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WASHINGTON — Adding to their woes, mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing a federal grand-jury investigation into their accounting practices.

The mortgage-finance companies said Monday that a federal grand jury in New York is investigating their accounting, disclosure and corporate-governance issues.

Fannie and Freddie said they received subpoenas Friday from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan as well as requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that they preserve documents. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government earlier this month as their mounting defaults and foreclosures threatened the entire mortgage mart.

The ruling power exploration focuses on activities starting in 2007, Freddie Mac said in a statement.

Critics have long questioned the companies’ bookkeeping. Last November, for example, a Fortune magazine story said new accounting procedures at Fannie Mae masked potential losses on bad loans.

And separate years ago, both Fannie and Freddie were forced to restate billions in proceeds from federal regulators discovered accounting irregularities at one in the same proportion that well as the other companies.

The scandals led to the replacement of the companies’ top executives. Freddie Mac’s former CEO, Gregory Parseghian, was ousted in December 2003. Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard were swept out of bureau a year later.

Both companies said Monday they would cooperate fully in the investigations, otherwise than that their spokesmen declined to comment. Representatives of the SEC and Justice Department also declined to comment.

Three weeks ago, the government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, by means of a rescue plan that could require the Treasury Department to dart in to the degree that much considered in the state of $100 billion into each to keep them afloat.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which controls the companies, said the housing agency “will work with the companies to make certain a undisturbed and active process and will work with the government agencies as they undertake their inquiries.”

Law-enforcement officials said last week the FBI is looking at potential fraud by Fannie, Freddie and insurer American International Group (AIG). Additionally, a senior law-enforcement magistrate said failed investment bank Lehman Brothers in like manner is with less than investigation.

The inquiries will focus on the pecuniary institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law-enforcement official told The Associated Press last week.

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