Category: Investigations

Credit Suisse takes fight over $1 billion awarded to billionaire to Singapore’s top court

A unit of defunct lender Credit Suisse will seek to overturn an order to pay US$743 million (S$1 billion) to a billionaire client over the actions of a notorious rogue banker at Singapore’s top court on April 8. The sum was awarded after a lower court earlier ruled that the bank’s trust had failed to safeguard the assets of Bidzina…

US stocks pull back as tech giants hit by EU probe

  NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks retreated March 25 as a market rally showed signs of fatigue and tech heavyweights faced stepped-up regulatory scrutiny in Europe. Maris Ogg of Fiduciary Trust said the reticent start was unsurprising given the relatively light schedule this week as far as economic news. “It certainly wouldn’t be unusual” to have some kind of…

China examining PwC role in $105 billion Evergrande fraud case

SHANGHAI – The Chinese authorities are examining the role of PricewaterhouseCoopers in China Evergrande Group’s accounting practices after the developer was accused of a US$78 billion (S$105 billion) fraud, ramping up pressure on the global accounting giant that audited a slew of developers before the sector’s meltdown. The country’s securities regulator this week accused Evergrande’s main onshore subsidiary Hengda Real…

JPMorgan fined almost $350M for issues with trade surveillance program

JPMorgan is facing nearly $350 million in fines from bank regulators due to issues with its trade surveillance program. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Thursday that it was assessing a $250 million civil penalty against JPMorgan Chase Bank because it found that the company “operated with gaps in trading venue coverage and without adequate data controls…

Boeing 747-9 mid-air malfunction: Inability to locate records for door panel maintenance

In a letter addressed to Congress, Boeing has admitted the inability to locate records for maintenance performed on a door panel that malfunctioned during an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon two months ago. “We have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation,” Ziad Ojakli, Boeing executive vice president and chief government lobbyist, wrote to Sen.Maria Cantwell on Friday….

Opioid manufacturer Endo Health “resolution” of criminal charges: No Prison for pharma criminals

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, February 29, 2024  United States Also Reaches Settlement with Endo International in Bankruptcy Case Endo Health Solutions Inc. (EHSI), which is in bankruptcy, has agreed to resolve criminal and civil investigations related to the company’s sales and marketing of the opioid drug Opana ER with INTAC…

Barclays sells credit card debt to Blackstone: Profiting from Poverty

Barclays (BARC.L), opens new tab has agreed to sell about $1.1 billion of credit card debt in the United States to Blackstone. Banks globally have been making greater use of credit risk transfers to shed risk from loan portfolios, Reuters has reported, with investors sharing the risk of losses. (See Corporate home buyouts: homelessness, mortgage & rent crisis rising) Barclays’ investment…

Pentagon Has Opened Over 50 Criminal Probes on US Aid to Ukraine

The Pentagon’s inspector general said its criminal investigators have opened more than 50 cases related to aid provided to Ukraine, including some involving contractors, but have yet to firm up any allegations. The investigations, which are at different stages, are looking at issues including “procurement fraud, product substitution, theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion,” the inspector general, Robert Storch, said…

DOD Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on Feb. 4, 2020

A leaked recording obtained by investigator and writer Sasha Latypova features an executive at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca stating the following: It wasn’t a surprise to me when I got a call on February 4th from the Defense Department here in the US saying that the newly discovered Sars-2 virus posed a national security threat. This is an astonishing, major-newspaper…

Former CIA engineer who sent ‘Vault 7’ CIA spying secrets to Wikileaks sentenced to 40 years

A former CIA software engineer was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday after his convictions for what the government described as the biggest theft of classified information in CIA history and for possession of child sexual abuse images and videos. The bulk of the sentence imposed on Joshua Schulte, 35, in Manhattan federal court came for an embarrassing…

Army officials retaliated against whistleblowing staff: report

Two Army Cyber Command officials worked to get an employee fired following his reporting of misconduct and subsequent participation in investigations, the Pentagon’s inspector general found in a report published Wednesday. The IG recommends that the employee be reinstated to his job with backpay, while the Defense Department officials involved “receive appropriate action.” For one of them, that means just…

Morgan Stanley and exec Pawan Passi avoid criminal misconduct prosecution for the price of $249 million

Morgan Stanley will pay $249 million to settle a criminal investigation, as well as a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The SEC said the bank generated more than $100 million in illicit profits as a result of misconduct by Pawan Passi, the bank’s former head of its US equity syndicate desk, and another employee.  Morgan Stanley has been under…

The likely cause of mid-air blowout and the other airlines operating the same Boeing plane

A mid-air blowout aboard a Boeing 737-9 MAX passenger plane has led to dozens of aircraft worldwide being grounded while engineers try to establish what went wrong. Six people aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland to California were injured after a window and chunk of fuselage blew out of the plane in mid-air shortly after takeoff on 5 January….

Canada and Partners take Iran to UN Council over Ukrainian Jet downed in 2020

Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine on Monday formally complained to the U.N. aviation council in their bid to hold Iran accountable for the downing of a Ukrainian passenger airliner in January 2020 that killed 176 people, they said on Monday. Most of the dead were citizens from the four nations, which created a coordination group that seeks to hold Iran…

Boeing faces crucial 48 hours as latest poor production quality allegations may be harder to shake off than before

Not for the first time, Boeing is again the subject of unwanted attention from regulators and customers over safety issues. The shocking scenes on Friday night, in which a Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines suffered a mid-air blow-out, has again raised questions over the safety of the jet. Boeing shares fell by 8% in pre-market trading today…

SEC ‘deeply regrets’ its ‘errors and lapses in judgment’ in crypto case

Attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission apologized to a judge on Thursday for misrepresenting facts used to secure a restraining order and asset freeze against a crypto firm. In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court of Utah, in response to the judge’s order to show cause for its misstep, the SEC attorneys wrote that the commission “deeply…