US Department of Justice began investigating the activities of the agency Moody's

The US Department of Justice launched an investigation into the international rating agency Moody's regarding the overvaluation of mortgage bonds before the 2008 financial crisis of the year. About this writes The Wall Street Journal, citing its own sources.

According to the publication, in recent months, representatives of the Ministry of Justice held meetings with a number of former Moody's leaders to clarify the mechanism for rating securities. In particular, they tried to find out if the agency had violated their own standards in 2004-2007 for the sake of attracting customers.

Investigation, as the newspaper notes, is now at an early stage. Whether it will be brought to court is unclear.

In February 2013, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) for $ 5 billion, accusing it of deliberately inflating ratings on mortgage bonds. The agency, in turn, called the claims revenge of the US government for downgrading the US rating to "AA +" from "AAA" in 2011.

According to WSJ, the parties recently managed to reach an agreement, as a result of which S&P will pay a fine of $1,37 billion, Lenta.ru writes.