The Public Ledger of Corruption
The American bank Wells Fargo has been fined $97.8m (£79m) by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department for breaching US sanctions laws. Inadequate oversight meant that it allowed a foreign institution to process $532m in illegal transactions involving Iran, Syria and Sudan. Wells Fargo said it stopped dealing with the client in 2015.
familiar with the matter.
The subpoenas from the U.S. territory’s attorney general seek any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein, the people said.
The four men are some of the wealthiest people in the U.S., and it couldn’t be determined why they were being asked for the communications and documents. In civil cases, lawyers can use subpoenas during the discovery process to get information from people who aren’t a party to a lawsuit but could provide evidence related to the case.
The U.S. Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan late last year in a Manhattan federal court, saying the bank facilitated Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and abuse by allowing the late financier to remain a client and helping him send money to his victims. The civil lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan received referrals of high-value business opportunities from Epstein and turned a blind eye to his activities. The bank has said it didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes and can’t be held liable.
Lawyers for a wealthy self-exiled Chinese businessman who developed ties to Trump administration figures including Steve Bannon are seeking bail for him two weeks after his arrest, saying other defendants accused of massive frauds like Bernard Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried were freed on bail.
The lawyers submitted papers in Manhattan federal court, saying Guo Wengui is entitled to bail just as other wealthy defendants have been given the chance to post bail in the past. They also challenged claims by prosecutors that he is a risk to flee, saying he would not leave his wife of 38 years and his daughter as all three seek asylum.
Madoff was free for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 before he was jailed after he pleaded guilty in a multibillion-dollar fraud. He was later sentenced to 150 years in prison and died behind bars.
Bankman-Fried, 31, was arrested in the Bahamas in December in what a prosecutor called one of biggest frauds in American history. He agreed to return to the United States, where he was freed with GPS monitoring on a $250 million personal recognizance bond after pleading not guilty to charges that he oversaw a massive cryptocurrency fraud.
The United Arab Emirates’ central bank on Friday said it will cancel the licence it granted last year to Russia’s MTS bank, which was placed under British and US sanctions in February.
Operations at the bank’s UAE branch, which is licensed in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, will be wound down within six months under UAE central bank supervision.
A statement from MTS Bank said it will fulfil all settlement obligations to existing customers and guarantee the safety of their funds for six months.
“This decision comes after considering the available options regarding the new status of the MTS Bank and taking into account the sanctions risks associated with the bank,” the UAE central bank’s statement said.
The International Monetary Fund said on Friday its executive board approved a four-year $15.6 billion loan program for Ukraine, part of a global $115 billion package to support the country’s economy as it battles Russia’s 13-month-old invasion.
The decision clears the way for an immediate disbursement of about $2.7 billion to Kyiv, and requires Ukraine to carry out ambitious reforms, especially in the energy sector, the Fund said in a statement.
The Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan is the first major conventional financing program approved by the IMF for a country involved in a large-scale war.
A jury will decide whether Fox Corp defamed Dominion Voting Systems with false vote-rigging claims aired by Fox News after the 2020 US election, a judge has ruled.
In a setback to the media company that had sought to avoid a trial in the $US1.6 billion ($A2.4 billion) lawsuit, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Friday denied motions from Fox and partially granted Dominion motions to resolve the issue of defamation liability ahead of the scheduled April 17 trial date.
Former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq., a partner at the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (“KSF”), announces that KSF has commenced an investigation into Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW).
In November 2021, the Company disclosed that it could not timely file its quarterly report due to an internal investigation into accounting issues. On March 31, 2022, the Company disclosed a multitude of internal procedural and control failures, including “an additional material weakness” beyond the company’s “previously identified internal control deficiencies.” The next day, the Company finally filed its 3Q2021 report revealing that its “disclosure controls and procedures” suffered from an inadequate “control environment” and that “certain members of senior management failed to consistently message and set certain aspects of an appropriate tone at the top.”
The Committee has learned that while Mr. Taibbi was describing his findings of government abuse and civil liberties violations, an IRS revenue officer appeared at Mr. Taibbi’s personal residence in New Jersey — leaving a note for Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. When Mr. Taibbi called the IRS, the IRS informed him that the reason for the visit was because his electronic 2018 and 2021 tax return filings had been rejected due to concerns of identity theft.
According to Mr. Taibbi, the IRS notified his accountant that the IRS had accepted his 2018 filing, and in the four-and-a-half years since then, the IRS has never notified Mr. Taibbi or his accountant of any issue with this return — until the day he was testifying before Congress. With respect to his 2021 return, the IRS rejected Mr. Taibbi’s electronic filing twice, even after his accountant filed with an IRS-provided pin number. In both cases, the IRS informed Mr. Taibbi after the agency visited his home that the problems were not “monetary”; in fact, the IRS apparently owed Mr. Taibbi a “considerable” tax return.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the verdict could not stand after the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board canceled the virtual private network (VPN) patents VirnetX accused Apple of infringing.
The ruling follows the Federal Circuit’s Thursday decision to affirm a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal’s finding that the patents were invalid.
(Reuters) -A Johnson & Johnson company cannot delay a court order dismissing its bankruptcy, a U.S. court said on Friday, despite the company’s planned Supreme Court appeal to use bankruptcy to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits over its talc products. J&J sought to use the bankruptcy of its subsidiary company, LTL Management, to halt…
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