UK: Tavistock Group founder pleads guilty to insider trading
24 January, 2024
UK billionaire Joe Lewis, whose family trust owns Tottenham Hotspur football club, has pleaded guilty to insider trading in a US court.
Lewis, 86, was accused of passing info about companies he invested in to his private pilots, friends, personal assistants and girlfriends.
US authorities say that the fraud netted millions of dollars in profit.
Lewis pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and two counts of securities fraud and will be sentenced in March.
The businessman founded the investment firm Tavistock Group and is worth approximately $6.2bn (£4.8bn), according to Forbes.
Lewis will plead not guilty to the remaining charges against him, which include 14 counts of securities fraud and two counts of conspiracy, for alleged crimes spanning from 2013 to 2021.
The pilots who were leaked information, Patrick O’Connor and Bryan Waugh, were also charged and entered not guilty pleas last July.
Tavistock Group is a Bahamas-based private investment organization founded in 1975. The company is headquartered in the offshore financial center of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas.
Subsidiaries: Freebirds World Burrito, Ultimate Finance Group, Lake Nona Land Co. LLC
Founder: Joe Lewis
Founded: 1975
Headquarters: Windermere, FL
Michelle Williams “Dying for Sex”
17 January, 2024
Michelle Williams, who has taken a two-and-a-half-year break from acting since she starred in Steven Spielberg’s movie The Fabelmans, disclosed to Deadline that her next project will begin next spring and will see her team up again with network FX. Michelle Williams is set to star in and produce Dying for Sex, a limited series for FX from writers Liz Meriwether (The Dropout) and Kim Rosenstock (Only Murders in the Building), director Leslye Headland (Acolyte) and 20th Television, where Meriwether, Rosenstock and Headland are under overall deals.
Based on the hit Wondery podcast, Dying for Sex is the story of a woman (Williams) diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer who leaves her husband of 15 years and begins to explore her sexuality. She gets the courage and support to go on this adventure from her best friend, who stays by her side all the way to the very end.
[December 1 2023 Michelle Williams is set to star in and produce Dying for Sex, a limited series for FX ]
[January 30 2010 Blue Valentine: ‘lengthy oral sex’ ratings fight ]
‘”Blue Valentine” is the consummate awards contender ‘ With the low seven-figure purchase, Harvey Weinstein was able to get in the awards game relatively cheaply — a lot more cheaply than he would making an awards movie from scratch.
“Blue Valentine” is the consummate awards contender. The film, which includes an unflinching sequence at an abortion clinic and a lengthy oral sex scene, may have a fight on its hands with the ratings folks at the Motion Picture Association of America. In a statement, Harvey Weinstein said: “The quality of the film and daringness of the filmmakers is astounding. As for Ryan and Michelle Williams, their performances are incendiary.”
The Weinstein Co. nabbed U.S., Canadian and Pan-Asian satellite territory rights to Derek Cianfrance’s romantic drama starring the pair in a low-seven-figure deal.
WME Global chief Graham Taylor was in an anxious huddle at a restaurant off Main Street well after midnight Thursday with “Blue Valentine” producers (and his personal valentine) Lynette Howell, Jamie Patricof and Alex Orlovsky, (the team behind the 2006 Sundance hit “Half Nelson”) as all-night negotiations were going down. IFC Films and Sony Pictures Classics were also said to be in the mix.
“Blue Valentine” offers the possibility of pitching both a lead male and female, as well as the filmmakers, particularly director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance, who developed the script for years and is said to have written more than 60 drafts of the script before the Incentive film fund and WME kick-started it last spring. With the low seven-figure purchase, Harvey’s able to get in the awards game relatively cheaply — a lot more cheaply than he would making an awards movie from scratch.
Citigroup 20,000 job cuts are “tough on morale”
12 January, 2024
Citigroup will cut 20,000 jobs by the end of 2026 after enduring a steep loss in the last quarter as it presses ahead with a sweeping restructuring.
While chief executive, Jane Fraser, hailed 2024 as a “turning point” for the American banking group, Mark Mason, its chief financial officer, acknowledged that job cuts are “tough on morale” as he outlined the planned reductions.
Citi currently has 239,000 staff across the world. The lender plans to reduce this by 20,000 as part of a reorganisation, Mason said.
[January 10 2024 SVB: Citigroup a $1.7 billion charge for collapse of Silicon Valley Bank ]
Citigroup, in the filing, said it recorded a $1.7 billion charge to its operating expenses in the quarter related to a special assessment from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., under which the FDIC would collect money to cover for uninsured deposits lost after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and others last year. It set aside $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter to account for risks in Argentina and Russia, citing shocks to both nations’ economies,
[May 24 2023 Citigroup Banamex: to complete separation second half of 2024 [
Citigroup said Wednesday it plans to pursue an initial public offering of its Mexico business Banamex, scuttling a 16-month effort to find a buyer for the unit.
The bank expects to complete the separation in the second half of 2024, with a public offering likely to follow in 2025. Banamex has 38,000 employees and 1,300 branches, with more than 12 million retail clients and about 10 million pension customers.
[December 20 2022 ]
[Gruenberg the FDIC Chair ]
The Senate by voice vote Monday confirmed Martin Gruenberg as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Gruenberg first joined the banking regulator in 2005 and chaired it from 2012 to 2018.
The Senate has confirmed him unanimously five times.
The Senate also confirmed Republicans Jonathan McKernan and Travis Hill to the board and designated Hill as vice chair in the same en bloc vote.
[April 15 2022 Citigroup to sell Banamex? ]
The nationality of who buys Citigroup’s Mexican unit, known as Citibanamex, will not be the deciding factor despite the Mexican government’s preference to sell the bank to a local buyer, an executive told local media in an interview published on Tuesday.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has made clear he wants to see investors “Mexicanize” the unit, floating names of Mexican billionaires like Ricardo Salinas of Banco Azteca and Carlos Hank Gonzalez of Banorte as potential buyers.
[February 16 2020 No conclusive evidence that Trump’s funding originated in Russia ]
Dark Towers provides no conclusive evidence that Trump’s funding originated in Russia.
Donald Trump, Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater attend the Trump Soho launch party in New York on 19 September 2007.
Dark Towers provides no conclusive evidence that Trump’s funding originated in Russia.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/16/dark-towers-review-deutsche-bank-donald-trump
[ July 4 2019 ]
900 clients are suspected of using its Regula subsidiary to avoid taxes so Frankfurt’s state prosecutors will search the homes of people who it suspects of using a company formerly owned by Germany’s biggest bank for tax evasion and money laundering by using its Regula subsidiary to avoid taxes.
Deutsche Bank helped clients shift criminal money, identifying more than 300 million euros ($339 million) that had allegedly flowed to the British Virgin Islands registered vehicle in 2016. Roughly 170 criminal police officers, prosecutors and tax inspectors searched Deutsche Bank offices in and around Frankfurt, Germany, November 29, 2018, on money laundering allegations.
29 March 2018 HAMILTON, Bermuda– The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited (“Butterfield”) (NYSE: NTB) (BSX: NTB.BH) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of the Deutsche Bank Global Trust Solutions (“GTS”) business (excluding US operations). Former GTS employees and accounts have successfully transitioned to Butterfield and all trust and fiduciary services for former GTS clients will be conducted from Butterfield locations in the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Switzerland, Singapore and Mauritius with effect from 2 April 2018.
Butterfield announced on 25 October 2017 that it had reached an agreement with Deutsche Bank to acquire GTS and take over the ongoing management and administration of the GTS portfolio. Over 60 Deutsche Bank employees have joined Butterfield as part of the acquisition to provide continuity of service for clients.
Regula Limited operates as a subsidiary of The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited
[February 5 2018 Banamex ]
Kenneth Blanco
Trump’s Justice Department is now raising eyebrows for handing another unit of Citigroup a non-prosecution agreement May 18 2017 for egregious money laundering violations.
[ January 23 Kushner: suspicious monies through Deutsche Bank…denied ]
Deutsche Bank on January 22 denied a magazine report that said that the bank had reported to German banking supervisors suspicious funds associated with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor.
The Manager Magazin article, translated from German, reports. “Their finding: There are indications that Donald Trump’s son-in-law or persons or companies close to him could have channeled suspicious monies through Deutsche Bank as part of their business dealings.”
[ January 9: Putin friend Uzbek-born Lev Leviev and Jared Kushner ]
Jared Kushner’s association with Deutsche Bank is among a number of financial matters that could come under focus as his business activities are reviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining Kushner as part of a broader investigation into possible Russian influence in the election.
One month before Election Day, Kushner’s real estate company finalised a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.
The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The Deutsche Bank loan was delivered just before the bank – which has long been under investigation by federal and state authorities – agreed to pay a $7.2 billion US penalty in December for mortgage securities fraud in its packaging of residential mortgages. The bank also paid a $425 million New York state fine in January for failing to properly track large transfers from Russia.
The Deutsche Bank loan capped what Kushner Cos. viewed as a triumph: It had purchased four mostly empty retail floors of the former New York Times building in 2015, recruited tenants to fill the space and got the Deutsche Bank loan in a refinancing deal that gave Kushner’s company $74 million more than it paid for the property.
The refinancing loan with Deutsche Bank is mentioned in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a public offering of mortgage-backed securities. It states that Kushner and his brother, Joshua, “will be guarantors” under what was called a “nonrecourse carve-out.” Such guarantees require more than a loan default to kick in. They are commonly known as “bad boy” clauses, a reference to how a lender could seek to hold the guarantor responsible for the debt under circumstances that might include fraud, misapplication of funds or voluntary bankruptcy deemed inappropriate. The terms of the guarantee, which generally are not secured by collateral, are negotiated between lender and borrower.
“The way to look at this is, so long as you’re not a ‘bad boy’ and don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” said James Schwarz, a real estate lawyer who is an expert in such clauses. “To the extent you would do something fraudulent, then you have things to worry about.”
The Deutsche Bank deal was one of the last Kushner orchestrated before joining the White House. It is among the dozens of complex transactions that he was involved with during his decade in the real estate business.
Although Kushner divested some properties in an effort to address potential conflicts, he retains an interest in nearly 90 percent of his real estate properties, including the retail portion of the former New York Times headquarters, and holds personal debts and loan guarantees.
The deal that led to the Deutsche Bank loan is rooted in a holiday party held in late 2014 at the Bowlmor bowling alley, which is located in the retail portion.
At the party, Kushner decided that the four retail floors of the building, while rundown, could be transformed into a thriving tourist destination, according to his associates.
The building passed through several owners after the newspaper sold the property for $175 million in 2004 to Tishman Speyer. Tishman sold it three years later for $525 million to a company called Africa-Israel Investments. (Those transactions prompted Trump a few months ago to poke fun at the Times, tweeting that the “dopes” at the newspaper “gave it away.”)
Africa-Israel’s decision to purchase the building was made by its chairman, an Uzbek-born Israeli citizen, Lev Leviev. He is one of the world’s wealthiest men, known as the “King of Diamonds” for his extensive holdings in Africa, Israel and Russia. He was then expanding his real estate holdings in New York City.
Leviev told the New York Times shortly after the building’s purchase that he was a “true friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, largely through his work with an influential Jewish organisation in the former Soviet Union. The newspaper wrote that he kept a photo of Putin in his office in Israel. Leviev’s company said in a statement to The Post that Leviev “does not have a personal relationship” with Putin but has met him “on a few occasions.” Leviev’s statement said he was referring to his belief that “Mr Putin has been a ‘true friend’ to the Jewish people in Russia.”
In 2008, a year after the building’s purchase, Leviev invited Trump to his Madison Avenue store, an ultra-high-end establishment called Leviev Jewelry, where they were photographed together, according to the Leviev statement. Leviev hoped to work with Trump on Moscow real estate deals, according to an article in Kommersant, a Russian newspaper. The Leviev statement said that the two “never had any business dealings with one another, contrary to speculation.”
Six years later, Kushner saw an opportunity for his own company.
Leviev, whose company was having financial difficulties, according to an Israeli press account, sold the building’s 12-floor office portion for $160 million, a transaction that did not involve the four retail floors.
Leviev’s daughter, Chagit, took charge of her father’s US subsidiary and set out to find a buyer for the retail portion of the building. The company said it would entertain offers no lower than $300 million.
Kushner’s company offered $265 million, which was rejected. Kushner himself then negotiated with Chagit Leviev and others in 2015 and succeeded with a $296 million offer, according to an official involved in the matter. “It was a very hard back-and-forth New York negotiating style,” said Kushner’s broker, Lon Rubackin. Leviev’s partner in the deal, Five Mile Capital, did not respond to a request for comment.
Few knew it at the time, but the negotiations had nearly consummated when Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, ran into Chagit Leviev on May 4, 2015, at an after-party for a Metropolitan Museum of Art gala – an encounter that was memorialised in a picture posted on Instagram.
“Such a pleasure seeing @jaredckushner and his stunningly beautiful wife @ivankatrump last night [at] the #metballafterparty,” Chagit Leviev wrote.
The deal was signed a week later and closed in October 2015. The Leviev company said in a statement to The Post that Kushner simply made the highest offer and “there was no political element to the transaction.”
Kushner took over a property that was only 25 percent leased, according to a company official. His company recruited tenants, offering some a year’s free rent to lock in long-term contracts, according to an SEC filing. As a result, the building was nearly fully leased, with higher rents, including new tenants such as National Geographic.
The strategy paid off when Kushner’s company went to Deutsche Bank for refinancing. An appraisal cited in SEC filings for the package of mortgage-backed securities placed the value at $470 million, a 59 percent increase in a year. The bank declined to release the appraisal, but a person involved in the deal said that such a rapid increase was unusual when New York real estate was rebounding from recession, and credited Kushner for finding stellar tenants.
In a statement, Kushner Cos. President Laurent Morali said the property’s value increased sharply “for a simple reason: the building’s dramatic turnaround. We had a vision for the property when we purchased it that no one else had, and are proud to say that we executed on it.”
Kushner’s company took out $370 million in new loans in October 2016, giving it $74 million more than the purchase price a year earlier. Along with $285 million from Deutsche Bank, Kushner’s firm received $85 million from SL Green Realty, where Kushner had once worked as an intern. SL Green spokesman Rick Matthews said the deal made sense because the building has been mostly leased, giving it “increased value.”
[January 4 Preet Bharara was fired and Prevezon case was dropped. Trump helping Russians? ]
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8871081/693762026.jpg)
Prevezon is a holding company with links to Russian elites that has been accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through New York City real estate. It’s also part of Hermitage Capital, an investment fund that was being investigated by Magnitsky (the Russian lawyer who was killed in a Moscow prison in 2009) more than 10 years ago.
Several months after Trump takes office, the Prevezon case is dismissed. So what happened? The U.S. attorney was carefully preparing a case against Prevezon Holdings. They were all set to go forward, and then suddenly the case was settled. Prevezon’s own lawyers were kind of shocked. We know they paid something like $6 million, which is a fraction of what the lawsuit was about. So they were extremely happy about it.
But it’s not even necessary for him to have any direct connections here. They’re only asking for some relief in this case, in return for certain compromising documents. So the interesting thing for me [Seva Gunitsky, politics professor at the University of Toronto] is, was there pressure placed on the U.S. Attorney’s Office by the administration, by the Department of Justice? What we know is that Preet Bharara, the attorney in charge of the case, was fired in early March, and shortly thereafter the Prevezon case was dropped.
Congressional Democrats have openly expressed concerns about what happened here. They want to know why it was settled so quickly. Was pressure being applied from above? In any case, we can see the possible motivations of the people approaching Trump for favors. When I say the collusion starts with financial interests, this is what I mean.
It’s not that obstructing democracy wasn’t important; it’s that it was potentially a happy byproduct of these financial relationships.
I’m not saying the political dimension is unimportant — surely it is. But if we’re talking about the roots of the collusion, we have to look at where Trump’s links with Russia begin. And it begins with money. [These roots] don’t start with the election; they start with money, and namely Russian oligarch money. This doesn’t start with the election; it starts with Russian oligarch money pouring into Trump’s real estate and casino businesses. Many of them Trump has been working with for years, well before he developed any serious political ambitions. And we’re not talking about small change here; we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Possibly even enough to keep Trump out of another bankruptcy.
We know because they’ve told us. We can talk about specific cases in a minute, but Donald Trump Jr. has already admitted the importance of Russian money to their business ventures. He said publicly in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
[January 4 Fire and Fury Deutsche Bank ]
Stephen Kevin Bannon,media executive, political activist, and former investment banker, speaking to author Michael Wolff, “It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”
Last month it was reported that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the German financial institution that has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner property empire. Bannon continues: “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. “
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,
[ December 5 2017 Learn money laundering via Trump ]
[August 21]
Robert Mueller has assembled a team of sixteen lawyers. One of them is fluent in Russian, and five have extensive experience investigating and prosecuting cases of money laundering, foreign corruption, and complex financial conspiracies. The path from Trump to Putin, if one exists, might be found in one of his foreign real-estate deals.
A stalled 2011 plan to build a Trump Tower in Batumi, a city on the Black Sea in the Republic of Georgia, has not received much journalistic attention. The deal, for which Trump was reportedly paid a million dollars, involved unorthodox financial practices that several experts described to me as “red flags” for bank fraud and money laundering; moreover, it intertwined his company with a Kazakh oligarch who has direct links to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. As a result, Putin and his security services have access to information that could put them in a position to blackmail Trump. (Sekulow said that “the Georgia real-estate deal is something we would consider out of scope,” adding, “Georgia is not Russia.”)
The developer that had paid Trump and invited him to Georgia—a holding company known as the Silk Road Group—had been funded by a bank that was enmeshed in a giant money-laundering scandal.
Trump Tower Batumi was going to be funded not by Trump but by businesses with ties to Kazakh oligarchs, including Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s autocratic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and a close ally of Putin.
The Financial Action Task Force, headquartered in Paris, is led by representatives from thirty-seven nations. In 2007, the task force issued a report about the use of real-estate projects for money laundering. The report makes note of several red flags. It warns of “complex loans” in which businesses “lend themselves money, creating the appearance that the funds are legitimate.” It also warns of the use of offshore shell companies and tangled corporate legal structures, especially those in which third parties are hired to administer a company and conceal its true ownership. These intertwined companies can then trade property among themselves, in order to create inflated valuations: “An often-used structure is, for example, the setting up of shell companies to buy real estate. Shortly after acquiring the properties, the companies are voluntarily wound up, and the criminals then repurchase the property at a price considerably above the original purchase price. This enables them to insert a sum of money into the financial system equal to the original purchase price plus the capital gain, thereby allowing them to conceal the origin of their funds.”
The report states that money launderers often find that “buying a hotel, a restaurant or other similar investment offers further advantages, as it brings with it a business activity in which there is extensive use of cash.” Casinos—like the one planned for the Trump Tower Batumi—are especially useful in this regard. The casino was to be owned by the Silk Road Group and its partners.
Alan Garten, the chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, declined to describe the due diligence behind the Batumi tower. When the deal was signed, the general counsel for the Trump Organization was Jason Greenblatt, who is now President Trump’s envoy to negotiate Middle East peace. (The White House declined to comment for this story, referring me instead to Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, who also declined to discuss the specifics of the Batumi deal.)
Ross Delston, a prominent anti-money-laundering attorney in Washington, D.C., told me that, if one of his clients approached him with the possibility of entering a licensing relationship with the people involved in the Batumi deal, he “would tell him not to walk away but to run away—to run like hell.” He explained, “There are too many aspects of the deal that don’t make sense, and there’s no way, as an outsider, that you could conduct sufficient due diligence to figure out if it is criminal.”
So many partners of the Trump Organization have been fined, sued, or criminally investigated for financial crimes that it is hard to ascribe the pattern to coincidence, or even to shoddy due diligence. In criminal law, there is a crucial concept called “willful blindness”: a person can be convicted of a crime even if he was unaware of certain aspects of the crime in which he was engaged. In U.S. courts, judges routinely explain to juries that “no one can avoid responsibility for a crime by deliberately ignoring what is obvious.” (When the Trump Organization cancelled the Batumi deal, it noted that it held the Silk Road Group “in the highest regard.”)
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business-of-corruption
[June 5 2016 Hank Greenberg can be sued for hiding insurance company’s losses]
American International Group
The New York Court of Appeals ruled that state officials can try to recover millions of dollars in bonuses and interest from Former American International Group CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg , 91, and his co-defendant, Howard Smith, 71, former AIG chief financial officer.In 2005, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Greenberg and Smith of using fraudulent transactions to hide the insurance company’s losses and mislead investors about its financial condition.
Greenberg’s lawyer, David Boies, later tried to get the charges dismissed, arguing that a $115 million settlement between AIG executives such as Greenberg and a group of shareholders should have ended the case. But the court rejected that argument and ordered the trial to proceed. More than $55 million may be at stake. In addition, the court said the state could seek to ban Greenberg and Smith from the securities industry and from serving as officers or directors of public companies. The U.S. government in a separate case last August appealed a judge’s ruling that sided with Greenberg on a legal claim over AIG’s bailout and found that the Federal Reserve exceeded its authority in the insurer’s bailout.
The case centers on a transaction with General Re, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The New York suit claims Greenberg orchestrated a $500 million transaction that boosted loss reserves without transferring risk. A second transaction, with Capco Reinsurance Co, allegedly hid a $210 million underwriting loss in an auto-warranty program
The People of the State of New York by Eric T. Schneiderman v. Maurice R. Greenberg
[April 4 Americans in Panama Papers: ‘Wait. Just look at what’s coming…’ ]
Americans later
Jen Mills for Metro.co.uk But weirdly, considering it’s the world’s largest economy, there was nobody from the USA .Stefan Plöchinger, digital editor of German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung which obtained the leaks, shot out this teaser earlier today, saying: ‘Wait. Just look at what’s coming…’
many items below
[August 17 2015 Carlos Hank Rhon and Banamex under DoJ subpoenas ]
Justice Department is examining anti-money laundering practices at Banco Nacional de Mexico, Citigroup’s Mexico unit known as Banamex, to see if any of its clients were involved in money laundering, Justice wanted Citigroup (C.N) to provide information on accounts tied to four businesses affiliated with Hank Rhon, two units each of Grupo Financiero Interacciones SA (GFINTERO.MX) and Grupo Hermes SA, which are controlled by Hank Rhon and his family as well as a fifth firm, Banco Monex, that’s not connected to Hank Rhon. Hank Rhon, a businessman involved in banking, construction and heavy industry, is the son of Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a longtime force in Mexico’s ruling party who died in 2001.
more Banamex
Carlos Hank Rhon’s fortune includes assets in the financial, industrial, real estate and transportation industries. His best-known company is bank holding company Grupo Financiero Interacciones, where he and his family own a 74% stake. In 2014 his son, Carlos Hank González, left the company when he became chairman of the board of another banking conglomerate, Grupo Financiero Banorte, in which his mother’s family has a 12% stake. In addition to Interacciones, Hank Rhon owns Grupo Hermes, an industrial conglomerate with interests in construction, infrastructure projects, energy, transportation, tourism and auto dealerships. He is the son of one of Mexico’s best-known politicians, the late Carlos Hank Gonzalez, who held several key government positions including Mexico City mayor, Secretary of Agriculture and governor of his home state of Mexico. [Clear?]
Jorge Hank Rhon (born January 28, 1956) is a Mexican politician, businessman and owner of Mexico’s largest sports betting company, Grupo Caliente. An eccentric and controversial personality, he served from December 2004 to February 2007 as the president of the municipality of Tijuana. He is the son of former Mexico City mayor Carlos Hank González and Guadalupe Rhon.Hank has long been target of diverse rumors and accusations. Tijuana
[August 17 Doral Bank pair charged with $2.35 million wire fraud and money laundering]
Doral search was being conducted by the white-collar crime unit regarding a federal offense
Doral could possibly be taken over by the FDIC Friday, people with knowledge of the matter told. A federal grand jury returned a 13-count indictment Feb. 18 charging Defendant Annelise I. Figueroa and Defendant Rolando Rivera Solis with financial institution fraud, misapplication of $2.35 million in bank funds, wire fraud and money laundering.
[December 26 2014 Doral Bank raid connected to 2011 unsolved murder?]
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents entered the Doral Bank’s offices about 8:15 a.m december 23. in San Juan to collect information including computers and documents, the Doral search was being conducted by the white-collar crime unit regarding a federal offense. However, she said she wouldn’t exclude the possibility that the probe may also relate to the 2011 murder of a Doral executive, Maurice Spagnoletti. The raid took place at the bank’s information technology offices in Hato Rey.
Spagnoletti, 56, was shot while driving home from work to the fashionable Condado beach front district in rush-hour traffic in June 2011 after leaving the Bank, in what authorities said was a professional execution. At that time, the man was Executive Vice President of Doral Bank, a position he occupied for six months.
Following the execution of Spagnoletti, his widow and daughter, Marisa and Lucy , respectively, filed a lawsuit civil at the federal level in 2013 for “wrongful death” or death by negligence, involving officers of the Bank, including its President Glen Wakeman. However, they withdrew the demand in January 2014.
In the lawsuit, the relatives of Spagnoletti claimed that he received threats after he found fraudulent bank transactions and advised President Glen Wakeman should dismiss Annelisse Figueroa, who was Executive Vice President of operations together with the head of security Jose Robles and Vice President, Chief compliance and Chief Legal, Enrique Ubarri Baragaño, defendants in the action.
Since 2012, Doral Bank has been operating under a consent agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and parallel sanction by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which required the directors to set policies and closely monitor the bank’s financial reporting, among other things, according to the complaint.
But the company ended up surprising investors on March 18 when it said it could not file its Form 10-K report for 2013 on time because it discovered material weakness in its accounting controls, Fair View said in its complaint. The bank subsequently revised its reported loss for the quarter ending Sept. 30 to $2.57 per share from $1.49 a share, it said.
Spagnoletti was president of Greenville-based Carolina First Bank, a subsidiary of The South Financial Group Inc., from April 2006 to June 2008.
fraud
[October 15 Citigroup Inc. fined $2 million in Oceanografía- Banamex]
Luis Robles and Javier Arrigunaga
The Mexican regulator, the CNBV, said October 15 that in its review of Oceanografía’s relationship with Banamex, it found actions that could be considered crimes. it has fined the local unit of Citigroup Inc.a little more than $2 million for failing to prevent an alleged fraud against the bank by a client, oil-services firm Oceanografía.
The regulator also said that Banamex should have had better internal controls in place to prevent such losses.The incident also has led to the departure of high-level employees at the bank, with Citigroup announcing this month that Banamex Chief Executive Javier Arrigunaga had resigned.
[June 30 BNP “perpetrating what was truly a tour de fraud,” pleads guilty]
BNP’s general counsel, Georges Dirani, in a Manhattan court on June 30.
BNP hid the names of Sudanese and Iranian clients when sending transactions through its New York operations and the broader American financial system. In the bank’s Geneva office, “there was policy to strip, amend and omit” information identifying Sudanese clients. “This conspiracy was known and condoned at the highest levels of BNP,” Edward Starishevsky, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said in court on Monday when the bank pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying business records and one count of conspiracy. BNP agreed to pay an $8.9 billion penalty
French bank BNP Paribas and the U.S. government are close to settling the criminal investigation of the bank for between $8 billion and $9 billion.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the bank conducted at least $30 billion of illegal transactions on behalf of companies and government agencies in Sudan over a period of five years, violating U.S. sanctions. In addition to paying a record fine, the bank is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and agree to a temporary prohibition on its ability to conduct transactions in U.S. dollars. Although the fine seems huge compared with those paid by other banks in comparable cases, prosecutors feel that it’s justified because of the severity of the misconduct as well as the fact that BNP didn’t cooperate as fully as the government would have liked.
The bank conducted at least $30 billion of illegal transactions on behalf of companies and government agencies in Sudan over a period of five years, violating U.S. sanctions. In addition to paying a record fine, the bank is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and agree to a temporary prohibition on its ability to conduct transactions in U.S. dollars.
[April 30]
A development could produce the first guilty plea to criminal charges from a major bank in more than two decade. A lack of criminal prosecutions of banks and their leaders fueled a public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are “too big to jail.” The decision is to seek guilty pleas in two of the most advanced investigations: one into Credit Suisse for offering tax shelters to Americans, and the other against France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, over doing business with countries like Sudan that the United States has blacklisted. The approach applies to American banks, though those investigations are at an earlier stage.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, has opened his own criminal investigations into a fraud at Citigroup’s Mexican affiliate and other American banks. And in the recent speech, Mr. Bharara warned, “You can expect that before too long a significant financial institution will be charged with a felony or be made to plead guilty to a felony, where the conduct warrants it.”
BNP’s shares are down less than 4%–a steep fall, but hardly calamitous. And its CDS have hardly budged, actually trading roughly one basis point tighter, at 64 basis points, according to data provider Markit. So much for banks being too big to indict.
[April 3]
There was valid documentation for $185 million of work, Citigroup said, but Banamex had advanced Oceanografía a total of $585 million. Some of Oceanografía’s invoices, Citigroup said, “were falsified to represent that Pemex had approved them. A Banamex employee processed them.”
A criminal investigation, overseen by the F.B.I. and prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan has opened as to whether holes in Citigroup Inc’s internal controls contributed to the fraud in Mexico. The question for investigators is whether Citigroup — as other banks have been accused of doing in the context of money laundering — ignored warning signs.
At Citigroup’s Grupo Financiero Banamex, Oceanografía became one of Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex)’.s largest corporate clients.
Under a short-term lending arrangement, Banamex would advance money to Oceanografia SA de CV, whose existence hinged almost entirely on government contracts. Banamex issued the loans with the understanding that Oceanografía had received contracts from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil monopoly. Once the work was completed, Pemex would repay the loan to Banamex.
Oceanografía’s financial problems became apparent in January 2014, when it announced that it would not be able to pay interest on a debt of $335 million contracted in 2008. Mexican authorities suspended Oceanografía from obtaining additional government contracts for several months. Shortly after, Banamex discovered a fraud.
There was valid documentation for $185 million of work, Citigroup said, but Banamex had advanced Oceanografía a total of $585 million. Some of Oceanografía’s invoices, Citigroup said, “were falsified to represent that Pemex had approved them. A Banamex employee processed them.”
Banamex accounts for 13 percent of Citigroup’s revenue.
At first glance, Citigroup appeared to be the victim of the fraud involving the Mexican oil services company Oceanografía. After all, the bank lost millions of dollars.
But the F.B.I. and prosecutors are questioning whether Citigroup was equal parts victim and enabler.
For one, it is unclear whether the wrongdoing at Citigroup was actually limited to a single Banamex employee, as early reports indicated. The authorities are investigating whether the scheme involved co-conspirators at the bank’s offices in the United States.
Banamex, acquired in 2001, is the biggest unit in Citigroup’s Latin America operations, which account for about 20 percent of total revenue. Profit at the subsidiary almost quintupled in the past decade, burnishing its reputation as well-managed and shielding the Mexico City-based bank from corporate interference.
The fraud allegations and a disclosure this week that Banamex USA received subpoenas in the U.S. related to money laundering now tarnish the unit’s image. The probes also could put pressure on Citigroup co-President Manuel Medina-Mora, whose job includes oversight of Mexican operations, and Banamex Chief Executive Officer Javier Arrigunaga, 50.
[September 15 2011]
Kweku Adoboli, a 31-year old trader on UBS’ exchange-traded-fund desk in London, has been arrested by City of London police in connection with rogue trading that has cost the Swiss banking giant an estimated $2bn (£1.3bn). The landlord at Mr Adoboli’s former £1,000-a-week apartment in Shoreditch, east London, described him today as a “nice guy”. a trader on UBS’ exchange-traded-fund desk in London. His title is listed as “Director ETF and Delta1 Trading at UBS Investment Bank.”
Investment banks’ Delta One operations trade securities that attempt to track an asset closely. Details are not yet known about what Adoboli traded.
Delta One can be considered the last domain of prop trading in the banking sector, where via market-making activities, traders can still get away with taking ample risks.
This is one of the few divisions in the banking community which is still hiring.
Bank of America: shift from Libor requires $1.6B charge
8 January, 2024
(Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp. took a roughly $1.6 billion charge tied to the finance industry’s shift away from the London Interbank Offered Rate benchmark, a non-cash and pre-tax earnings charge the company said will eventually be made up as income.
As part of the shift away from Libor, alternatives including the Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield Index were created. That index will be permanently shut down on Nov. 15. As a result, the bank determined it was required “to ‘de-designate’ certain interest-rate swaps used in cash flow hedges” as of November of 2023, and “reclassify into earnings any amounts recognized in the accumulated other comprehensive income category of shareholders’ equity that relate to forecasted cash flows that are now no longer expected to occur.”
The charge reduced the company’s common equity tier 1 ratio by eight basis points as of the end of 2023. Bank of America is scheduled to report results for the fourth quarter and for 2023 on Friday.
[July 11 2023 $250m in fines, refunds ]
(Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp. took a roughly $1.6 billion charge tied to the finance industry’s shift away from the London Interbank Offered Rate benchmark, a cost the company said will eventually be made up as income.
As part of the shift away from Libor, alternatives including the Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield Index were created. That index will be permanently shut down on Nov. 15. As a result, the bank determined it was required “to ‘de-designate’ certain interest-rate swaps used in cash flow hedges” as of November of 2023, and “reclassify into earnings any amounts recognized in the accumulated other comprehensive income category of shareholders’ equity that relate to forecasted cash flows that are now no longer expected to occur.”
The charge reduced the company’s common equity tier 1 ratio by eight basis points as of the end of 2023. Bank of America is scheduled to report results for the fourth quarter and for 2023 on Friday.
BofA must refund $100 million to customers, pay $90 million in penalties to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and $60 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “Bank of America wrongfully withheld credit card rewards, double-dipped on fees, and opened accounts without consent,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, in a statement. “These practices are illegal and undermine customer trust.”
Morgan Stanley and Allen & Overy working for Kolesnikov
8 January, 2024
Sergey Kolesnikov, originally from Russia but now a Maltese citizen under its “golden passport” scheme is estimated to be worth $1.2bn (£940m) as a result of the building materials business he co-founded.
Only Poland has imposed sanctions on the 51-year-old but Ukraine has included him on its list of people it wants the EU to use sanctions against.
Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, and Allen & Overy, one of the elite “magic circle” law firms headquartered in London, have been helping Kolesnikov as he attempts to take ownership of the Verbluzhye oilfield, said to contain 100m barrels of oil, in Astrakhan in southern Russia.
Allen & Overy, now in the process of merging with the US law firm Shearman & Sterling, announced in March 2022 that it was closing its Moscow office due to the “illegal and senseless invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing humanitarian crisis”. In December 2022, Morgan Stanley said: “We are not entering any new business onshore in Russia and our activities in Russia are limited to helping global clients address and close out pre-existing obligations.”
[September 14 2023 $50B returns to Russia, Russia-Cyprus link gone ]
Russia has introduced several measures to lure its billionaires back home. It suspended dual tax treaties and increased the costs of safeguarding assets in havens like Cyprus and Malta, while companies re-registering in Russia can qualify for tax benefits.
“The Russia-Cyprus link doesn’t work very well now in terms of money transfers,” Alexei Kuznetsov, whose firm B1 Group previously operated in Russia. “This is solved by moving to a friendly jurisdiction or Russia.”
[January 6 2023 Families of oligarchs have avoided restrictions ]
Amendments made Roman Abramovich’s seven children, the youngest of whom is nine years old, beneficiaries of trusts holding assets worth at least $4bn, though the total value could be much higher.
The revelations are likely to raise questions about whether Abramovich’s children should also be subject to asset freezes. Unlike family members of some of Putin’s closest advisers, many families of oligarchs subject to sanctions have avoided restrictions. Until that month, Abramovich was the sole beneficiary of at least 10 Cyprus and Jersey trusts. But on 4 February – almost in one fell swoop – the trusts began to be amended to appoint Abramovich’s seven children as beneficiaries.
UK and EU governments have cast Abramovich as a pro-Kremlin oligarch and in March 2022 imposed sanctions on him for allegedly benefiting from close relations with Putin.
China sanctions on U.S. arms mostly symbolic
7 January, 2024
BEIJING (AP) — China announced sanctions Sunday on five American defense-related companies in response to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and U.S sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals.
The sanctions will freeze any property the companies have in China and prohibit organizations and individuals in China from doing business with them, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted online. It was unclear what impact, if any, the sanctions would have on the companies, BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions. Such sanctions are often mostly symbolic as American defense contractors generally don’t sell to China.
[April 2 2022 Meng Wanzhou promoted ]
It was unclear what impact, if any, the sanctions would have on the companies, BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions. Such sanctions are often mostly symbolic as American defense contractors generally don’t sell to China.
50-year-old Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, has been named one of three rotating chairs who helm Huawei for six-month intervals. Ren, 77, remains chief executive. Meng will keep her place as chief financial officer.
[September 23 2021 to return to China, pleads not guilty, admits ‘misleading’ ]
Meng Wanzhou is expected to appear virtually in an American federal courtroom today to plead guilty [pleaded not guilty, admitted misleading creditors] in the U.S. proceedings against her. – Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL) Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is expected to appear virtually in federal court to resolve U.S. charges against her. Judicial hearings in her extradition case wrapped up in August, with the date for a ruling to be set on Oct. 21. The U.S. case is U.S. v. Huawei Technologies Co., 18-cr-457, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
[August 26 2021]
Aug 25 (Reuters) – U.S. officials have approved license applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars for China’s blacklisted telecom company Huawei to buy chips for its growing auto component business,
[August 20 2021]
Meng – who also goes by her English name, Sabrina – is the chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board at the powerful Chinese tech giant founded by her father, Ren Zhengfei.
Like Huawei, Meng’s rise to prominence in global telecom business is also a story of China’s long pursuit of “wealth and power”.
[Augusr 19 2021 Meng Wanzhou’s extradition: October 21 ]
Holmes has set the next hearing date for 21 October, when she is expected to give a clearer timeline on when a decision can be expected.
Even if she chooses to approve the extradition request, appeals by Meng could bring the case all the way to the country’s supreme court – a lengthy and costly route that could take eight years.
[August 13 2021 final arguments ]
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes posed a question after Robert Frater, a lawyer for Canada’s attorney general, said Meng’s alleged misconduct falls squarely within the bounds of fraud law.
“Isn’t it unusual that one would see a fraud case with no actual harm many years later and one in which the alleged victim, a large institution, appears to have numerous people within the institution who had all the facts that are now said to have been misrepresented?” Holmes asked.
[August 4 2021]
The judge begins hearing the final extradition arguments. A judgement is expected later in the year. If Meng Wanzhou loses, the extradition request goes to Canadian government ministers for their decision. Her lawyers can then launch an appeal. This means the case could potentially drag on for another five years or more.The court hearings, which are expected to last up to three weeks, mark the culmination of two-and-a-half years of legal battles.
[July 10 2021 no more docs ]
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies chief financial officer, will head into her final extradition hearings next month without banking evidence in her legal battle against extradition to the United States on fraud charges.
“My decision is that the application is denied,” Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes said during a case management hearing on Friday. “The HSBC documents will not be admitted.”
Holmes did not provide her reasons for the decision, but said they would be released in roughly 10 days.
[March 3 2021 alleged political interference ]
The defense wants the judge overseeing the B.C. Supreme Court extradition proceedings to toss the case over what Meng’s lawyers claim is an abuse of process. Crown urges judge to reject bid to toss extradition case over alleged political interference
“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Mr Trump is reported to have said.
The hearings at the Supreme Court of British Columbia are expected to continue until May. Appeals could lengthen the process significantly. Some Canadian extradition cases have lasted as long as a decade.
Ren Zhengfei is the founder and CEO of Huawei.
The U.S. case is U.S. v. Huawei Technologies Co., 18-cr-457, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/meng-wanzhou-extradition-trump-huawei-1.5935849
[August 8 2020 and Chinese-Canadian death sentences ]
Jan. 14, 2019 China has given Robert Lloyd Schellenberg the death penalty as an accessory to drug smuggling. In April 2019, China gave the death penalty to a Canadian citizen identified as Fan Wei in a multinational drug smuggling case. Xu Weihong is the third Canadian citizen to death on drug charges. Ye Jianhui a fourth Canadian citizen had been found guilty of manufacturing and transporting illegal drugs.
[May 28 2020 to proceed to next phase in June ]
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes ruled that extradition proceedings against the Huawei executive should proceed.
In a widely anticipated decision on so-called double criminality,
Huawei’s legal team argued in January that since the sanctions against Iran did not exist in Canada at the time of her arrest, Meng’s actions were not a crime in Canada. Prosecutors representing the Canadian government countered that the lie itself was the fraud, regardless of the existence of sanctions. A ruling in favour of Meng gives the Canadian government time to decide whether to appeal the decision.
As the judge ruled in favour of the Canadian government, the case will proceed to the next phase in June, arguing whether Canadian officials followed the law while arresting Meng. Closing arguments are expected in the last week of September and first week of October.
Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, 48, was arrested in Vancouver in December 2018. China arrested two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, in apparent reprisal for her arrest; they have been in prison for 535 days. Ms. Meng is on bail and living under a form of house arrest in a Vancouver mansion.
[November 22 2019 Huawei Technologies Co Ltd: stay extradition of Meng Wanzhou ]
November 21, 2019 Lawyers for Huawei Technologies Co Ltd filed an application to a Canadian court to immediately stay the extradition proceedings of the company’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou to the United States, Because Canada did not have sanctions against Iran at the time Canadian officials authorized commencing with the extradition process, double criminality cannot be met. The standard of double criminality means that the alleged conduct for which Meng was arrested in 2018 has to be illegal in both countries for her to be extradited
Canada: hostages taken by China released
Endeavor Mining missing $5.9m
6 January, 2024
Forensic accountants EY and Linklaters were unable to identify the owner of a bank account to which Sébastien de Montessus, the former CEO of Endeavour Mining, instructed a $5.9m payment.
Endeavour Mining Plc tumbled after announcing it fired chief executive Sébastien de Montessus, citing “serious misconduct” and irregularities tied to the sale of a company asset.
The London-based gold miner removed de Montessus after discovering an alleged “irregular payment instruction” of US$5.9 million related to an asset sale, it said in a statement. The company also revealed it recently conducted an external investigation into the CEO’s personal conduct with colleagues, following whistle-blowing allegations from October.
Endeavour, which is backed by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, traded 12 per cent lower in London on Friday, after falling 10 per cent in Toronto following the announcement on Thursday. Naguib Sawiris is a scion of Egypt’s wealthiest family. His brother Nassef is also a billionaire. The company has named mining industry veteran and Deputy Chairman Ian Cockerill as CEO.
De Montessus said that in 2021 he instructed an unnamed creditor of Endeavour to offset an amount owed to the company for essential security equipment, to protect its partners and employees in an unspecified conflict zone.
“The decision had no additional cost to the company and did not benefit me personally in any way,” de Montessus said in his statement. “I omitted to inform the board that I had arranged for this offset, which I have freely accepted was a lapse in judgment.”
Hue and Cri 