WASHINGTON – The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t just enforce the rules that govern Wall Street. When asked, it often grants individual companies exemptions from the rules.

But companies that win those special breaks often fail to comply with the conditions that come with them, the SEC’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday.

What’s more, the agency has no formalized process for monitoring whether companies live up to their end of the bargain, the report said. Though the agency routinely inspects financial firms, “only in rare cases” did the examiners focus on that question, the report said.

The inspector general’s report was another in a series the office has written criticizing the SEC’s performance. Others have focused on agency spending, Ponzi scheme probes and pornography viewed on staff computers.

The SEC both writes and polices a panoply of rules, which are meant to protect clients of investment firms and shareholders in public companies. It routinely gives companies a green light to disregard specific requirements.

In some cases, the SEC tells companies they don’t have to follow certain rules. In other cases, it issues no-action letters, which assure firms that they need not fear enforcement action in certain scenarios if the facts are as the companies describe.

The office of the inspector general, headed by H. David Kotz, called on the agency to do more to monitor these exemptions. When companies fail to abide by the conditions, the result could be “significant violations of the securities laws,” the report said.

Some SEC staff members assume that companies that have gone to the trouble of requesting relief from the rules “present a reduced risk,” the report said.

In a written response to the report, SEC staff members said they generally agree with the recommendations but noted that some of the proposed steps would take “significant resources.”