Matter Under Inquiry

A Matter Under Inquiry (MUI, pronounced "muey",[1] sometimes called Matter Under Investigation[2]) is a term used by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to describe preliminary investigations it makes into alleged financial fraud in the companies that it is responsible for regulating.

The American Spectator published an article in 2006 by Peter Wallison criticizing this practice, and arguing that it was too difficult for SEC employees to close investigations that it deemed unwarranted.

Here are a few notable examples: After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation... you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI According to former SEC employee and whistleblower Darcy Flynn, as reported by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone in 2011, the agency routinely destroyed thousands and thousands of MUI documents related to investigations of alleged crimes committed by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, SAC Capital, and other financial companies involved in the Great Recession that the SEC was supposed to have been regulating.

This eventually caused a conflict with the National Archives and Records Administration when Darcy Flynn revealed the activity to NARA in 2010.

Flynn also described a meeting at SEC in which top staff discussed refusing to admit the destruction had taken place because it was possibly illegal.