers and e-mails under lock and key” as it sifts through the evidence, a source said
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