Category: corporate corruption

(Bloomberg) — Canada is assessing the consequences of potentially expelling a Chinese diplomat accused in media reports of targeting a Canadian lawmaker’s family for sanctions as political punishment. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said her department summoned China’s Canadian ambassador to Canada to discuss the matter Thursday morning. “We’re assessing the consequences that we’ll be facing in case of diplomatic expulsion, because there will be consequences,” Joly told a parliamentary committee. The blowback could take the form of punishing Canada economically…

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News is opposing a renewed effort by three news organizations to unseal documents related to its recently settled defamation lawsuit, saying it would do nothing but “gratify private spite or promote public scandal.” The Associated Press, The New York Times and National Public Radio asked a Delaware judge earlier this week to reveal mostly private text messages and conversations between Fox employees shortly after the 2020 presidential election that were uncovered during the Dominion Voting…

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is alleging Facebook “repeatedly violated its privacy promises” and is proposing a “blanket prohibition” on parent company Meta’s monetization of data of users under 18. The company, meanwhile, called the move “a political stunt.” The FTC on Wednesday moved to expand its USD5 billion privacy order with then-Facebook from 2020, claiming the company failed to comply with the order and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule, misrepresented access to private user data it provided…

A Wells Fargo boss started by mocking a female executive’s fiancé, moved on to inappropriately touching and groping her, then threatened to take sales opportunities from her if she didn’t date him, according to a new lawsuit against the San Francisco-headquartered bank and the alleged harasser.

Wells Fargo management responded to complaints by the former VP and senior portfolio manager, who filed suit anonymously as Jane Doe, by forcing her to continue working with the man, attempting to block her from receiving a hefty referral fee and commission, and finally firing her, the lawsuit claimed.

Wells Fargo spokeswoman Laurie Kight said Wednesday the bank was reviewing the lawsuit. “We take all allegations of misconduct very seriously,” Kight said.

Doe started in an executive position at Wells Fargo in 2000, in a Los Angeles unit devoted to serving high-wealth clients, and was promoted to a senior VP position five years later, according to her lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Starting in 2016 and continuing into 2020, she was subjected to sexual harassment by a superior, Carl Nelson, a VP and senior private banker, her lawsuit claimed.

Nelson has since resigned from Wells Fargo, according to Doe’s lawyer Ronald Zambrano. Nelson did not immediately respond Wednesday to messages from this news organization at his new workplace in a different bank.

The Financial Conduct Authority has said it will change its approach to whistleblowers after a survey revealed widespread dissatisfaction among those who alert the regulator to wrongdoing.

The organisation acknowledged problems including whistleblowers not “feeling heard”; a lack of dialogue with them, which prompts doubts about the chances of a proper investigation; and frustration over a shortage of updates, sometimes interpreted as delay and inaction.

The majority of those who raised concerns with the regulator said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied” with how they had been listened to and how issues had been explored, while most were dissatisfied with the outcome of their reports, an FCA study found.

When asked to rate overall satisfaction with the authority’s handling of their whistleblowing report, 15 of the 21 respondents said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied”. Only two expressed any satisfaction.

The regulator said it was “disappointed” with the findings. “Whistleblowers are key in our efforts and we greatly value their contribution,” it said.

It pledged to make reforms, including improving the use of whistleblowers’ information, better communication over what has been done with their reports and engagement with the government over a review of whistleblowing legislation.

Fully backed by the Labor government, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board yesterday resumed aggressively raising interest rates. It is deliberately inflicting more suffering on working-class households in order to further cut real wages and consumer spending.

Building workers walk past Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney, Nov. 1, 2022. [AP Photo/Rick Rycroft]
In announcing its decision to raise its cash rate from 3.6 percent to 3.85 percent, the RBA explicitly targeted wages—which have already been cut 4.5 percent in real terms over the past year. It said this level of “wages growth” was consistent with the bank’s inflation target, but it would continue to “pay close attention” to labour costs.

Real wages had fallen, RBA governor Philip Lowe told an RBA Board Dinner brimming with business leaders in Perth last night, but if inflation continued “workers will seek larger pay rises.” He said the “labour market” was “still very tight.” Therefore, the RBA was determined to pursue its course, “even if it is difficult for some people in the short term.”

BERLIN (AP) — Police across Europe arrested dozens of people, raided homes and seized millions of euros in assets on Wednesday, in a coordinated crackdown on Italy’s ’ndrangheta organized crime syndicate, one of the world’s most powerful, extensive and wealthy drug-trafficking groups.

The operation, coordinated by European Union judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, aimed to dismantle a network that includes the n’drangheta, Colombian drug producers and paramilitary groups, and moves tons of cocaine to Europe and Australia each year.

The investigation uncovered how these networks used ports in Ecuador, Panama and Brazil to ship the Colombian drugs to northern European ports while also dealing in weapons. The drug proceeds were then laundered through restaurants, ice cream shops and car washes, and money sent back to Colombian drug producers via a Chinese wire transfer service, according to Italian officials and a Carabinieri press release.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Two 10-year-olds are among 300 children who worked at McDonald’s restaurants illegally, a Labor Department investigation of franchisees in Kentucky found.

Agency investigators found the 10-year-olds received little or no pay at a McDonald’s in Louisville, the Labor Department said. The franchisee for the Louisville store was among three McDonald’s franchisees fined $212,000 in total by the department.

Louisville’s Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald’s locations, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted, the agency said. Among those were two 10-year-old children. The agency said the children sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m., but were not paid.

“Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register,” the Labor Department said Tuesday, adding that one child also was allowed to operate a deep fryer, which is prohibited task for workers under 16.

The former manager used inside information from a deal Morgan Stanley was advising on to generate HK$4.2mn in profits for herself and a friend.

A Hong Kong court has granted an interim injunction order allowing the freezing of about HKD 8.2 million in assets in an insider dealing case.

The case was brought by the SFC (Securities and Futures Commission), which suspects two individuals – Ms Tsang Ching Yi and Mr Barry Kwok Sze Lok – of engaging in insider trading in the stock of I.T Limited, a software company that was privatised in 2021.

The SFC alleged that Tsang obtained information relating to the privatisation of I.T Limited through her employment as a manager at an investment bank, and shared such information with her friend Kwok, before both traded in the stock using the inside information.

Though not named in the SFC’s statement, the investment bank was identified through Tsang’s licensing record to be Morgan Stanley – which was the adviser for I.T Limited’s privatisation offer.

The Fed had to choose between capitulation on inflation or letting the banking crisis mushroom. The twin crashes in the US’s commercial real estate and bond market have collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in its banking system, which can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age.

The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion. Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks are already burning through their capital buffers. They may not have to mark all losses to market under US accounting rules but that does not make them solvent. Somebody will take those losses.

“It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are under water,” said Prof Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University. “Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.” The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff edge over the next six quarters.

Only then will we learn whether the US financial system can safely deflate the excess leverage induced by extreme monetary stimulus during the pandemic. A Hoover Institution report by Prof Seru and a group of experts calculates that more than 2,315 US banks are sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios is $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) lower than book value.

These lenders include big beasts.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, published on the newspaper’s front page Monday morning, links important figures in the US business and political elite to financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a federal prison in Manhattan in 2019 under circumstances that strongly suggest he was murdered to keep him quiet.

The Journal reporters wrote that they had gained access to Epstein’s private diary and other documents, “which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, [that] haven’t been previously reported.” The diary listed meetings with dozens of individuals, though it supplied little information about the content or subject of the meetings. The bulk of these engagements were at Epstein’s palatial townhouse in Manhattan.

Among those prominently mentioned in the Journal report were two high-level officials of Democratic administrations: William Burns, currently CIA director, formerly deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration; and Kathryn Ruemmler, currently general counsel for Goldman Sachs investment bank, who was White House counsel in the Obama administration.

The Chinese government has significantly increased the use of exit bans to stop people – Chinese and foreign nationals alike – from leaving the country since top leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, according to a new report describing how a web of vague laws are being expanded for political reasons.

The report comes amid growing concern about the environment for foreign businesses in China, after the wide-ranging overhaul last week of the country’s espionage law and raids on corporate consultancies Mintz Group and Bain & Co.

House Republicans have used the power of their new majority to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of the family’s finances. Comer has obtained thousands of pages of the Biden family’s financial records through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions since January.

Most recently, Comer claimed one deal involving the Biden family resulted in a profit of over $1 million in more than 15 incremental payments from a Chinese company through a third party.

Both Comer and Grassley have accused both the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their investigations and politicizing the agency’s yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Last month, an IRS special agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress to disclose a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.

The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Valencia denounced several months ago the CEO of Gedesco, Antonio Aynat, for a possible environmental crime in the Albufera of Valencia, which has led to the opening of legal proceedings for which the main executive of the financial services company for companies and the self-employed is under investigation.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to denounce Aynat after an intervention by the Environmental Unit of the Local Police of Valencia, which acted after being warned by the management of the natural park in May 2021 of the existence of irregular works in a place of the protected area known as Tancat de L’Alcatí. There is the headquarters of the Valencian Association of Lateen Sailing, which is chaired by the businessman.

The CEO of one of the largest non-banking financial institutions in Spain leased the land in 2014 to a community of irrigators in order to install there a sports and business club dedicated to lateen sailing. It is, according to the complaint, a plot located on undeveloped land, within the Albufera natural park, the Natura 2000 Network and in a cataloged wetland area. Its legal use is exclusively agricultural.

Rioters smashed shop fronts and tried to set fire to police officers in Paris as up to a million people marched across France in May Day protests against President Macron’s reform to the pension age. Young men dressed in black from the anarchist “black block” movement were joined by hardline yellow vest protesters on a rampage at the front of the peaceful union-organised march, which moved through central Paris from the Place de la République to the Place de la Nation. The anarchists broke shop windows and bank frontages and set fire to bins as riot police on motorcycles moved in.

Officers using teargas and batons arrested several dozen violent protesters in the capital and at similar outbreaks on the edges of marches in Lyons, Toulouse and Nantes, which were staged by unions and left-wing parties as a “show of contempt” for Macron’s reform. About 12,000 police had been deployed for the marches after the interior ministry said it expected trouble from two or three thousand black block “wreckers” and violent followers of the yellow vest movement, whose protests inflicted heavy damage in Paris and other cities in 2018 and 2019.

Protesters from the radical climate movements were also active, spraying paint on shop fronts in the Place Vendôme, the central Paris home to jewellery shops, and also on the façade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the contemporary art museum financed by LVMH, the luxury brand giant.

The U.S. is sending Ukraine about $300 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds, howitzers, air-to-ground rockets and ammunition as the launch of a spring offensive against Russian forces approaches, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The new package includes Hydra-70 rockets, which are unguided rockets that are fired from aircraft. It also includes an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, mortars, howitzer rounds, missiles and Carl Gustaf anti—tank rifles. The weapons will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so they can go quickly to the front lines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been formally announced.

The latest shipment comes as Ukrainian officials say they are readying a counteroffensive — with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov declaring they are in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.’” Ukrainian officials have said they are stockpiling ammunition to stow it along potentially long supply lines.

Reznikov said Monday that the key things for the assault’s success would be “the availability of weapons; prepared, trained people; our defenders and defenders who know their plan at their level, as well as providing this offensive with all the necessary things — shells, ammunition, fuel, protection, etc.”