The Securities and Exchange Commission charged 36 municipal underwriting firms, including units of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., with making false statements or omissions in bond documents, the first penalties for underwriters under the agency’s voluntary self-reporting program targeting inaccuracies in those documents, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Between 2010 and 2014, the firms violated federal law by selling municipal bonds with offering documents that “contained materially false statements or omissions about the bond issuers’ compliance with continuing disclosure obligations,” the SEC said in a news release Thursday. The firms also failed to conduct due diligence to identify those inaccurate statements or omissions before selling the bonds, the agency said. The 36 firms settled the cases for a combined total of around $9 million, without admitting or denying the findings, and agreed to cease and desist from such actions in the future, the SEC said.
