A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators want to give Wall Street’s top cop more power to recover funds for burned investors, the Wall Street Journal reported. The legislation, to be introduced today, would allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to recover money for harmed investors based upon wrongdoing that occurred as much as a decade ago. The measure would help restore some of the muscle the SEC lost when the Supreme Court unanimously decided in 2017 that federal regulators are bound by a five-year statute of limitations. Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that the bill would give the SEC more time to spot hard-to-detect financial crimes. “Financial fraudsters can sometimes go on for years, even decades, before they finally get caught,” Warner said in a written statement. “They shouldn’t be able to rip off investors just because some arbitrary five-year window has expired.” Last year, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton told a House committee that regulators should have the authority to seek restitution for harmed investors beyond the five-year window.
