Financial Crime Online

An end to one of the most spectacular Swiss banking criminal cases. Zurich based banker Holenweger was acquitted of money laundering charges. Eight years after Holenweger was first arrested on charges of laundering money for South American drug cartels, the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona on Thursday cleared him of all charges, which also included [...]

The US DOJ reported that former (JP Morgan) vice president James Hertz ´Pleads Guilty for Role in Bid-rigging and Fraud Conspiracies Involving Municipal Bonds´. JP Morgan was was a provider of investment agreements and other municipal finance contracts, such as swaps, to public entities. Public entities typically hire a broker to conduct a competitive bidding [...]

So let’s say you made a mistake and invested your money in a ponzi scheme. By the time you find out about your mistake, the bad guy is probably broke. How to recoup your money. Sue the bank; that is where the money is. Not your money (that went to boats, juwelry, cars, real estate [...]

Another rogue banker…. This banker at the Oberbank in Austria is reported to have embezzled over 8 million euros of client’s funds. Internal controls apparently did not pick up the abnormalities until this month while the fraud started in May 2008. The banker allegedly forged client’s signatures to transfer money to accounts in Hungary to [...]

An $8.9 million fine that is. The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) said Tuesday that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its subsidiaries failed to properly screen its customers and their transactions during 2008, leading to an “unacceptable risk that RBS could have facilitated transactions involving sanctions targets, including terrorist financing.”. Notice the words ‘could [...]

The European Commission has fined 17 bathroom equipment manufacturers a total of € 622 250 783 for a price fixing cartel covering six EU countries. “These 17 companies fixed prices for baths, sinks, taps and other bathroom fittings for 12 years in six countries covering 240 million people. The cartel will have harmed businesses such [...]

A former employee of Pamrapo Savings Bank was arrested by IRS agents on June 2 and charged with diverting and embezzling more than $600,000 from the  New Jersey-based bank. According the the details published in the public domain to date, the scheme was quite simple. In a complex banking environment, he asked business partners to [...]

Swiss banks are no longer what they used to be. The ‘secrecy veil’ has been lifted to a large extent. Money launderers found ‘safer’ havens for their dirty money. This week it was announced that a Swiss banker, the former CEO of Tempus PrivatBank, is indicted for corruption and money laundering after a 7 (!) [...]

The Quadrangle Group agreed to pay $ 12 million to settle allegations of paying kickbacks to get business from a NY pension fund. The investment firm will pay $ 7 million to the pension fund and $ 5 million to the SEC. News of the settlement came on the same day that the state comptroller, [...]

The SEC claims that Goldman created and sold to its clients a mortgage unit that was devised to fail ,without telling clients that the set up was for the portfolio to fail. Within half an hour after this announcement, Goldman’s share price dropped 10% (or over $ 10 billion). The SEC alleges that one of [...]