Search Results for “"money laundering"” – Attestation Update

Headline from 2017 which is relevant again today: Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again.

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Jim Ulvog

With Credit Suisse expected to get swallowed up into UBS today and thus disappear as an independent entity, I thought it would be a fine time to reprint this article which describes the bank’s legacy.

Pay particular attention to comments at then of the post – – Credit Suisse has a subsidiary whose sole purpose in life is to launder money for clients. They have been laundering money since 1910. Yes, 1910.

Previously posted on 2/24/17:

A different type of money laundering. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Looks like Credit Suisse is in trouble again. The feds and NYDFS have opened another money laundering investigation.

Check out the report on 2/23/17 at Wall Street Journal – Credit Suisse Probe Opens Old Wounds for the following info.

A retired professor invested $500K in a startup back in 2000. When the company went public in 2008, his shares were worth $80M.

Cool! Good for him!

He didn’t want to share a lot of that with Uncle Sam, so he got some help from the Israel branch of Credit Suisse to cut his tax bill.

By 2013 he had $200M parked in his accounts in Switzerland.

Well, somehow the revenuers caught up with him.

He cooperated extensively, including wearing a wire to some meetings.

Current status for him is he was sentenced to seven months in a federal penitentiary. The Bureau of Prisons is expecting him (inmate 90504-083), but he is not in custody. (Check for yourself here.) That means he will be moving into federal housing soon. Unstated implication is that means he is now a felon.

Current status for Credit Suisse is another probe with possible additional prosecution and additional fines. Several bankers have been fired.

The rules have changed

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Headline from 2017 which is relevant again today: Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again.Read More »

Headline from 2017 which is relevant again today: Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again. Read More »

Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again.

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Looks like Credit Suisse is in trouble again. The feds and NYDFS have opened another money laundering investigation.

Check out the report on 2/23 at Wall Street Journal – Credit Suisse Probe Opens Old Wounds for the following info.

A retired professor invested $500K in a startup back in 2000. When the company went public in 2008, his shares were worth $80M.

Cool! Good for him!

He didn’t want to share a lot of that with Uncle Sam, so he got some help from the Israel branch of Credit Suisse to cut his tax bill.

By 2013 he had $200M parked in his accounts in Switzerland.

Well, somehow the revenuers caught up with him.

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Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again.Read More »

Credit Suisse under investigation. Again. For money laundering. Again. Read More »

Surprise! Enforcement efforts against money laundering have unintended consequences.

Leave a Comment / Other stuff, Pondering / Jim Ulvog

Severe fines against large banks for violating anti-money laundering rules has led the banks to place a heavy focus on making sure their customers are legit. The result is a closing accounts of customers who have too high a risk of being shady. The unintended consequence is legitimate businesses and legitimate charities have difficulty finding a place to do their banking.

In a wonderful irony, articles at The Wall Street Journal on two successive days illustrate the tension. The articles leave you wondering in opposite directions. One article makes you think the banks ought to get serious about screening clients and shut down a bunch of accounts. The other article makes you wonder why these charities doing such wonderful work are getting all their accounts closed for no good reason.

First, charities finding themselves without bank accounts.

3/30 – Wall Street Journal – Cautious Banks Hinder Charity Financing / Account shutdowns and holdups of money transfers hinder ability to deliver aid to refugees – A charity that funds a school in Turkey which provides education to around 400 refugees from Syria had their account closed by JP Morgan for no stated reason. After an inquiry from the WSJ, the bank reversed their decision.

Another charity that operates a hospital in Syria had their accounts closed by BofA. After moving to Wells Fargo, their accounts were closed there. Staff at the hospital went four months without pay while the charity tried to figure how to get money into the country.

Authors have spoken to eight other charities who have had their accounts closed. Many others have had money transfers going into Syria, Turkey, or Lebanon held up for varying lengths of time.

Article mentions that banks are under pressure from the U.S. federal government to monitor their customers accounts and close those accounts which could be related to money laundering, whether related to drug running, terrorist financing, or other illegal activity.

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Surprise! Enforcement efforts against money laundering have unintended consequences.Read More »

Surprise! Enforcement efforts against money laundering have unintended consequences. Read More »

Barclays’ money laundering fine in relation to their 2014 financial statements.

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Previous post discussed Barclays drawing a £72M (US$109M) fine for breaking British anti-money laundering laws. The bold scheme involved not putting clients’ names into the computer system amongst other creative plans. They bankers involved also gave their clients a money back guarantee if their names ever became public.

I did a bit of research to find out how the fine compares to their financial statements. Was wondering how big a hit $109M really is for them.

You can find the 2014 financial statements for Barclays at this link. The financials are here. Income statement is on page 224.

Here are some key numbers to help put the £72M fine in perspective:

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Barclays’ money laundering fine in relation to their 2014 financial statements.Read More »

Barclays’ money laundering fine in relation to their 2014 financial statements. Read More »

How’s this for a brazen money laundering scheme? We can add another item to the list of at least $16 billion of fines for money laundering.

1 Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Check out this plan for evading money laundering rules. Oh, it came with a money back guarantee to clients whose money was being laundered. Also, I’ve accumulated a preliminary list of industry-wide fines for getting caught busting those AML rules.

11/26 – CNN – Barclays fined $109 million for trying to hide “the deal of the century” – Staff at Barclays came up with a creative plan to hide clients’ money. The staff processed US$2.8B of deposits from “politically exposed people”, meaning people with significant political power and ability to do bad stuff to generate personal wealth.

Commission for the bank was £52M (US$77M).

According to the article, this scheme involved merely performing an Internet search to verify the source of funds as asserted by the clients, did not enter clients’ names on the internal computer systems which meant compliance staff would never find out who owned the money, and used quickly opened & closed offshore accounts to move the money.

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How’s this for a brazen money laundering scheme? We can add another item to the list of at least $16 billion of fines for money laundering.Read More »

How’s this for a brazen money laundering scheme? We can add another item to the list of at least $16 billion of fines for money laundering. Read More »

Unintended consequences of anti-money laundering enforcement

1 Comment / Pondering / Jim Ulvog

One of the general rules of life seems to be that when one person does something really bad, the larger group pays the penalty.

You remember the drill – one person in the school classroom misbehaves on the playground and the whole class looses recess.

Or one of your coworkers breaks etiquette of the office and there is a new restrictive rule that inconveniences everyone. One person pushes the boundary on expense reimbursement and everyone gets new reporting requirements.

Well, same thing is emerging with the tremendous effort against money laundering.

Check out Account Closed: How Bank ‘De-Risking’ Hurts Legitimate Customers / In their hunt for money launderers, regulators are forcing banks to shut down branches and reject business At the Wall Street Journal on August 13.

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Unintended consequences of anti-money laundering enforcementRead More »

Unintended consequences of anti-money laundering enforcement Read More »

Primer on money laundering and tax havens

2 Comments / Audits, Fraud, Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

High level overview on the how-to of laundering money and using tax havens. Will leave you curious for more details, but it’s a good intro. Also, article on another couple of billion in another settlement from the Great Recession.

4/7/13 – ICIJ – Tax Havens 101: the high cost of going offshore – Good 4 minute primer on how to set up and run an offshore operation to hide assets, whether from the taxman, your spouse, or creditors.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gy2RgjIIZyA]

For under 4 minutes, it is a good explanation.

A few places to expand the ideas:

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Primer on money laundering and tax havensRead More »

Primer on money laundering and tax havens Read More »

Standard Chartered draws $300M fine for money laundering issues

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

As mentioned yesterday, StanChart did get a $300M fine for running afoul of their 2012 agreement. Their software to monitor wires for possible violations of money laundering laws didn’t pick up on one or several million wires that should have been flagged.

In addition to the fine, the bank agreed to permanently halt US dollar settlement for about 300 high-risk clients in Hong Kong and UAE.

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Standard Chartered draws $300M fine for money laundering issuesRead More »

Standard Chartered draws $300M fine for money laundering issues Read More »

Standard Chartered penalty rumored to be $300M for this round of money laundering issues

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Financial Times is reporting StanChart faces fresh $300M US settlement.

This is up from the previously rumored amount of $100M, and would be close to the amount from the previous settlement.

Article says an agreement may be signed this week.

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Standard Chartered penalty rumored to be $300M for this round of money laundering issuesRead More »

Standard Chartered penalty rumored to be $300M for this round of money laundering issues Read More »

Standard Chartered under review for money laundering issues. Again.

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Standard Chartered is in trouble again for money laundering issues.

Either I’ve been blogging long enough to see cycles repeating or the too-big-to-fail banks are getting more casual in their casual efforts to comply with US law. Or maybe I’m just suffering from confirmation bias.

Their software that is supposed to flag suspicious transactions allegedly failed to identify a million transactions that should have been reported to US authorities for review. That is according to the monitor installed to watch their compliance.

Unknown yet how many, if any, of the million suspicious wires were actually illegal.

Settlement negotiations are underway. Discussion in the air suggests a fine of $100M is possible. The bank’s chief executive has reportedly flown to New York to participate in the negotiations.

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Standard Chartered under review for money laundering issues. Again.Read More »

Standard Chartered under review for money laundering issues. Again. Read More »

Search Results for: "money laundering"