Category: Enforcement Actions

SAN FRANCISCO – Wells Fargo & Co agreed to pay US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) to settle a shareholder lawsuit that accused it of making misleading statements about its compliance with United States consent orders, following the 2016 scandal involving the opening of unauthorised customer accounts. The settlement is one of the top six largest securities class-action settlements of the past…

WASHINGTON – A Massachusetts man has been arrested for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the United States to China’s government, the Justice Department said Monday. Litang Liang, 63, of Brighton, was arrested on May 9 on charges of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) without notifying US authorities, according to the department.

The announcement of Liang’s arrest came on the same day as a court in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou revealed that a 78-year-old US citizen, John Shing-wan Leung, had been sentenced to life in prison for espionage. The Justice Department said Liang, between 2018 and 2022, had passed information about Boston-area residents, dissidents and groups, including “community organisations with pro-Taiwan leanings,” to Chinese government officials.

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s military chief has ordered the freezing of all bank accounts belonging to a rival paramilitary force. The two sides have battled for weeks across Sudan, pushing the troubled country to the brink of all-out war.

The decree, issued on Sunday by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, will target the official accounts of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudanese bank, as well as the accounts of all companies belonging to the group, the state news agency SUNA reported.

It remains unclear what immediate effect the freezing would have on the RSF and how Burhan’s orders are to be enforced.

The military chief also announced the replacement of the governor of Sudan’s Central Bank, a move likely tied to the freezing decree. Over the past decade, the RSF amassed great wealth through the gradual acquisition of Sudanese financial institutions and gold reserves.

WASHINGTON – Google, a unit of Alphabet, has agreed to pay US$8 million (S$10.7 million) to settle claims it used deceptive advertisements to promote the Pixel 4 smartphone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Friday.

The search and advertising giant, which also makes Android smartphone software and owns YouTube, has been scrutinised for antitrust and consumer protection infractions by both the federal government and state attorneys general. The federal government has filed two antitrust lawsuits.

In this instance, Paxton’s office alleged that Google hired radio announcers to give testimonials about the Pixel 4 even though the company had refused to allow them to use one of the phones.

“If Google is going to advertise in Texas, their statements better be true,” Paxton said in a statement. “In this case, the company made statements that were blatantly false, and our settlement holds Google accountable for lying to Texans for financial gain.”

WASHINGTON – A Federal Reserve report warned that banks’ concerns about slower growth could lead them to make fewer loans, accelerating an economic downturn, and highlighted commercial real estate as an area of heightened risk that will draw more scrutiny from bank examiners.

The US central bank’s financial stability report released on Monday is the first since four regional lenders collapsed. The episodes prompted weeks of wild trading in bank stocks and forced regulators to take a series of extraordinary steps that included backstopping all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Mr Karimi was among the first celebrities who vehemently criticised the deadly crackdown on the protests which erupted in September. The footballer, known as the Maradona of Asia, lived in the UAE at the time.

The protests were sparked by the death in custody of a Kurdish Iranian woman. Mahsa Amini, 22, died after allegedly being beaten by morality police who arrested her for what they said was her failure to wear her headscarf properly.

The protests spread nationwide, but have been violently suppressed. Human rights groups say security forces have killed at least 530 protesters – including around 70 children – since the protests began.

One of the documents seen by BBC Persian says Mr Karimi “was invited [to Iran] by our agent nine times and has received serious warnings”.

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…

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.

In Huawei’s head office last month, staff gathered to celebrate the in-house development of software to replace a US system that, thanks to Washington’s export controls, the Chinese technology company was no longer able to purchase. “Three years ago, we were cut off from the old ERP [enterprise resource planning] system,” said Tao Jingwen, a Huawei board member and president…

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.

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.

A retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general was sentenced last week to 12 months and one day in prison for wire fraud and filing a false tax return, the Justice Department announced.

Scott Bethel, 59, worked as a government contractor and advisor to the service following his retirement in 2012, according to the statement. During that time, Bethel launched a business that worked with both the government and his employer, both of which he would reportedly submit invoices to, according to court documents.

Last weekend, Russian authorities moved one step closer towards potentially locking up Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most prominent and outspoken human rights defenders. On April 29, the prosecutor’s office formally indicted him on charges of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian military, for which he faces a maximum three-year prison sentence. Authorities should immediately drop the charges.

Orlov is co-chair of Memorial, a leading Russian rights group. The government shut down Memorial in 2022 as part of the Kremlin’s effort to stifle critics and human rights work. Yet Memorial’s core activists continued their human rights work, some from abroad, and some, like Orlov, from inside the country.

On March 21, criminal investigators in Moscow interrogated Orlov, informing him they had opened a criminal investigation against him for repeated acts of “discrediting” Russian armed forces, based on his single-person anti-war pickets and his social media post containing his trenchant criticism of the war and of the government’ slide toward totalitarianism and fascism.  They released him later that day on his own recognizance.