JP Morgan is being sued for $20bn in the United States for allegedly knowingly selling investments backed by risky mortgages that were likely to lose money.

The loans were actually sold by Bear Stearns in 2006 and 2007 before JP Morgan bought the company.

Phil Angelides, chair of the US government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) into what went wrong on Wall Street last year, told Today business presenter Simon Jack that the situation was "very troubling" and that the statute of limitations for criminal actions - currently five years - "needs to be extended" for the alleged crimes to be properly dealt with.

"JP Morgan took on both the upside of Bear Stearns and the downside," he explained.

"If money was stolen from people it needs to be given back to the people that it was stolen from."

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