Senior SEC staff watched porn on gov’t computers as economy tanked, violating ethics rules

SEC employees watched porn as economy crashed

WASHINGTON — An agency watchdog says senior employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz says in a memo obtained by The Associated Press that the behavior violates agency and government-wide ethics rules.

The memo reports 33 violations in the past five years — 31 of which took place in the two and a half years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.

It says one supervisory accountant looked at pornographic websites about twice a day and saved images on his SEC computer to view during work hours.

The memo is a response to an earlier request by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.