The Securities and Exchange Commission had been actively investigating the banking business of billionaire R. Allen Stanford for more than three years before Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came to light last December and has fulfilled its duty to pursue alleged wrongdoing by the financier, the agency’s inspector general has found.

The SEC’s decision to halt its investigation of Stanford in April 2008 came in response to a request by the Justice Department, and the agency didn’t breach its obligation, according to a report by the office of Inspector General David Kotz.