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Richmond Fed president resigns amid leak probe

Xinhua, April 4, 2017 Adjust font size:

U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said on Tuesday that he will resign from the post immediately after admitting his involvement in an alleged leak of confidential Fed information in 2012.

According to Lacker's statement, in October 2012, he was sought comment on an important non-public detail about one of the policy options considered by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants through a telephone interview with a Medley Global Advisors analyst.

Due to the confidential and sensitive nature of the information, Lacker said that he should have declined to comment or immediately ended the call. "Instead, I did not refuse or express my inability to comment and the interview continued," he said.

Lacker said he failed to report to the FOMC that the analyst was in possession of confidential FOMC information in a 2012 internal probe. However, he disclosed his discussion with the Medley analyst in an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2015.

Lacker announced in January that he would retire on Oct. 1 this year after 28 years at the Richmond Fed.

A policy report released by Medley Global Advisors in October 2012 contained market-moving details about the Fed's internal policy discussions which were considered as confidential. The Medley report led to an internal Fed investigation in 2012 which found no major breaches of its communications policies.

In 2015, Justice Department and the FBI joined the inquiry amid pressure from Congress for details about the leak.

The Fed said in a statement on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve is committed to maintaining the security of confidential FOMC information, and cooperated fully with the independent law enforcement investigation into an unauthorized disclosure in 2012.

"We appreciate the diligent efforts made to bring this mater to its conclusion," said the statement. Enditem