But was the fraud going on at Abacus unusual? No. They never would have sent the aggrieved borrower to the police! Did they need better oversight? In retrospect, yes. If they had, they would never have fired Ken Yu, reported him, then initiated their own internal investigation that resulted in the firing of several other loan officers. I do not believe they at all condoned or encouraged fraud. negligence?Īm I 100 percent convinced that the Sungs are innocent of what they were charged with? Yes, absolutely. But it had everything to do with it in terms of the DA’s office framing of the indictment and trial.Īre you convinced that they are 100 percent innocent of having committed any crime during the years that led up to the fiscal crisis? What about crossing an ethical boundary? Or.
#ABACUS BANK RACISM TRIAL#
And this trial had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis of 2008 in terms of the fraud. Sung.Ībacus was the mirror opposite of the Big Banks in every respect. The Jimmy Stewart reference came from people in the community, which speaks to the high regard that they have for Mr. But it wasn’t until I met the Sungs and filmed with them for several days that it became clear to me that this case made little sense. I think Matt Taibbi’s piece predisposed me to think this was a miscarriage of justice. Mark and I felt this story was very important, precisely because it wasn't being told.ĭescribe the process by which you came to the film's clear position that the Sung family was the subject of a miscarriage of justice. The only substantive thing written at that time was by Matt Taibbi in the introduction to his book "The Divide." He wrote about the indictment of Abacus as an example of the unequal application of justice. We were both struck by the fact that no one in the mainstream media was really covering this case. He first approached me about the story right before the trial. One of the producers, Mark Mitten, has been friends with the Sung family for over 10 years. Salon recently sat down with him to talk about the film, the Sungs, the financial crisis and more. But with "Abacus," the Oscar verdict may finally be in his favor. James has himself been famously subjected to a career-long miscarriage of justice - of the tinsel-tinged variety - having been repeatedly overlooked by the Academy Awards. "Abacus" achieves depth because it's about so much more than a court case, a family or the mortgage crisis: it’s a unique portrait of how an iconic community, New York City’s Chinatown, is a nation unto itself, with its own rules and traditions, which has persisted, sometimes successfully and yet with significant costs. The director manages to weave a dramatic, narrative thread around the Sung family’s struggle to defend itself as a pawn in the fiscal firestorm against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and an American legacy of anti-Chinese racism. James smelled a good David-and-Goliath story here, and he's found one. bank to be indicted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Documentary director Steve James ("Hoop Dreams") and a banking court case might seem to be an unlikely match, but prepare to be pleasantly - and provocatively - surprised by "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail," which opens in New York City on Friday and then rolls out to other parts of the country.Ībacus, a family-owned bank in New York City’s Chinatown, was the only U.S.
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