McClatchy investigates a dropped DOJ fraud investigation and asks why?

mcclatchy is doing the work that few other full-bore print media news outlets are doing, and putting the ap and news corp. to shame in the process (not hard to to, i know)...

Two years into a fraud investigation, veteran federal prosecutor David Maguire told colleagues he'd uncovered one of the biggest cases of his career.

Maguire described crimes "far worse" than those of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant that collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Among those in his sights: executives from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment empire overseen by billionaire Warren Buffett.

In May 2006, he felt strongly enough about his case that he prepared a draft indictment accusing executives from a Virginia insurer, Reciprocal of America, of concocting a series of secret deals to hide its losses from regulators. Although he didn't name anyone from Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiary, he described the company as a participant in the scheme.

But Maguire never brought those charges.

Months after preparing the draft, he was removed as the lead prosecutor on the case and reassigned.

there's a lot more than what i have excerpted here, and i recommend you go read it all... if this indeed was bigger than arthur andersen, what in god's name would have shut it down, other than, of course, the possibilities mentioned in the article... good on mcclatchy for going in and digging this out...

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