Category: banks

On March 2, 2023, the Department of Justice announced several new initiatives that prioritize the investigation and enforcement of economic sanctions evasion, export control violations, and similar economic crimes.  Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a “surge of resources to address a troubling trend: the intersection of corporate crime and national security.” 

The Justice Department announced today that it filed statements of interest in Espin et al. v. Citibank, N.A. and Padao v. American Express National Bank, two lawsuits currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, to address the right of the nation’s servicemembers to bring and participate in class action litigation under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) instead of being forced into privatized arbitration proceedings on their own.

Finance leaders of the world’s top economies sought on Friday to bridge differences over how to deal with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine a year ago, as the West stepped up sanctions against Moscow.

On January 24, 2023, the Federal Reserve Board (“FRB”) assessed a second-tier[1] civil penalty of $2.3 million against New York-based Popular Bank (or the “Bank”) for unsafe and unsound practices related to six Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loans.  According to the FRB, the Bank processed and funded these loans despite detecting significant indicia of fraud……

Several banks are now offering super-long-term mortgages in response to soaring interest rates, but experts warned that the offers come with a $300,000 hidden cost. Forty-year mortgages are now being offered by banks, to supposedly help alleviate some of the pressure as surging interest rates force the average Australian to spend an additional $12,000 a year in mortgage repayments. But…

The preservation of plant seeds as a genetic resource is becoming more and more important at a time when many crops are threatened by extinction or lower productive output due to climate change and the destruction of ecosystems through overdevelopment. The shifting of ideal growing zones due to warming across the globe makes the creation of seed banks a cause…

A US jury has ordered Bayer subsidiary Monsanto to pay $857 million (£676 million) to seven people – including former students and parent volunteers at a school in Washington state – who said they were sickened by exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that the company sold. The PBCs were apparently used in fire safety fluid in the school that leaked…

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform as a judge set a tentative trial date for October. Bankman-Fried, 30, denied charges accusing him of illegally diverting massive sums of customer money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases, donate…

A Manhattan federal judge known for swift decisions and a no-nonsense demeanor during three decades of overseeing numerous high-profile cases was assigned Tuesday to Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency case. The case was relegated to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan after the judge originally assigned recused herself because her husband worked for a law firm that had done work related to Bankman-Fried’s collapsed…

  The Federal Trade Commission is ordering an end to illegal business tactics that Mastercard has been using to force merchants to route debit card payments through its payment network, and is requiring Mastercard to stop blocking the use of competing debit payment networks. Under a proposed FTC order, Mastercard will have to start providing competing networks with customer account…

Danske Bank A/S (Danske Bank), a global financial institution headquartered in Denmark, pleaded guilty today and agreed to forfeit $2 billion to resolve the United States’ investigation into Danske Bank’s fraud on U.S. banks. According to court documents, Danske Bank defrauded U.S. banks regarding Danske Bank Estonia’s customers and anti-money laundering controls to facilitate access to the U.S. financial system…

Stuart Alderoty, General Counsel for Ripple, stated in a tweet that BlockFi’s problem is another regulation by-enforcement success story of the SEC. The counsel asserted that the $100 million enforcement fine that the SEC charged BlockFi contributed to the firm’s bankruptcy. He also raised questions about the $270 million loan outstanding and some unknown amounts owed to BlockFi by FTX….

Please note that Bittrex is a crypto exchange / trading platform. Crypto exchanges are like merchants that sell and trade cryptocurrencies, while cryptocurrencies (like Monero, Bitcoin, ZCash, etc.) are the ‘products’ sold by the merchants. The failure of a merchant does not entail that there is a failure in the product. Cryptocurrency experts recommend that if you are going to…

Prosecutors on Wednesday moved to confiscate $5.4 million from a U.S. bank account belonging to Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, who Washington has accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea and imposed sanctions on him. (Reuters) Konstantin Malofeyev is the founder of Tsargrad TV, and has been reported in western media to be a regular “consultant” to the Kremlin….

The FTC has temporarily shut down a credit card debt relief scheme operated by Sean Austin, John Steven Huffman, and John Preston Thompson and their affiliated companies that allegedly took millions from people by falsely promising to eliminate or substantially reduce their credit card debt: ACRO SERVICES LLC, a limited liability company, also d/b/a Capital Compliance Solutions, AMERICAN CONSUMER RIGHTS…

On September 16, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) published three reports in response to a March 2022 Executive Order concerning the development of digital assets.  The reports address the future of money and payments; implications for consumers, investors, and businesses; and the illicit financing risks of digital assets.  Secretary Yellen described the reports as identifying the challenges…