New crackdown on Wall St fraud

Federal prosecutors in New York vowed to step up their campaign to root out and punish wrongdoing by Wall Street over the credit crisis. The US attorney's office in the southern district of New York, which has much of the finance industry under its jurisdiction, yesterday named a new head of its civil frauds office to examine "large-scale and sophisticated financial frauds".

Heidi Wendel, who made her name prosecuting fraud against government health insurance scheme Medicaid, will take up the post. The American public and politicians have expressed frustration at the small number of criminal prosecutions that have followed the credit crisis.