Category: banks

Latvia’s former central bank governor was sentenced to six years in prison for bribery on Wednesday after a trial over the most prominent of a series of recent financial scandals to hit the Baltic country. Ilmārs Rimšēvičs, head of the Latvian central bank from 2001 until 2019, was found guilty by the Riga district court of accepting bribes and a fishing trip to Russia from shareholders of a now defunct bank. He was sentenced to six years in jail and…

US Targets Foreign Banks with Sanctions to Curb Russia’s War Effort In a decisive stroke designed to undermine Russia’s military capabilities, US President Joe Biden has signed a far-reaching executive order targeting the financial sinews aiding Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. The order, enacted on December 22, 2023, sanctions foreign banks that allegedly support Russia’s defense sector, underscoring the US commitment to stymie Russia’s access to international financial networks and critical war supplies. The Financial Front of Warfare The latest…

SEOUL – South Korea’s financial watchdog has recommended imposing a fine of at least 10 billion won (S$10.24 million) each on HSBC Holdings and BNP Paribas for so-called naked short selling, which is considered illegal in the country, according to two people familiar with the matter.  The nation’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) made the recommendation to the Securities and Futures Commission under regulator Financial Services Commission (FSC), said the people, who requested anonymity discussing private matters.  Naked short selling is…

France’s Sapin II Law was created in 2016 to address corporate corruption and implement antibribery measures. The legislation took effect in 2017, marking a significant shift in the country’s regulatory compliance landscape. The law, which tracks closely with similar laws in the US, UK, and other EU countries, requires large companies [1] to implement a robust compliance program, including anti-corruption policies, monitoring procedures, and accounting controls.  The law also significantly changes the government’s prosecution strategies for white collar crime, particularly…

Saudi Diplomatic Exchanges and Technological Developments Amidst Political Shifts in North Africa In a recent diplomatic exchange, the Crown Prince of Morocco, Prince Hassan bin Mohammed, received a verbal message from the Saudi Arabian King and Crown Prince, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The message reiterated the robust fraternal relations between the two nations, discussing how to further enhance and develop these ties across diverse sectors. Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Diplomatic Engagements On another diplomatic front,…

LONDON: The Bank of England on Wednesday said its multiple interest-rate hikes aimed at cooling high inflation would prolong a cost-of-living crisis but stressed UK retail banks could contain the fallout. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said in a report that almost five million UK homeowners would see mortgage repayments soar over the next three years. Retail banks tend to pass on BoE rate hikes, hitting customers whose home loans come with variable rates and those whose fixed-term deals…

  WASHINGTON – The US government concluded that short-seller Hindenburg Research’s allegations of corporate fraud against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani weren’t relevant before extending his conglomerate as much as US$553 million (S740 million) for a container terminal in Sri Lanka, a senior US official said. Allegations in a scathing report by US-based Hindenburg Research, which erased around US$100 billion from the Adani Group’s market value earlier this year, were front and centre as the International Development Finance Corp., or DFC,…

Mercer Financial Advice has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $12 million penalty for breaching fee disclosure obligations and for wrongly charging fees to customers, ASIC has reported. “This is a significant penalty for a financial advice provider,” said Sarah Court (pictured above), ASIC deputy chair. “Mercer failed in its obligation to provide fee disclosure statements to clients, provided misleading information in the disclosure statements it did provide, and charged its clients fees for services it was…

  As China’s embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group faces a criminal probe, lawyers and analysts are assessing the damage to investors. One estimate puts that at about US$56 billion (S$74.9 billion). More than three quarters of investor cash would be lost, with just 100 billion yuan (S$18.7 billion) being recovered from debt of as much as 460 billion yuan, according to one scenario outlined by Mr Ying Yue, a lawyer at Leaqual Law Firm in Shanghai. He expects…

With Russian tanks and troops descending on Ukraine in early 2022, Cyprus became a hotbed of financial activity. The island country has long been known as an offshore transit point for the fortunes of Russian billionaires, and as sanctions loomed over many of them last year, Cyprus financial services firms fielded a series of urgent demands to transfer funds and shareholdings, newly revealed records show. In one case, documents show that two Russian billionaires, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, needed…

Portugal’s central bank governor Mário Centeno is facing an ethics review by an independent watchdog after he was proposed as the next prime minister by Socialist premier António Costa, who quit last week over a corruption scandal. Costa’s proposal has triggered a public spat between Centeno and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president who has the power to appoint prime ministers. Costa, who resigned over allegations of corruption among public officials, had urged Rebelo de Sousa to appoint Centeno as…

In September, a class action lawsuit (Mannacio v. Discover Financial Services, et al., No. 23-cv-06788 (N.D. Ill.)) was filed against Discover Financial Services (“Discover”) alleging Discover and certain current and/or former executives violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Specifically, the class action complaint alleged that the defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Discover maintained deficient risk management and compliance procedures; (ii) as a result, Discover, among other things, failed to comply with applicable…

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and money laundering by a New York jury in a landmark criminal verdict that is likely to condemn the former crypto tycoon to decades in prison […] The decision […] was delivered just after 7.40pm on Thursday, following less than five hours of deliberation by the jury’s nine women and three men over seven charges including wire fraud on FTX customers and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering. Bankman-Fried was…

The Trump era was very, very good to the country’s giant telecom monopolies. Trump officials doled out billions in tax breaks (AT&T nabbed $42 billion alone) and billions more in poorly tracked subsidies. It also approved anticompetitive mergers without even reading the details, and handed out all manner of regulator favors like the dismantling of net neutrality or the elimination of media consolidation rules. In absolutely every instance telecoms like AT&T and Comcast claimed these efforts would boost broadband deployment…

Hackers have accessed approximately 632,000 emails from the Department of Defense and other federal agencies this year, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed. The report detailed a large-scale cyberattack in May 2023 in which emails from US government offices, private sectors, airlines, and academic entities were accessed by a suspected Russian group called “CL0P.” Alongside electronic personal data, the actors breached internal tracking codes and government employee survey links issued by agencies. Through File Transfer Software The cybercriminals…

There is a sharp sell-off in the bond market, and it has big implications on both the economy and people’s pocketbooks. Yields on U.S. government bonds, especially the 10-year Treasury note, determine the interest rates that people pay on a lot of their debt, including mortgages and credit cards. And a key bond yield hasn’t been this high since 2007. Several factors are driving the sell-off, including stronger-than-expected economic data and the government’s worsening finances. Here is what you need…