Category: Enforcement Actions

Four bankers from a Russian bank’s Swiss branch have been found guilty by a Zurich court over vast sums going into the accounts of a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin.

The accounts in the Swiss arm of Gazprombank were held by Sergei Roldugin, the artistic director of the St. Petersburg Music House, who is often dubbed Putin’s cellist.

Roldugin has been a friend of Putin for more than four decades and is godfather to one of the Russian leader’s daughters.

The four men were found guilty of “lack of due diligence in financial transactions”, the Zurich District Court said in its verdict released to media on Thursday, over the millions of Swiss francs flowing through Roldugin’s account.

Under Swiss law, the bankers — two Russians, one Swiss and a Russian-born British national — cannot be identified.

The bank branch’s chief executive was fined 540,000 Swiss francs ($590,200).

U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group said on Thursday its Beijing office was raided by authorities and five Chinese staff were detained, stoking worry among foreign companies in China just as its capital hosts an international economic forum.

News of the raid and detentions comes as Sino-U.S. relations have spiraled downwards following months of diplomatic tensions, including over the U.S. military downing in February of a suspected Chinese spy balloon and a planned U.S. transit next week by the president of Taiwan, the self-governed island China claims as its territory.

“We can confirm that Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group’s Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there,” the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The company said it was ready to work with Chinese authorities to “resolve any misunderstanding that may have led to these events”, and that its top concern was the safety and wellbeing of colleagues in China.

Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG are among the banks under scrutiny in a US Justice Department probe into whether financial professionals helped Russian oligarchs evade sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Swiss banks were included in a recent wave of subpoenas sent out by the US government, the people said. The information requests were sent before the crisis that engulfed Credit Suisse and resulted in UBS’s proposed takeover of its rival.

Subpoenas also went to employees of some major US banks, two people with knowledge of the inquiries, said.

The Justice Department inquiries are focused on identifying which bank employees dealt with sanctioned clients and how those clients were vetted over the past several years.

“Should Putin appear on German territory, he will definitely be arrested,” Feldhusen said. She recalled that Germany is a signatory to the Rome Statute along with over 120 countries.

“It will be very difficult for Putin to go on official trips to those countries,” she added. According to the diplomat, Germany believes that the warrant was issued in a timely manner.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants on March 17 for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova, alleging their involvement in the unlawful removal of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation since Feb. 24, 2022.

The Kremlin dictator’s arrest is authorized in 123 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Andriy Kostin, said.

According to the Office of the President of Ukraine, the court’s ruling implies that there will be no negotiations with the present Russian leadership and no lifting of sanctions.

A new lawsuit accuses Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta Platforms Inc executives and directors of failing to do enough to stop sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram. The complaint made public late Monday by several pension and investment funds that own Meta stock said Meta’s leadership and board have failed to protect the company’s and shareholders’ interests by turning a blind eye to “systemic evidence” of criminal activity.

Given the board’s failure to explain how it tries to root out the problem, “the only logical inference is that the board has consciously decided to permit Meta’s platforms to promote and facilitate sex/human trafficking,” the complaint said. Meta rejected the basis for the lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware Chancery Court.

Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, has long faced accusations that its platforms are a haven for sexual misconduct.

The United States said Tuesday it is imposing a new round of sanctions on Iranian firms and people accused of procuring equipment used for Iranian drones.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control coordinated with the FBI to designate four firms and three people in Iran and Turkey for allegedly buying equipment, including European-made engines, to be used for Iran’s drone and weapons programs.

Those targeted for sanctions include the Iran-based Defense Technology and Science Research Center, its procurement firm Farazan Industrial Engineering Inc. and two other firms along with purchasing agents from the companies.

Florida companies Kingwood Orlando Reunion Resort LLC (Orlando Reunion) and Kingwood Crystal River Resort Corp. (Crystal River) have agreed to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act (FCA) and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) by knowingly providing false information in support of a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness application submitted by Crystal River.

ABF Freight System Inc. (ABF), a freight carrier that operates more than 200 transportation facilities in 47 states and Puerto Rico, has resolved allegations that it violated requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA) relating to industrial stormwater at locations across the country. Under the proposed settlement, ABF will enhance and implement its comprehensive, corporate-wide stormwater compliance program at all its transportation facilities except those located in the state of Washington, and will pay a civil penalty of $535,000, a portion of which will be directed to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the State of Maryland, and the State of Nevada who all joined this settlement.

Today, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), filed a motion for preliminary injunction under the Clean Air Act (CAA) requesting that the court order Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (Denka) to require significant pollution controls to reduce chloroprene emissions, a pollutant that EPA has determined to be a likely carcinogen. The request for immediate relief by EPA and the Justice Department follows the United States’ complaint filed on Feb. 28, alleging an imminent and substantial endangerment to the communities surrounding the facility as a result of Denka’s manufacturing operations.

The Clean Air Act section 303 imminent and substantial endangerment lawsuit is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

German and US authorities, supported by Europol, have targeted ChipMixer, a cryptocurrency mixer used to keep crypto transactions private. The investigation was also supported by Belgium, Poland and Switzerland. On 15 March, national authorities took down the infrastructure of the platform, seizing 4 servers, and also seizing about 1909 Bitcoins in 55 transactions (approx. EUR 44.2 million) and 7 TB of data.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are accused of deporting children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, which, according to the court, constitutes a war crime.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the document “legally worthless.”

“Decisions of the International Criminal Court have no value for our country, in particular from a legal point of view,” Zakharova wrote in a Telegram post.

“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and doesn’t bear obligations under it. Russia doesn’t cooperate with this body, and possible ‘recipes’ for arrest coming out of the International Court of Justice will be legally worthless and void for us.”

Deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, made a rather discourteous comment:

“No need to explain how this (piece) paper should be used,” Medvedev said, adding a toilet paper roll emoji to his Twitter post.

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.

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.