Category: Corruption

A United States judge has ordered a South African executive to pay more than US$3.4 billion (S$4.5 billion) in restitution and fines for a fraud scheme involving Bitcoin – the highest-ever civil monetary penalty in any US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) case.

Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Mirror Trading International Proprietary, committed fraud tied to retail foreign currency transactions, among other violations, the agency said in a statement that announced the order by US District Judge Lee Yeakel.

An unusually early heatwave in drought-hit Spain is set to peak on Thursday and Friday, with temperatures expected to break April records in the south of the country.

Experts have warned of the high risk of wildfires, and farmers have warned of the catastrophic effect it is having on their crops.

Since Monday, Spain has been enveloped by a mass of warm, dry air from North Africa that has driven up temperatures to “levels normally seen in summer and exceptionally high for this time of year,” said Spain’s state weather agency Aemet.

It’s been six weeks since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank threatened to kick off a nationwide bank run. Now, U.S. regulators are due to issue their postmortem reports.

The Federal Reserve plans to release a report Friday on whether there were lapses in its oversight of Silicon Valley Bank that may have contributed to the bank’s failure.

Separately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will also report Friday on how the regulator supervised New York-based Signature Bank, which failed days after the Silicon Valley lender.

The sudden implosion of two big regional banks rattled nerves throughout the financial system last month, forcing the federal government to take emergency steps to prevent a nationwide bank run.

BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.

The alleged boss of one of Italy’s biggest mafia syndicates has been arrested by police at a cathedral in the northern city of Genoa.

Pasquale Bonavota has been wanted by police since 2018 after fleeing an arrest warrant for murder and mafia association.

Police say the 49-year-old leads the notorious ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

The group is Italy’s most powerful mafia family and is said to control the bulk of Europe’s cocaine supplies.

Pasquale Bonavota – whom newspaper La Stampa describes as the “baby boss” – had been at the city’s cathedral when arrested and was carrying a fake ID, according to local media reports.

He is one of the defendants in an ongoing “maxi-trial,” in which more than 300 people face charges related to organised crime.

More than three years after his arrest, Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department, has avoided prison for failing to disclose funding from China. For hiding his affiliation with a Chinese university, as well as income tax and foreign bank account reporting violations, Lieber was sentenced yesterday to time served, two years of supervised release with six…

Pfizer Inc applied to be registered as an importer of controlled substance Pentobarbital

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has avoided starting her more than 11-year prison sentence on Thursday by deploying the same legal maneuver that enabled her co-conspirator in a blood-testing hoax to remain free for an additional month.

Holmes’ lawyers on Wednesday informed U.S. District Judge Edward Davila that she won’t be reporting to prison as scheduled because she had filed an appeal of a decision that he issued earlier this month ordering her to begin her sentence on April 27.

The appeal, filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday, automatically delays her reporting date because she has been free on bail since a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022. The verdict followed a four-month trial revolving around her downfall from a rising Silicon Valley star to an alleged scam artist chasing fame and fortune while fleecing investors and endangering the health of patients relying on Theranos’ flawed blood tests.

The tactic deployed by Holmes mirrored a move made last month by her former lover and subordinate, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, to avoid a prison reporting date of March 16. After the Ninth Circuit rejected his appeal three weeks later, Davila set a new reporting date of April 20.

The Kremlin warned on Wednesday that Russia could widen the list of foreign companies subject to temporary asset seizures in case of the “expropriation” of Russian assets abroad.

The comments came after Putin signed a presidential decree approving the takeover of operations of two Western energy groups in Russia — Finland’s Fortum and Germany’s Uniper — and threatened to do the same with others.

“If necessary, the list of companies could be expanded,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, a day after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing asset seizures.

As a result of action by the Federal Trade Commission and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, debt collection company International Credit Recovery, Inc. (ICR), officer Richard Diorio, Jr., and manager Cynthia Powell, have agreed to a permanent ban from the debt collection industry after being charged with engaging in bogus debt collection efforts against businesses and non-profits. 

The FTC and Pennsylvania alleged that ICR was a key part of a telemarketing scheme run by American Future Systems, Inc., (AFS), which also does business as Progressive Business Publications and the Center for Education and Employment Law. ICR allegedly collected on debts AFS claimed organizations such as businesses, schools, fire and police departments, and non-profits owed for book and newsletter subscriptions they did not order.

 “The defendants in the case were the second half of a one-two punch that targeted small businesses, non-profits and first responders, first with bogus subscription bills and then bogus debt collection,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “We’re proud to work with our partners in Pennsylvania to hold them accountable.”

“Through collaboration with our federal partners, we reached an agreement that ensures Pennsylvanians will be protected from these callous defendants that preyed on emergency-responder and non-for-profit organizations to fulfill their selfish greed,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said.

The FTC and Pennsylvania charged that, in connection with its debt collection activities, ICR contacted consumers that it knew or had reason to know did not agree to order paid subscriptions. They also charged that ICR used false or unsubstantiated representations to try to get consumers to pay, and that ICR illegally threatened consumers if they did not pay.

The court order, which was agreed to by the defendants to settle the case, permanently bans them from the debt collection industry, as well as requires them to cooperate since the case will continue against the other defendants AFS, Progressive Business Publications of New Jersey, Inc. and Edward Satell.

The Commission vote approving the stipulated final order was 3-0-1, with Commissioner Christine S. Wilson not participating. The vote on this matter closed on March 23, 2023, prior to Commissioner Wilson’s departure from the Commission. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania approved the settlement.

NOTE: Stipulated final orders or injunctions have the force of law when approved and signed by the District Court judge.

This matter is being handled by the FTC’s East Central Region.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s sudden departure from the cable network is being greeted as good news by Republicans who support U.S. intervention in the war in Ukraine.

Carlson was one of the most prominent critics of U.S. involvement to defend Kyiv against Moscow’s invasion.

“It’s a bad day for Vladimir Putin,” a Senate Republican aide said. “This takes one of the biggest critics of Ukraine war in Republican and conservative circles off the table.”

The aide noted that some GOP senators were also uncomfortable with what they viewed as Carlson’s over-the-top rhetoric opposing vaccine mandates, which divided conservatives during the pandemic.

Two decades of misconduct records will be now trickling out of the NYSP’s hands. One assumes it will be a very slow drip, one perhaps interrupted by last-minute admissions the NYSP has, say, destroyed records it was required to retain. A lot can happen over twenty years, but hopefully it won’t take twenty years for records requesters to obtain what they’re entitled to possess.

The Superior Court (basically the first level of state courts in New York) decision [PDF] is short and sweet. It not only directs the NYSP to comply with the law, but draws some other helpful legal conclusions along the way, like this one, which says cop shops can’t withhold information about officers who were investigated for misconduct, but later cleared of wrongdoing.

It is clear that the mere fact that the complaint was determined to be unsubstantiated does not categorically exempt the records from disclosure.

The U.N. appears to have officially announced that young children have a right to engage in consensual sex– including consensual sex with an adult. The United Nations published a declaration stating that “sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.”

The U.N. document, The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, is the handiwork of the International Committee of Jurists, the UNAIDS [the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS] and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

FDA OCI, Greater Boston Behavioral Health, guilty, plea, misbranded, drugs, prescription, Rx, $2.5 million, fines, forfeiture, Botox, foreign, black box, warning, side effects, migraine, treatment, consumer protection,

The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in the appeal of two False Claims Act (FCA) cases from the Seventh Circuit that called into question the level of intent, or scienter, required to establish corporate liability under the FCA for “knowingly” overbilling the government for goods or services.  The Court’s eventual decision may have widespread…… Continue Reading
The post Healthcare Companies and Companies Doing Business with the US Government – Supreme Court Appears Likely to Clarify False Claims Act (FCA) Knowledge Requirements appeared first on Global Investigations & Compliance Review.

I’m going to write about mifepristone and the legal troubles around it, and I will probably regret doing so. That’s partly because the situation is changing – this dispute is now before the US supreme court, and for better or worse, they will have the last word. But as of this writing, that last word hasn’t been handed down, and…