An online news site has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to produce the full list of organizations that received payments from the Civil Penalty Fund that was created when the agency was established in 2011.
Federal Newswire, which focuses on Washington, D.C.-based government agencies, noted the Civil Penalty Fund collects penalties from the CFPB’s enforcement actions against financial services companies including banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage servicing operations, foreclosure relief services and debt collectors.
“The fund is supposed to be used to compensate alleged victims of consumer finance violations,” said Federal Newswire in announcing its FOIA request. “The CFPB, however, can allocate money from the Civil Penalty Fund to non-profits and other organizations that the bureau says will further consumer education and financial literacy, if the bureau determines that it cannot locate actual victims of the alleged penalties are too small to allocate.”
Federal Newswire also pointed out that the Civil Penalty Fund collected $1.9 billion in fiscal year 2023, which is more than the $1.49 billion collected from the fiscal years 2012 through 2022.
“That financial report provides only the names of companies targeted by bureau enforcement actions and total amounts collected and allocated by the Civil Penalty Fund,” the news organization added. “It does not list the specific groups who received payments from the fund for ‘consumer education and financial literacy,’ which is why Federal Newswire has submitted the FOIA request for this information.”
Federal Newswire also highlighted the CFPB has a history of being opaque on this subject, citing a General Accountability Office report from 2014 that recommended an effort “improve the transparency of CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund activities [on] determining the amount of funding, if any, allocated to consumer education and financial literacy programs.”
The CFPB did not publicly comment on the FOIA request.
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