Gaston L. Gianni Jr. spends his time evaluating how well the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does its job.
Mr. Gianni, the agency's first presidentially appointed inspector general, is by law independent from the FDIC board.
But he says he is not an adversary.
"I must walk a fine line" between independence and cooperation, he said in a recent interview. "I'm there to help, not to be an 'I gotcha.' "
His mission: To assess FDIC programs and root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
After five months on the job, Mr. Gianni appears to have the trust of senior FDIC officials. William Longbrake, the agency's chief financial officer, says he and Dennis Geer, FDIC chief operating officer, "discuss a whole variety of issues with him."
Mr. Gianni, 54, spent nearly 32 years at the General Accounting Office before joining the FDIC. He got his start at the congressional watchdog office as an entry-level auditor and worked his way up to become a senior executive.
Born in Steubenville, Ohio, Mr. Gianni received a bachelor's degree in accounting from the College of Steubenville and did advanced work at American University, George Washington University, and the Kennedy School for Senior Executive Fellows at Harvard University.
In his long GAO career, Mr. Gianni audited law enforcement programs at the Department of Justice, employment and training programs at the Department of Labor, and highway programs at the Department of Transportation.
After the Resolution Trust Corp. was created in 1989, Mr. Gianni headed a GAO group that reviewed how the RTC disbursed billions of dollars worth of assets from failed thrifts.
The FDIC job offered new opportunities, he said, adding, "There is a lot more responsibility being Inspector General of an agency."
His staff of 340 is working on 400 investigations and 200 audits. Most of the staff is based here, but there 70 investigators and 30 auditors spread among offices in Hartford, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and Irvine, Calif.
A few probes are high profile, such as one released Monday criticizing Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.
But much of what Mr. Gianni's office does is mundane. For example, legal bills submitted by dozens of outside law firms are reviewed by the inspector general's office.
In the first of two reports he will give to Congress this year, Mr. Gianni noted that his office issued 62 reports questioning $7.8 million in costs and suggested ways to put $229,072 to better use.
Fines and recoveries resulting from the FDIC's IG investigations totaled $2.2 million during the most recent six-month period reported to Congress.
Equally important but harder to quantify, Mr. Gianni says, are the savings his office generates by helping the FDIC develop better procedures. "We want to provide our expertise at the front end, as the agency is devising new programs," he explains.
Mr. Gianni meets regularly with the newly formed FDIC office of internal countrols and the agency's audit committee to discuss potential problems and ways to improve procedures.
Mr. Gianni is concerned about the security of FDIC's computer systems and has made several suggestions, such as restricting employee access to sensitive information on financial institutions.
This summer, the inspector general concluded that the FDIC is not destroying enough old records from failed financial institutions, tying up expensive warehouse space.
