Category: Corruption

The International Criminal Court said Friday that it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.

It was the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The ICC said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.

The move was immediately dismissed by Moscow.

Eleven of the biggest banks in the U.S. agree to provide funds to shore up First Republic as shares plummet by as much as 70 per cent over the past week.

San Francisco-based First Republic is caught in the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse last Friday. Its shares have plummeted as much as 70 per cent over the past week. Much like SVB, First Republic has not reported any sudden loan losses or writedowns. But clients nervous about its stability have been pulling deposits and transferring them to larger institutions, something known as a flight to quality.

With First Republic looking like the next domino to fall in a cascade of bank failures, the larger lenders and investment banks are hoping their deposits will keep it standing, and prevent the situation from spiralling out of control.

It is an unusual approach.

Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire known for his opposition to Beijing and ties to the administration of former US President Donald Trump, has been charged in the United States with defrauding investors out of $1bn.

Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, was arrested in New York on Wednesday over an alleged conspiracy involving the misappropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from his thousands of followers online, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Guo is accused of pocketing money raised from investors who were promised outsized returns for backing a number of his business ventures, including the media company GTV Media Group, an exclusive membership club known as G|CLUBS and a cryptocurrency called Himalaya Coin.

A massive 20,000-gallon tank was found to be leaking ammonia at a facility in Auburndale, Florida early on Wednesday morning, a city spokesperson told a local Fox affiliate, noting that all employees were evacuated from the plant. Residents living in a two-block area near the plant were also asked to take shelter following the discovery, though the order was lifted…

Latitude Financial has revealed it has been hit by a sophisticated and malicious cyberattack that has compromised a total of 328,000 separate pieces of data that it had sourced from its customers. The loans, credit card and insurance provider said it had detected unusual activity on its systems over the last few days that was believed to have originated from a major vendor used by Latitude.

The company said the attacker appeared to have used employee login credentials to steal personal information that was being held by two other of Latitude’s service providers. In a statement to the ASX on Thursday morning, Latitude said approximately 103,000 identifications documents – 97% of which were drivers’ licences – were stolen from the first service provider, while 225,000 customer records were stolen from a second service provider.

Regulators, policymakers and bankers are looking at the role that digital messaging and social media may have played in the collapse, and whether banks are entering an age when the psychological behavior behind a bank run — mass fear from depositors of losing their savings — may be amplified and go viral quicker than bank officers and regulators can successfully respond.

The Japan Securities Dealers Association said Wednesday it has imposed a penalty of 300 million yen on SMBC Nikko Securities Inc for market manipulation, matching the highest fine previously issued by the organization.

According to the JSDA, SMBC Nikko illegally propped up the prices of 10 individual stock issues to stabilize them last year in “block offering” transactions.

The fine imposed on the brokerage by the JSDA is equal to that issued to Nomura Securities Inc. in connection with an insider trading scandal in 2012.

Shares of Swiss bank lose more than a quarter of their value in one day, dragging down European and US markets.

Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company and two senior executives are facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States, where shareholders have accused the financial institution of failing to disclose the risks that anticipated interest rate hikes would have on its business.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California on Monday, is seeking unspecified damages from SVB Financial Group and its Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck, as well as the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker.

The bank collapsed and its assets were seized by the US government late last week after a mass withdrawal of funds by customers.

The lawsuit, which accuses SVB of violating federal securities laws, noted that the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, had signaled as early as 2021 that it would increase interest rates to tame inflation.

Credit Suisse shares tumbled more than 20% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after its biggest backer ruled out investing any more into the troubled Swiss bank. 

“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said in a Bloomberg interview, responding to whether the Gulf lender would dole out more money. 

Shares in Credit Suisse slid 21.91% to $1.96 in pre-market trading in US-listed shares. Meanwhile, in Zurich, it’s stock fell 19% to $1.79, marking a new record low on Switzerland’s stock exchange. The bank’s stock is down about 24% since the start of the year.

US stocks tumbled Wednesday, as the banking sector saw renewed turmoil — but this time focused on Europe. US-listed shares of Credit Suisse plunged more than 20%, as Saudi backers ruled out further investment in the embattled lender.

Since regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, investors have been concerned about another 2008-style financial crisis. On Tuesday, Moody’s cut its outlook for the entire US banking system. Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported wholesale prices posted a monthly decline of 0.1% in February, versus expectations for a 0.3% increase.

Privacy technology company OneTrust announced a series of changes to its board of directors and governance structure Wednesday, which it says positions the company for future growth. 

Under the revised governance arrangement, CEO Kabir Barday, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, will be joined by Coatue Management’s Thomas Laffont and Insight Partners’ Richard Wells. Current board members Alan Dabbiere, David Dabbiere and John Marshall will depart from the board, which now seeks “four new independent board members resulting in a majority-independent board of seven people,” according to the company’s press release. 

“Today, we have a clear path forward, strong investor demand, and the capital to support this last phase as a private company,” Barday said in comments provided to The Privacy Advisor. 

March 14, 2023. Blick Online: Dark hours for Credit Suisse Bank Dark hours for the bank Credit Suisse, which continues to fight against the outflow of cash from its coffers. The trend has slowed but not reversed, the bank said in its annual report on Tuesday. The Zurich group suffered massive liquidity withdrawals last year, of 123.2 billion francs, including…

At the best of times this is not a good look for an institution in charge of £1.1 trillion worth of the world’s deposits and investments. In the middle of the worst jitters over bank safety for 15 years, it is doubly awkward. Coming weeks after both the chairman and chief executive had given the impression that the outflows had bottomed out, it is also deeply embarrassing. Markets gave their own unambiguous verdict. Credit default swaps on Credit Suisse debt hit a record, meaning it is more costly than ever for investors to insure against the group defaulting. The shares slumped by 4 per cent at one point yesterday, though they rallied on the back of a worldwide bounce in bank stocks.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will not affect China’s financial system but offers an important lesson for the country’s banking industry, the official Securities Times has said.

An SVB-style bank failure is unlikely to happen in China but the incident would have “important implications for the development of China’s small- and medium-sized lenders, and the stability of China’s financial system”, the media outlet said in an editorial on Wednesday.

SVB’s shutdown on Friday has roiled global markets, forced US President Joe Biden to rush out assurances that the financial system is safe and prompted emergency US measures giving banks access to more funding.

A Southfield, Michigan-headquartered bank holding company has agreed to plead guilty to securities fraud for filing false securities statements relating to its 2017 initial public offering (IPO) and its 2018 and 2019 annual filings.

According to a signed plea agreement that will be publicly filed in court, Sterling Bancorp, Inc. (the Company) was the holding company for its wholly owned subsidiary, Sterling Bank and Trust F.S.B. (the Bank, or together with the Company, “Sterling”). Sterling – with branches located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and Southfield – completed an IPO in 2017, and the Company’s stock began trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol “SBT.”