A federal judge ruled yesterday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not have to restore purged files on Bernard Madoff and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that were sought by a government watchdog group, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C. sued the agency for allegedly violating federal records law by refusing to recover investigative files that had been destroyed. The group asked for documents related to the agency’s preliminary probes under the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled yesterday that the government was only required to seek recovery of records that were physically removed from the agency’s custody rather than those that were done away with.
