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.
familiar with the matter.
The subpoenas from the U.S. territory’s attorney general seek any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein, the people said.
The four men are some of the wealthiest people in the U.S., and it couldn’t be determined why they were being asked for the communications and documents. In civil cases, lawyers can use subpoenas during the discovery process to get information from people who aren’t a party to a lawsuit but could provide evidence related to the case.
The U.S. Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan late last year in a Manhattan federal court, saying the bank facilitated Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and abuse by allowing the late financier to remain a client and helping him send money to his victims. The civil lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan received referrals of high-value business opportunities from Epstein and turned a blind eye to his activities. The bank has said it didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes and can’t be held liable.
The United Arab Emirates’ central bank on Friday said it will cancel the licence it granted last year to Russia’s MTS bank, which was placed under British and US sanctions in February.
Operations at the bank’s UAE branch, which is licensed in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, will be wound down within six months under UAE central bank supervision.
A statement from MTS Bank said it will fulfil all settlement obligations to existing customers and guarantee the safety of their funds for six months.
“This decision comes after considering the available options regarding the new status of the MTS Bank and taking into account the sanctions risks associated with the bank,” the UAE central bank’s statement said.
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).
For decades, the major banks – along with AMP – dominated the financial planning landscape, employing or authorising the vast majority of licensed advisers. The remaining 16,000 providers – most of them independent or privately owned – are insufficient in number to meet the advice needs of the millions of Baby Boomers set to retire in coming years.
And the mountains of red tape the remaining advisers must comply with – thanks largely, it must be said, to the misdeeds of the bank-owned advice providers – have made their services too expensive for most families to afford even if they wanted to.
Epstein, who died in a prison cell in 2021 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, had been a client at JPMorgan for 15 years, from 1998 to 2013. The last five years of those were after he’d pleaded guilty in Florida of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. The lawsuits against JPMorgan claim that Dimon as CEO had knowingly allowed continued cooperation with Epstein, ignoring internal warnings about his illegal behavior. According to a report by the Financial Times, during the pretrial process investigators found communications between JPMorgan employees that mentioned a “Dimon review” of the bank’s relationship with Epstein. The bank, however, denied that Dimon had any knowledge of such a review. A source within JPMorgan with knowledge of the bank’s internal probe into the matter, told the news outlet there was no record of the CEO being in direct communication with Epstein.
According to the reports, Dimon agreed to be interviewed under oath about the lawsuits. His sworn deposition, will reportedly take place in May, behind closed doors.
After a relatively calm week in banking, Deutsche Bank is now making headlines for a falling share price and rising CDS spreads.
In an apparent attempt to show strength, the company announced that it would redeem a bond issue early, but the market had other ideas.
Shares of major U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo and Bank of America dropped between 1% and 2% in early trade.
Shares of regional lenders First Republic Bank, PacWest Bancorp, Western Alliance Bancorp and Truist Financial Corp fell between 1% to 5%.
The S&P 500 banking index and the KBW regional banking index, hit their lowest since late 2020 in the previous session, fell 1.6% and 1.2%, respectively.
European banks also came under pressure after a report on a U.S. probe into Credit Suisse and UBS further soured the mood. Their U.S.-listed shares were down about 5.4% and 4.1%, respectively.
U.S. shares of Deutsche Bank fell nearly 10% after the bank’s credit default swaps rose to a four-year high.
U.S. two-year Treasury yields fell sharply to their lowest levels since September on Friday.
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.
The crisis at Credit Suisse has traders wondering who’s next. Japanese lenders, with their staid depositor bases, look like unlikely targets for bank runs. Yet their collective overseas bond portfolio is in focus.
For years the country’s ultra-low interest rates encouraged deposit-taking institutions, lenders and other investors to borrow yen and buy higher-yielding but relatively safe assets. This helped Japan overtake China as the top foreign owner of U.S. Treasuries in 2019; they owned an estimated $2 trillion of foreign bonds as of last year. On paper the sequence of rate hikes in Western economies make such positions even more profitable.
Yet the rising cost of short-term dollar and euro credit, combined with extreme yen volatility, have made hedging much more expensive. The inversion of the American yield curve makes it unprofitable to borrow short-term dollars and buy long-term Treasuries. Japan Inc was reducing positions well before Silicon Valley Bank imploded.
