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WASHINGTON — An extensive investigation of embattled Fannie Mae (FNM) points to its former finance chief and controller as mainly responsible for the accounting failures at the mortgage giant now struggling to emerge from an $11 billion scandal, said a report released Thursday. The report by a team of investigators led by former Sen. Warren Rudman also found that former chairman and CEO Franklin Raines, while not sharing direct responsibility, contributed to a culture of arrogance at the government-sponsored company. The report comes about 17 months after the revelation that federal regulators had discovered violations of accounting rules and earnings...

Franklin Raines — the ousted cooked-books chief of mortgage giant Fannie Mae — is being accused of corrupting its directors by giving them $12M in charity checks to ignore his scandals. A federal shareholder suit yesterday claims that Raines lavished directors with generous donations to their favorite charities, funneled through a Fannie Mae charitable foundation he controlled for serving the needy......to "dominate his fellow board members" and prevent them from challenging his activities in a mounting $10.8 billion accounting scandal at Fannie Mae. Raines who was chairman of Fannie Mae's board and the its charitable foundation, directed the money to...

Homeless Man Gets Five Fannie Mae Loans In Florida The St. Petersburg Times found a homeless man who had bought a few houses. “After struggling much of his adult life with unemployment, homelessness and drug addiction, Johnny Moon Sr. died last year on a dirty mattress on the floor of a small home near Tampa’s College Hill district. Moon left behind a watch, a flashlight and a wallet containing a solitary dollar bill. And more than a half-million dollars worth of real estate.”

WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) - Fannie Mae's (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) chief executive said on Wednesday the U.S. housing market will face significant resetting of adjustable rate mortgages over the next two years and he worries about this sparking foreclosures in some locations. Daniel Mudd, president and chief executive officer of the government-sponsored mortgage giant, told Reuters in an interview that Fannie Mae models suggest a couple of reset "spike periods" in the next two years, based on past originations of mortgages with adjustable rates and other features such as low initial "teaser rate" periods. It is still unclear what...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Employees at mortgage giant Fannie Mae manipulated accounting so that executives could collect millions in bonuses as senior management deceived investors and stonewalled regulators at a company whose prestigious image was phony, a federal agency charged Tuesday. The blistering report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the product of an extensive three-year investigation, was issued as the government-sponsored company struggles to emerge from an $11 billion accounting scandal. Earlier, a person familiar with the situation said that Fannie Mae was being fined between $300 million and $500 million for the alleged manipulation of accounting to...

WASHINGTON (XFN-ASIA) - Fannie Mae's federal regulator said Tuesday the company's executives and board of directors were to blame for the accounting scandal that rocked the big mortgage company, and said the firm must pay a $400 million fine. A harsh and stinging 348-page report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said senior management manipulated accounting at the giant company, that Fannie 'stonewalled' government investigators and that Fannie should further probe employees associated with the accounting scandal. The long-awaited report says Fannie employees manipulated earnings to trigger bonuses for management from 1998 to 2004. 'The image of Fannie...

US Senate panel plans one more hearing on GSE bill Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:10 PM ET By David Lawder WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee expects to hold one more hearing on legislation to rein in government-sponsored housing enterprises before sending the bill to the Senate floor, a panel aide said on Tuesday. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the committee's Republican chairman, will schedule a hearing in the next few weeks to collect testimony on Fannie Mae's $11 billion accounting scandal from credit rating agencies and possibly from Fannie Mae board members, said panel spokesman...

Director of oversight agency says still finding control issues following the $11 billion accounting scandal. June 15, 2006: 1:59 PM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fannie Mae's $11 billion in accounting errors cost shareholders up to $30 billion, the acting director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight told a Senate panel on Thursday. James Lockhart said his agency continues to find control problems at the mortgage finance company and that it will be many years before Fannie Mae (up $0.25 to $47.51, Charts) has the proper financial controls in place following an $11 billion accounting scandal.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Bush administration continued to turn up the heat on government-sponsored housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Thursday as a senior Treasury official warned that the huge companies shouldn't expect government assistance if they get into financial trouble. In a speech to a real estate group, Treasury Undersecretary Emil Henry said past government bailouts don't mean the government will act again. "Past actions, especially in the case of government bailouts, are not a good predictor of future actions," Henry said in prepared remarks to a real estate roundtable. "And," Henry asked, "do we really want to...

” As investigations by OFHEO, the SEC and Department of Justice into the company's accounting irregularities continue, Fannie Mae announced an unusual change to its long-term bonus plan…Dan Mudd, who was officially installed as Fannie Mae's CEO in June, received $11.5 million in total compensation in 2005, which included a cash bonus of $2.6 million, an annual salary of $950,000, and $8 million in restricted stock… Newly installed Chief Business Officer Rob Levin received $8.9 million in total compensation, including a cash bonus of $1.8 million, $4.3 million in restricted stock and an additional $2.1 million in restricted cash paid...

U.S. FORECLOSURE MARKET REPORT Nearly 847,000 Properties Enter Foreclosure During The Year; Florida, Colorado and Utah Post Nation’s Highest Foreclosure Rates. Irvine, Calif. – January 23, 2006 – RealtyTrac™ (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2005 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which showed that 846,982 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure in 2005, and a 25 percent increase in the number of new foreclosures from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. RealtyTrac publishes the largest national database of pre-foreclosure and foreclosure properties, with more than 550,000 properties in nearly 2,000 counties...

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , whose accounting problems are expected to result in a multibillion-dollar profit restatement, on Tuesday said it would not file its second-quarter earnings on time. Fannie, a shareholder-owned but government-sponsored housing enterprise, also said it was unlikely to post 2004 results before the second half of 2006. Fannie Mae last filed a quarterly financial report in June 2004. The company expects to restate results for 2001 through 2004 and has said it will not likely release any financial results before the restatement process is completed. "Completing...

The doughty band of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reformers isn't beaten yet. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby plans to mark up a bill this week to protect taxpayers against the risky business of these "government-sponsored enterprises," and the question is whether he can coax enough skittish Republicans to pass it. The Alabama Senator's proposal is a quantum improvement over the non-reform that passed the House Financial Services Committee earlier this year. In particular, it would force Fan and Fred to reduce their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities, a source of great profit for the companies but also of significant...

For the list of worst Congressional legislation ever, we have a new candidate: last month's debacle in the House Financial Services Committee on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the name of reforming these "government-sponsored" mortgage giants, the Members voted to make them even more financially dangerous, while grabbing a chunk of their profits for political payola to boot. Chairman Mike Oxley and friends voted to create a new "affordable housing fund" to the tune of $600 million or more a year. Already facing deserved criticism for being under-capitalized, Fannie and Freddie would have to dole out 5% of their...

We have no proprietary information about Fannie Mae, but what is publicly known is scary enough. As you may recall, last December the SEC required Fannie to restate prior financial statements while the Office of Federal Oversight (OFHEO) accused the company of widespread accounting regularities that resulted in false and misleading statements. Significantly, the questionable practices included the way Fannie accounted for their huge amount of derivatives. On Tuesday, a company press release gave some alarming hints on how extensive the problem may be. The press release stated that in order to accomplish the restatements, “we have to obtain and...

Fannie Mae Shares Dive on Report of New Problems Wednesday, September 28, 2005 STORIES •Fannie Mae Restatement Delayed, Stocks Drop•Fannie Mae Mortgage Portfolio Drops Again •Fed Head Warns Congress on Fannie, Freddie•Fannie Mae Accounting Probe Widens•Fannie Mae: New Accounting Issues Found•Fannie Mae Won't Pay Bonuses to Top Execs•Fannie Mae to Sell $5B in Preferred Stock •Fannie Mae to Pay Ex-CEO $1.3M Per Year•Ex-Fannie Mae Chief to Get Hefty Pension•Two Top Fannie Mae Execs Forced Out WASHINGTON — Shares in Fannie Mae (FNM) plunged Wednesday after a report saying investigators found new accounting violations at the mortgage finance enterprise, which is...

...[I]nvestigators have uncovered even more accounting "irregularities" -- including overvaluation of assets, attempts to hide derivatives losses and the possible improper use of tax credits.... Which brings us to Mr. Oxley, the House Financial Services Chairman who is pressing a "reform" for Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac, that fails to address their core financial risks. His bill does nothing to reduce their huge portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and the derivatives they use to hedge those portfolios. Reducing their MBSs would dent their profitability. But a meltdown in their black-box hedging operations could have far worse consequences, and the...

Jon D. Markman Fannie Mae: With Friends Like These By Jon D. Markman RealMoney.com Contributor 9/30/2005 1:19 PM EDT URL: http://www.thestreet.com/funds/jondmarkman/10245079.html This column was originally published on RealMoney on Sept. 29 at 7:43 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. It's going to be very interesting over the next few days and weeks to see who comes to the defense of Fannie Mae (FNM:NYSE) , the badly wounded mortgage lending giant that weathered a new blow on Wednesday. So far, it looks like the Wall Street investment banks that have been its counterparty or underwriter on...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The following is a statement by Daniel H. Mudd, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae: Last December, the SEC required Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM - News) to restate our prior financial statements to eliminate the use of hedge accounting and, to the extent material, to correct for errors in our accounting for deferred purchase price adjustments. Our safety and soundness regulator, OFHEO, also raised questions with respect to our accounting, which has led us to undertake a comprehensive review of our accounting policies and practices. Today, in our SEC Form 12b-25 filing, Fannie...

<p>July 28 (Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank is eliminating its holdings of debt issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two biggest U.S. providers of mortgage financing, and recommended that its national central banks do the same, according to a person who has seen the ECB's recommendation.</p>