Foreign Collusion, Naked Shorting (Counterfeiting) & Money Laundering — All Illicit Wealth
Credit Suisse fined $135 million over unfair forex practices
Manaya Bagga, 14 November 2017
Credit Suisse has agreed to pay $135 million to resolve a probe of misconduct in its foreign exchange business. New York’s banking regulator Department of Financial Services (DFS) said Credit Suisse improperly shared information to manipulate currency prices and benchmark rates, and deceived customers to enhance its profits. The bank engaged in “unsound conduct” from 2008 to 2015, DFS added.
Credit Suisse Pays $135 Million to Settle New York FX Probe
Greg Farrell, 13 November 2017
Credit Suisse AG will pay $135 million to resolve currency-manipulation allegations by New York’s banking regulator, the latest echo from authorities’ long-running scrutiny of foreign-currency trading at big banks.
Traders at the Zurich-based bank, prodded by executives in some cases, shared information about clients’ currency orders, talked to traders from other banks and in some instances front-ran customer orders in an effort to boost the bank’s own profits, New York’s Department of Financial Services said as it announced a settlement on Monday.
Top Wall Street Banks Accused of Conspiracy to Control Stock Lending Market Via Threatening Tactics and Boycotts
Cohen Milstein, 17 August 2017
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Face Antitrust Allegations
NEW YORK—Several of the world’s largest investment banks have colluded, in violation of federal antitrust laws, to create and maintain exclusive control of the more than $1 trillion stock loan market, reaping massive profits at the expense of investors, according to three public employees’ pension funds which today filed a federal class action lawsuit. The suit alleges that since at least 2009, six of the world’s largest investment banks—Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS—have illegally conspired to overcharge investors and maintain the power they hold over the stock loan market, obstructing multiple efforts to create competitive electronic exchanges that would benefit both stock lenders and borrowers. Continue reading “Article: Top Wall Street Banks Accused of Conspiracy to Control Stock Lending Market Via Threatening Tactics and Boycotts”
Morgan Stanley, 4 others settle forex-rigging case for $111.2M
Katherine Dela Cruz
S&P Global, 30 July 2017
Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Plc, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., Société Générale SA and RBC Capital Markets LLC agreed to pay a total of $111.2 million to settle a U.S. lawsuit accusing them of manipulating prices in the foreign exchange market, pending court approval.
The lawsuit was filed in 2014 against 12 companies, including Morgan Stanley, for allegedly conspiring to fix artificial prices on foreign exchange markets. In 2015, Standard Chartered, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Société Générale and RBC Capital Markets were added as defendants in the case.
VirnetX Class Accuses Big Brokers of Naked Short Sales
Chris Fry
Courthouse News Service, 19 December 2016
Investors claim in a federal class action that Goldman Sachs and other banking giants suppressed the share price of VirnetX, “a leader in mobile security technology.”
In addition to Goldman Sachs, the Dec. 14 complaint in Bergen County Superior Court takes aim at Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and the Bank of New York Mellon. The case is the Top Download for Courthouse News on Monday.
Credit Suisse Tries to Overhaul Its Image, but Problems Remain
William D. Cohan
New York Times, 23 June 2016
Wall Street’s efforts to overhaul its culture since the 2008 financial crisis that nearly bankrupted the world’s economy have not been a resounding success, despite calls by prominent regulators to stop rewarding bad behavior.
William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and one of Wall Street’s most important overseers, has twice held closed-door sessions at the bank, located in downtown Manhattan, to urge top banking executives to overhaul the behavior inside their companies. His goal has been to get bankers to think about what they should do instead of what they can do and get away with.
Nine banks to pay $2 billion to US investors in rate-rigging case
Pinsent Masons, 18 August 2015
Nine of the world’s largest banks have agreed to pay a total of $2 billion in compensation to investors in the US over the manipulation of exchange rates, and to cooperate in litigation against 12 other defendants.
Law firm Hausfeld announced that settlements have been reached with Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS on behalf of investors.
The banks will now work with the investors in continuing litigation against Credit Suisse Group, Credit Suisse, Credit Suisse Securities, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank Securities, Morgan Stanley, Morgan Stanley & Co, Morgan Stanley & Co. International, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi., RBC Capital Markets, Société Générale and Standard Chartered. Several of these banks were added to the action last month based on facts found during the investigation, Hausfeld said.
JP Morgan agrees to pay $100 million to settle a Currency Manipulation Lawsuit in New York
Giambrone, 25 January 2015
Financial service giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reached a $100 million settlement to resolve a U.S. antitrust lawsuit that sought damages for the alleged rigging of foreign currency markets, in which investors accused 12 major banks of rigging prices in the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market in the case of In re: Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-07789.
JP Morgan will pay about $100 million and settled the case after mediation with Kenneth Feinberg, an American attorney, specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution. Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, RBS and UBS also settled with regulators in November for an additional $3.3 billion. Continue reading “Article: JP Morgan agrees to pay $100 million to settle a Currency Manipulation Lawsuit in New York”
JP Morgan Agrees New Settlement for FX Manipulation
Profit & Loss, 7 January 2015
JP Morgan has agreed a settlement, believed to be worth $100 million, in an antitrust litigation lawsuit brought against 12 major banks for alleged manipulation of the FX market.
The bank submitted a letter to judge Lorna Scholfield of the Court of the Southern District of New York, stating that it had reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs in this litigation and that is planning to file a copy of the settlement terms with the court for approval by the end of January.
Reuters, 3 November 2014
From bundles of cash inside scraps of newspaper to setting up shell companies, the trial in Florida of a former UBS executive is a reminder of the extreme methods some Swiss bankers used to hide clients’ cash.
Raoul Weil, 54, is the highest ranking Swiss banker to be arrested in the United States and prosecutors are seeking to paint him as a facilitator of efforts that helped conceal up to US$20 billion in taxpayers’ assets in secret offshore accounts.
How to Explain the Number of Financial Crimes on Wall Street
Robert Lenzner, 17 June 2021
I ask everyone how to explain the stunning number of financial crimes we have witnessed the last several years and never get an adequate clear answer. The reason: it’s not easy to grasp why Bank of America , Citigroup , BNP-Paribas, UBS , Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase and a bevy of giant hedge funds are sweating their way through the demand for fines in the tens of billions or potential jail sentences as long as decades.
One reason it’s hard is that prosecution of the crimes comes so many years later than the crimes themselves. It’s hard to contemplate so many banks of marketing garbage mortgages, or laundering money for Iran, Sudan, and other rogue nations or radical groups, or secret bank accounts in Switzerland. The cops on the beat take much more time to act than the actual crimes took. Continue reading “Article: How to Explain the Number of Financial Crimes on Wall Street”
Swiss probe banks over foreign exchange market
BBC News, 31 March 2014
RBS, Barclays, UBS, Credit Suisse, Zuercher Kantonal Bank, Julius Baer, JP Morgan and Citigroup are being probed by Swiss competition commission, Weko.
“Evidence exists that these banks colluded to manipulate exchange rates in foreign currency trades,” Weko said.
The regulator opened a preliminary investigation last October. Weko said the information it had so far suggested that most important exchange rates are affected.
Authorities worldwide are investigating allegations that some foreign exchange traders have colluded in setting certain key exchange rates in the foreign exchange market, resulting in big profits. Continue reading “Article: Swiss probe banks over foreign exchange market”
Naked Gold Shorts: The Hows and Whys of Gold Price Manipulation
Commodity Trade Mantra, 20 January 2014
The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis.
Securities Lending Times, 20 August 2013
“Abusive”, “like a form of terrorism” and “funny paper”are three descriptions of naked short selling, given by the Securities and Exchange Committee, a life insurance company CEO, and broker-dealer Jeffrey Wolfson, respectively.
They do not do much to dispel the belief of naked shorting as a practice that is even worse than selling a borrowed security, only to buy it back at a lower price—what we know as covered short selling.
Lan Pham
Economics Voodoo, 28 December 2012
The banking and financial crisis emerging in September 2008 is often called a global financial crisis, but to be more precise the data point to a crisis of the Western central banks. I referenced euros previously, so this is the euros companion to Quantitative Easing 0-1-2-3∞ & The Federal Reserve’s Love Affair with its Banks and Mortgage Bonds: Levitating The Black Hole. QE 0-1-2-3 is incomplete as concurrently the Federal Reserve Bank also entered into $10.06 Trillion in dollar ‘loans’ liquidity swaps with foreign central banks that we examine in Section I. Why QE $10T as we look at a few of Europe’s largest banks in Section II, which leads us to the $1.25 Trillion naked reasons behind the Federal Reserve Bank’s Quantitative Easing I purchase of phantom agency mortgage bonds that we revisit more closely in Section III.
THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?
