An anti-harassment plan at the federal bank deposit insurance agency could not be effectively implemented, workers at the agency believed, because executives leading the effort had misconduct allegations against them, a report issued by the inspector general at the agency said July 30.
The report is titled “Special Inquiry of the FDIC’s Workplace Culture with Respect to Harassment and Related Misconduct – Part 2.” It was issued by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), and was a follow-up to report issued in December 2024.
The report names former FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg and four additional senior officials at the agency as having engaged in harassment. The four officials, however, are not named and referred to as Officials 1-4 in the report.
“We reviewed allegations of personal misconduct by each of the senior officials,” the report’s executive summary states. “While the scope and severity of conduct varied, our investigations developed evidence supporting that each of the senior officials personally engaged in some degree of inappropriate workplace conduct. Our report discusses the factual evidence related to each official.”
A key part of the report outlines how the agency handled allegations against Gruenberg and the four officials and their role in reviewing incoming allegations against each other.
“In our previous report, we found that many FDIC employees perceived that FDIC management has tolerated harassment and related misconduct and that management has not been effective in supporting victims of workplace harassment and encouraging the reporting of harassment they experienced,” the agency said.
“Our investigations developed evidence supporting that certain actions of these senior officials did not protect victims of harassment, nor consistently align with the FDIC’s applicable policies and stated core values (including accountability, fairness, and integrity),” the report noted.
The report adds that the investigations found evidence that “corroborated the validity of employee perceptions of FDIC culture” described in the December report.
“In Part 1, we reported that many of the employees we interviewed perceived that the FDIC would not effectively implement its action plan to address harassment because some of the executives leading the efforts have had allegations against them. Our investigations developed evidence that Official 2, Official 3, and Official 4 assisted one another in discreetly and expeditiously resolving complaints when allegations of misconduct arose against them,” the report asserts.
To prepare its report, the OIG said it performed a “judgmental review” of more 280,000 FDIC records, processed complaints received by a hotline set up by the office, reviewed publicly available information, and conducted interviews of current and former FDIC employees. That included Gruenberg, according to the report.
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