(Reuters) – Two senior U.S. Federal Reserve staffers reported a series of financial market trades in early 2020 at a time when the central bank was putting in place emergency measures to prop up the economy at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reported https://on.wsj.com/33jP8rC on Friday.

John Stevens, and Diana Hancock are both senior associate directors at the Fed’s statistics and research division. They reported on official financial disclosure forms an assortment of trades that took place in February 2020 and March 2020. The newspaper reviewed the disclosure forms.

Reuters asked the Fed for comment but they did not respond immediately.

Stevens reported on 46 financial transactions between Feb. 27, 2020 and February 28, 2020. He bought and sold individual stocks, mutual funds, and other investments. Most of these, he claimed, were connected to the spouse’s estate. Stevens did not manage the trades, he said.

Hancock reported a $1,000,000 sale in exchange-traded funds, which hold shares in certain companies. The purchase of $500,001 to $1 million in shares from the same fund was reported by Hancock on March 18, 2020. Hancock told the newspaper her spouse made the trades, and she didn’t have any control over those transactions.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the central banking would reduce interest rates if necessary. It did so in March. The same month, it also launched a series of programs to encourage lending and keep financial conditions open.

Since it was discovered that Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan, the Dallas Fed presidents, had been active traders in the aftermath of last year’s pandemic, there has been intense scrutiny on Fed. They both resigned shortly afterward.

Richard Clarida was the Fed’s outgoing Vice Chair. He corrected the financial information to reveal that he sold stock funds. Then he quickly bought them back shortly before the Fed launched a series rescue programs in an effort to curb the effects of the pandemic.

Powell recently announced that new ethical rules govern financial transactions and financial holdings at central bank. An investigation by central bank’s inspector General is ongoing.

However, questions remain about how much back and forth may have occurred over policymakers’ personal trading in a year when markets first cratered, then rebounded on the basis of both massive federal fiscal stimulus and an aggressive rescue effort by the Fed.

Earlier this week, the Fed, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by Reuters, said there are about 60 pages of correspondence https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/fed-denies-release-correspondence-pandemic-trades-made-by-policymakers-2022-02-09 between its ethics officials and policymakers regarding financial transactions conducted during 2020 but “denied in full” to release the documents, citing exemptions under the information act that it said applied in this case.