Letter: Lehman Accounting Tricks Possibly Illegal

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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/19/business/AP-US-Lehman-Brothers-Whistleblower.html

A Lehman Brothers whistleblower warned his bosses that accounting gimmicks the bank used before its collapse may have been illegal, his lawyer said Friday.

Matthew Lee, a former Lehman senior vice president, was fired days after questioning the accounting tricks in a letter to his superiors, attorney Erwin Shustak said. Shustak gave a copy of the letter to The Associated Press.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded in September 2008, becoming the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The collapse sent financial markets across the globe into a free-fall and prompted a massive bailout of the U.S. banking system.

An examiner appointed by the bankruptcy court said in a 2,200-page report last week that Lehman hid its debt and perilous financial condition by using an accounting gimmick called Repo 105. The report revealed Lee's warnings to the bank, though his letter makes public the first internal assessment of the legality of Lehman's bookkeeping.

In a letter dated May 18, 2008, Lee wrote that he discovered that the bank had been underreporting its debt by about $5 billion at the end of each month. Lee, a 14-year Lehman veteran, wrote that he felt compelled to report the ''discrepancies'' under the firm's code of ethics, saying he believed they ''possibly constitute unethical or unlawful conduct.''