Five Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials, including then-Chair Martin Gruenberg, engaged in workplace misconduct, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General released Thursday.
“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,” according to the report. The report identified Gruenberg, but left Officials 1 through 4 anonymous.
In its previous report, the OIG found that FDIC employees perceived that management was not effective in supporting victims of workplace harassment.
“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 OIG said.
The findings came from the second part of a two-part report on the FDIC’s workplace culture, which followed a November 2023 Wall Street Journal exposé alleging a “boys’ club environment” that alienated women.
According to the report, Gruenberg could be “short tempered,” was “not always nice,” “his behavior could feel threatening,” and he made people cry – an allegation the OIG heard from “at least four people.”
The report also stated that Gruenberg saw the WSJ expose and subsequent articles as “a political attack rather than focusing on the underlying issues the articles described,” and that he “seemed more interested in protecting himself than fixing the problems noted in the articles.”
Additionally, two senior officials alleged that Gruenberg excluded them from projects and meetings that they would normally have been invited to given their responsibilities, and one of those officials believed they were excluded because they disagreed with Gruenberg about the WSJ report.
Gruenberg told the OIG he did not intentionally exclude people, and that other than his former chief of staff, “few people participated in every meeting he attended.”
Gruenberg wasn’t the only official to allegedly draw tears from employees. Official 1, a deputy chairman who started at the FDIC in 1998, belittled staff, made demeaning comments, and was dismissive of employee concerns, according to the report.
“On multiple occasions, she drove employees to tears,” the OIG wrote. “When employees raised concerns, Official 1 was dismissive and would state things like ‘you’re not used to working hard,’ ‘not used to working to tough standards,’ and would say to her managers that she thought staff were being ‘babies and needed to get over it.’”
Official 1 did not agree to be interviewed by the OIG for the report.
Official 2, according to the report, left a “vitriol[ic]” and “completely inappropriate” ranting, swearing voicemail to an employee who had made a “fairly benign mistake.” The employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and received a $105,000 payout, but was then allegedly subject to retaliation by Official 2.
In an interview with the OIG, Official 2 took responsibility for his actions and also said that, when he left the voice message, he was en route to visit a sick relative.
Official 3, according to the report, was the subject of detailed allegations of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and inappropriate conduct in 2022 and 2023. Allegations against him include that he told one employee he was excited to see her “from the waist down” after previously only working remotely with them, and that on another occasion, he looked her up and down and muttered, “wow.”
In an interview with the OIG, Official 3 “acknowledged that he may not have been articulate” during the “unscripted moment.”
Official 4, according to the report, “viewed those who took opposing positions to his as ‘disloyal’ and would respond by using his position to investigate them or move them out of their positions.”
Witnesses alleged that Official 4 arbitrarily reassigned managers into nonsupervisory roles, with three witnesses alleging he “exerted influence over personnel investigations in favor of those he liked and against those he did not.” Official 4 told the OIG that of five reassignments, some were for disciplinary actions and some were not, with each based on “a different set of facts.”
The OIG’s investigation included outreach to FDIC employees, a technology-assisted review of 280,448 FDIC documents, follow-up document requests and interviews of 69 current and former FDIC employees.
As of June, none of the five officials still worked at the FDIC, according to the report.
