Fed Drops Probe of Ex-Kmart Execs

New York City, Federal prosecutors in Detroit will not charge former executives of Kmart Corp., including former chairman and CEO Charles Conaway, for their roles in events leading up to the discount retailer’s 2002 bankruptcy, the Detroit News reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said that the decision, which also lifts charges against Kmart former president Mark Schwartz, caps a multimillion-dollar and three-and-a-half year Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department probe into allegations that corporate wrongdoing caused the bankruptcy filling. While the investigation generated dozens of allegations, hundreds of hours of interviews and millions of pages of documents, no significant evidence of personal fraud by senior executives emerged, according to the newspaper.

Kmart, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2003, has since acquired Sears, Roebuck and Co., and the combined company is called Sears Holdings Corp.