The American bank Wells Fargo has been fined $97.8m (£79m) by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department for breaching US sanctions laws. Inadequate oversight meant that it allowed a foreign institution to process $532m in illegal transactions involving Iran, Syria and Sudan. Wells Fargo said it stopped dealing with the client in 2015.
Former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq., a partner at the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (“KSF”), announces that KSF has commenced an investigation into Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW).
In November 2021, the Company disclosed that it could not timely file its quarterly report due to an internal investigation into accounting issues. On March 31, 2022, the Company disclosed a multitude of internal procedural and control failures, including “an additional material weakness” beyond the company’s “previously identified internal control deficiencies.” The next day, the Company finally filed its 3Q2021 report revealing that its “disclosure controls and procedures” suffered from an inadequate “control environment” and that “certain members of senior management failed to consistently message and set certain aspects of an appropriate tone at the top.”
The Biden administration has sanctioned a Slovakian man who U.S. officials said attempted to facilitate an arms deal that would have given Russia access to weapons and munitions from North Korea in exchange for aircraft, food and other material.
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting Ashot Mkrtychev, the man accused of trying to arrange the secret deal. Officials said the episode is the latest sign that Russia is searching for ways to replenish its military capabilities as it continues to suffer losses amid heavy fighting in Ukraine.
“We know that between the end of 2022 and early 2023, that [Mkrtychev] worked with North Korean officials to attempt to obtain, as I said, over two dozen kinds of weapons and ammunitions for Russia” in exchange for aircraft, raw materials and commodities, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on a call. He said any such arrangement would violate multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The Treasury Department said Mkrtychev “confirmed Russia’s readiness to receive military equipment from the DPRK with senior Russian officials,” using North Korea’s official diplomatic name. The department said Mkrtychev worked with a Russian official to locate commercial aircraft that could be delivered to North Korea. Thursday’s sanctions mean all of Mkrtychev’s property and interests in the U.S. or in the possession of U.S. persons are blocked.
Four bankers from a Russian bank’s Swiss branch have been found guilty by a Zurich court over vast sums going into the accounts of a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin.
The accounts in the Swiss arm of Gazprombank were held by Sergei Roldugin, the artistic director of the St. Petersburg Music House, who is often dubbed Putin’s cellist.
Roldugin has been a friend of Putin for more than four decades and is godfather to one of the Russian leader’s daughters.
The four men were found guilty of “lack of due diligence in financial transactions”, the Zurich District Court said in its verdict released to media on Thursday, over the millions of Swiss francs flowing through Roldugin’s account.
Under Swiss law, the bankers — two Russians, one Swiss and a Russian-born British national — cannot be identified.
The bank branch’s chief executive was fined 540,000 Swiss francs ($590,200).
U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group said on Thursday its Beijing office was raided by authorities and five Chinese staff were detained, stoking worry among foreign companies in China just as its capital hosts an international economic forum.
News of the raid and detentions comes as Sino-U.S. relations have spiraled downwards following months of diplomatic tensions, including over the U.S. military downing in February of a suspected Chinese spy balloon and a planned U.S. transit next week by the president of Taiwan, the self-governed island China claims as its territory.
“We can confirm that Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group’s Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there,” the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
The company said it was ready to work with Chinese authorities to “resolve any misunderstanding that may have led to these events”, and that its top concern was the safety and wellbeing of colleagues in China.
Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG are among the banks under scrutiny in a US Justice Department probe into whether financial professionals helped Russian oligarchs evade sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Swiss banks were included in a recent wave of subpoenas sent out by the US government, the people said. The information requests were sent before the crisis that engulfed Credit Suisse and resulted in UBS’s proposed takeover of its rival.
Subpoenas also went to employees of some major US banks, two people with knowledge of the inquiries, said.
The Justice Department inquiries are focused on identifying which bank employees dealt with sanctioned clients and how those clients were vetted over the past several years.
Frankfurt (dpa) – A US court has ordered German stock operator Deutsche Börse’s Clearstream subsidiary to turn over about $1.7 billion in assets held by Iran’s central bank, Bank Markazi.
The court decision comes as part of a long-running US legal case in which victims of a terrorist attack 40 years ago have sought compensation from Iran. Clearstream said it is considering an appeal of the decision.
The assets are held in a customer account in Luxembourg by Clearstream, a wholly owned subsidiary of the German stock exchange operator. The company announced on Wednesday evening in Frankfurt that those suing Iran were granted a right to the assets attributed to the Iranian central bank held in a customer account at Clearstream.
Iranian-held assets at Clearstream, which manages securities on behalf of customers and handles purchases and sales, have been frozen on suspicion of terrorist financing and locked in several legal disputes for a number of years.
According to Deutsche Börse, that case remains pending but Clearstream maintains it is without merit.
A federal court in the District of Columbia unsealed two indictments yesterday charging multiple defendants with violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) for their roles in separate schemes to procure and export U.S. technology to Iran between 2005 and 2013. In connection with this announcement, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated three of the defendants and four entities for their involvement in the procurement of equipment that supports Iran’s ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and weapons programs.
The United States said Tuesday it is imposing a new round of sanctions on Iranian firms and people accused of procuring equipment used for Iranian drones.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control coordinated with the FBI to designate four firms and three people in Iran and Turkey for allegedly buying equipment, including European-made engines, to be used for Iran’s drone and weapons programs.
Those targeted for sanctions include the Iran-based Defense Technology and Science Research Center, its procurement firm Farazan Industrial Engineering Inc. and two other firms along with purchasing agents from the companies.
Today, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), filed a motion for preliminary injunction under the Clean Air Act (CAA) requesting that the court order Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (Denka) to require significant pollution controls to reduce chloroprene emissions, a pollutant that EPA has determined to be a likely carcinogen. The request for immediate relief by EPA and the Justice Department follows the United States’ complaint filed on Feb. 28, alleging an imminent and substantial endangerment to the communities surrounding the facility as a result of Denka’s manufacturing operations.
The Clean Air Act section 303 imminent and substantial endangerment lawsuit is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
