U.S. House to explore financial crisis prosecutions

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank listens to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill, September 29, 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing next week to ask key justice officials and regulators what they need to prosecute wrongdoers in the financial crisis, the chairman of the committee said on Thursday.

Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he had invited officials from the U.S. Justice Department, the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and all the bank regulators to the hearing.

"I'm not morphing into Joe McCarthy, but I am going to have them tell me what they need for criminal prosecutions and the civil recovery of funds," Frank told a conference of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

McCarthy was a Republican senator in the 1950s who notoriously accused people of being Communists during the Cold War.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)