Madoff probes bungled for 16 years

The US Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who later married Bernard Madoff’s niece said he would have made a deeper investigation into the disgraced financier’s business had he been more thorough in studying a complaint.

The admission by Eric Swanson, who was an SEC lawyer and inspections official during a 2003-04 examination of Madoff’s operations, is among a trove of revelations in a report by SEC inspector general David Kotz.