[April 1 2019]
There are many Sky Ferreiras. There’s Sky the model, a Hedi Slimane muse who’s walked the runway for Marc Jacobs and perfected a glare so haunted the Bates Motel must be jealous. There’s Sky the actor, who played a key supporting role in director Edgar Wright’s big-studio heist flick Twin Peaks: The Return, but doesn’t have an agent. There’s Sky the live performer, who battles stage fright, but who also opened a 2014 Miley Cyrus arena tour, Sky’s cameo in “Twin Peaks: The Return” had the meta-ness of astral projection. She played Ella, an enigmatic bar patron who talked about a penguin and flaunted a “wicked” armpit rash. “She played that scene so perfectly,” Lynch tells me. “She inhabited that character and made it real from a deep place. When she scratched that rash, you could really feel the itching!” As for Masochism:The proper album is coming, Sky swears, almost positively in 2019.
Trump, his adult children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and the Trump Organization sought a preliminary injunction to prevent Deutsche Bank complying with the subpoenas from the House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, and Capital One from complying with a subpoena from the Financial Services Committee. U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos ruled at a court hearing in New York that Congress has the legal authority to demand the records, Ramos was appointed by President Obama.
[ May 4 2019 ]
Two committees of the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on May 3 2019 asked to intervene in a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump, his three oldest children and the Trump Organization seeking to block House subpoenas seeking financial records from Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp.
Trump’s lawsuit may slow down the congressional investigations but is unlikely to stop them in the long run, says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School.
“I think the president is fully aware that down the road, the court will allow some of these subpoenas, especially the ones that focus on him and his transactions,” she says.
[May 1 2019 ]
COMPLAINT against Deutsche Bank, AG, Capital One Financial Corp.. (Filing Fee $ 400.00, Receipt Number ANYSDC-16789203)Document filed by The Trump Organization, Inc., Trump Acquisition, Corp., Eric Trump, Trump Organization LLC, DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC, Donald J. Trump, Jr, DJT Holdings LLC, Donald J. Trump, Ivanka Trump, Trump Acquisition LLC, The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.(Strawbridge, Patrick)
New York Southern District Court
Case #: 1:19-cv-03826
Nature of Suit 890 Other Statutes – Other Statutory Actions
Cause 12:3410 Right to Financial Privacy: Customer Challenges
Case Filed: Apr 29, 2019
http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/9ee796f6-6af0-11e9-a9a5-351eeaef6d84
Attorneys for President Trump said in a court filing May 1 2019 that Deutsche Bank and Capital One have agreed not to produce any financial records requested under congressional subpoenas until after a federal judge rules on whether to issue a preliminary injunction in the case.
During an explosive public hearing in February, Cohen disclosed copies of Trump’s financial statements which he said were turned over to Deutsche Bank as Trump was seeking a loan to place a bid on an NFL team, the Buffalo Bills. Those statements, according to Cohen, contained false information.
The committee has requested similar records from Capital One, which asked for a “friendly” subpoena before it could comply.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans have rushed to Trump’s defense amid the onslaught of investigations and subpoenas, claiming Democrats are abusing their authority to take down the president and eventually impeach him.
[Febtuary 3 2019 Deutsche Bank: international, national security nexus? ]
‘At no time was any money needed to finance the purchase or the refurbishment of Trump Turnberry.’
Amanda Miller never explicitly addressed whether the Trump Organization asked Deutsche Bank for a loan.The bank declined to comment.
“The bank has received a request from the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees,” said a spokesman for Deutsche Bank on January 24 2019 in Frankfurt. “The Bank is engaged in constructive dialogue with these committees to best assist them in their oversight functions. We will continue to provide the information we need during all official investigations. ”
“The interesting thing about Deutsche Bank is they seem to be pretty much the only entity out there willing to lend to The Trump Organization,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of both committees, said. For the Intelligence Committee, “there has to be some sort of international, national security nexus” such as Russian involvement.
[December 2 2018 money laundering via BVI? ]
DECEMBER 1, 2018 “It’s about two employees who, at the time, helped to work through everything surrounding the issue of the Panama Papers. Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) is not at risk of a takeover, said Christian Sewing, its chief executive.
[November 29 2018]
Deutsche Bank confirmed that police had raided several locations in Germany. In 2016 alone, more than 900 customers were served by a Deutsche Bank subsidiary registered in the British Virgin Islands, generating a volume of €311m, the prosecutors allege.
The investigation was sparked by revelations in the 2016 “Panama Papers” – an enormous amount of information leaked from a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca.
[ June 21 2018 “jamming the fix” at Deutsche Bank ]
John Cryan is out and Christian Sewing is in as CEO of Deutsche Bank
Certain Deutsche Bank traders involved accumulating a large trading position and then using the position to make aggressive trades just before and during the fix window, with the intention of moving the ultimate fix price in a desired direction, up or down – known as “jamming the fix.”
This technique involved accumulating a large trading position, and then using the position to make aggressive trades just before and during the fix window, with the intention of moving the ultimate fix price in a desired direction, up or down (known as“jamming the fix”). Certain Deutsche Bank traders boosted the potential impact of this strategy by using multi-bank chats to share sensitive and confidential client information. This allowed them to learn, for example, whether other traders had large positions in the opposite direction, so that they could attempt to coordinate trading strategies and achieve maximum influence on the published fix rate. The DFS investigation found that it appeared to be understood by other Deutsche Bank traders that the New York foreign exchange spot desk welcomed fix business, in part because of profits generated through manipulation. Deutsche Bank foreign exchange staff were also willing to assist customers who also sought to manipulate fix business. Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to pay a fine of $205 million as part of a consent order with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) for violations of New York banking law, including efforts to improperly coordinate trading activity through online chat rooms, improperly sharing confidential customer information, trading aggressively to skew prices, and misleading customers. https://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/ea/ea180620.pdf
Traders at Deutsche Bank’s US unit suffered losses 12 times larger than its risk projections estimate could occur in one day. On 19 June, the day before news of the trading losses emerged, Deutsche bank let go of five emerging market traders.
[June 2 S&P downgrades Deutsche Bank, Aussie cartel charges filed ]
ANZ treasurer, Rick Moscati
Credit reporting agency Moody’s Investors Service says criminal cartel proceedings against the ANZ Bank are credit negative.
ANZ, its head of treasury, investment banks Citigroup and Deutsche Bank and several other individuals face criminal cartel charges. The ASIC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ] investigation centres on whether [Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited] ANZ’s announcement of August 7, 2015 should have stated the joint lead managers took up approximately 25.5 million shares of the placement.
The shortfall in finding buyers left the underwriters with around $790 million worth of unsold shares. An ANZ statement issued the day after the institutional share sale said the deal had been completed, but made no mention of stock retained by the underwriters and whether there were any plans to dispose of it.
On Thursday, May 31, rating agency S&P downgraded its view of Deutsche Bank’s financial stability, down from A- to BBB+. The agency attributed its decision on Germany’s largest lender to the fact that it believes the bank’s latest restructuring is riskier than had been expected.
That news came at the same time as Deutsche Bank’s US subsidiary was added to the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s list of “problem banks.”
Deutsche Bank’s shares fell hard on Thursday, May 31, down by 7.2 percent on Frankfurt’s DAX exchange, hitting their lowest ever level in the process. In early trade on Friday, Jume 1, they have recovered somewhat, up by around 1.7 percent.
[ 25 % cut in trading jobs at Deutsche Bank NYC & London ]
60 Wall Street
Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) said global headcount would fall to well below 90,000 from 97,000, with a 25 percent cut in equities sales and trading jobs, which are mainly in New York and London and where it has been losing ground to U.S. rivals. It was aiming to axe 10,000 positions.
“We remain committed to our Corporate & Investment Bank and our international presence – we are unwavering in that,” said Christian Sewing, Chairman of the Management Board. €1,050 billion euros of leverage exposure, the ratio of assets to capital on the bank’s balance sheet, was reported at the end of the first quarter of 2018, including derivatives, securities financing transactions (SFTs).
[ Punishment in U.S. over Libor for Societe Generale ]
Didier Valet, right
France is no longer cooperating with U.S. information requests, a decision shaped in part by the monster fines levied on BNP Paribas SA for violating U.S. sanctions. Didier Valet, Societe Generale SA’s deputy CEO, has left without severance pay after a “divergence of approaches” at the bank on how to settle the Justice Department’s probe into whether traders manipulated benchmark interest rates. Is he leaving as a sacrificial offering to the authorities? If that’s the case, the punishment over Libor could be harsher for Societe Generale than for other big banks.
[ July 28 2017 Libor out; SONIA in? ]
Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, says that work must “begin in earnest” on shifting to an alternative index to Libor, saying the end of 2021 would offer time to ensure a smooth transition.The BoE has already been refining its overnight sterling funding rate SONIA, which is based on actual transactions, and which the central bank administers itself, as the substitute for Libor. At least six bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have been sent to prison for manipulating Libor, although some in the United States are still awaiting sentencing.
[July 22 Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase settle yen Libor and Euroyen Tibor cases; “London Whale”; charges dropped ]
U.S. prosecutors have decided to drop criminal charges against two former JPMorgan Chase & Co derivatives traders implicated in the “London Whale” trading scandal that caused $6.2 billion of losses in 2012.
In seeking the dismissal of charges against Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout, the Department of Justice said it “no longer believes that it can rely on the testimony” of Bruno Iksil, a cooperating witness who had been dubbed the London Whale, based on recent statements he made that hurt the case.
Prosecutors also said efforts to extradite Martin-Artajo and Grout, respectively citizens of Spain and France, to face the charges have been “unsuccessful or deemed futile.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan asked a federal judge for permission to drop charges that included securities fraud, wire fraud and falsifying records. Martin-Artajo and Grout were indicted in September 2013.
–
Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) have agreed to pay a combined $148 million to end private U.S. antitrust litigation claiming they conspired with other banks to manipulate the yen Libor and Euroyen Tibor benchmark interest rates.
The preliminary settlements, totaling $77 million for Deutsche Bank and $71 million for JPMorgan, were detailed in filings late Friday July 21 in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and require a judge’s approval.
They followed similar settlements last year with Citigroup Inc (C.N) and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L) totaling $23 million and $35 million, respectively.
January 17 U.S. Libor antitrust actions may proceed ]
The U.S. Supreme Court on January 17 allowed private antitrust lawsuits brought by investors including big U.S. cities accusing major banks of conspiring to manipulate the pivotal Libor benchmark interest rate to move forward. The justices rejected an appeal filed by a group of banks including Bank of America Corp(BAC.N), Deutsche Bank AG(DBKGn.DE), UBS AG(UBSG.S) and JPMorgan Chase & Co(JPM.N) of a May 2016 ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed various lawsuits against them to proceed. The appeals court reversed a lower court judge’s dismissal of investors’ antitrust claims against the banks. The private litigation is separate from Libor rigging probes that have resulted in roughly $9 billion of sanctions worldwide, including $2.5 billion against Deutsche Bank in April 2015. Several bank affiliates have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and more than 20 people have been criminally charged.
[May 3 2016 Alaska Electrical”banging the close” case settled ]
Alleged illegal activity including the execution of rapid trades just before the rate was set each day, called “banging the close,” causing the British brokerage ICAP Plc (IAP.L) to delay trades until they moved ISDAfix where they wanted, and posting rates that did not reflect market activity. Settled is a private U.S. lawsuit accusing them of rigging an interest rate benchmark used in the $553 trillion derivatives market.
Under the settlement, payments would include $52 million from JPMorgan; $50 million each from Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and RBS; $42 million from Citigroup and $30 million from Barclays.
Alaska Electrical Pension Fund et al v. Bank of America Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-07126. The settlement made public on May 3, which requires court approval, resolves antitrust claims against Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Barclays Plc (BARC.L), Citigroup Inc (C.N), Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN.S), Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS.L).
[April 15 Deutsche Bank AG settles London Gold Fixing conspiracy ]
John Cryan, the British former chief financial officer of UBS
April 14 Deutsche Bank AG agreed to settle U.S. lawsuits accusing it of conspiring with other banks to manipulate gold and silver prices at investors’ expense, court papers show.
The settlements were disclosed in letters filed in Manhattan federal court by lawyers representing investors and traders who accused Deutsche Bank of violating U.S. antitrust law.
Terms were not disclosed, but both settlements will include monetary payments by the German bank. Deutsche Bank also agreed to help the plaintiffs pursue claims against other defendants.The plaintiffs accused Deutsche Bank of conspiring with Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Societe Generale to manipulate prices of gold, gold futures and options, and gold derivatives through twice-a-day meetings to set the so-called London Gold Fixing.
They also accused Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ScotiaBank of a similar conspiracy to manipulate silver prices by rigging the daily Silver Fix.
UBS AG was also accused in both lawsuits of conspiring to exploit metals prices.The cases are In re: Commodity Exchange Inc Gold Futures and Options Trading Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-md-02548; and In re: London Silver Fixing Ltd Antitrust Litigation in the same court, No. 14-md-02573.
[June 2015 John Cryan, British former chief financial officer of UBS CEO of Deutsche Bank ]
“It is categorically false that pressure from regulators [known as BaFin,] was a factor in the decision of the co-C.E.O.s to step down early,” Michael Golden, the spokesman, said in an email. He pointed out that Mr. Jain would not receive about 15 million euros in pay he would have been entitled to if he had been fired. Mr. Jain will leave at the end of June while Mr. Fitschen will remain another year.
Sunday 7 June 2015 14.36 EDT Anshu Jain will leave Deutsche Bank at the end of this month, with Jürgen Fitschen staying on until the bank’s annual meeting in 2016. The surprise move of the joint chief executives of Deutsche Bank came just over a month after Deutsche was fined a record $2.5bn (£1.7bn) for rigging Libor, ordered to fire seven employees and was accused of being obstructive towards regulators in their investigations into the global manipulation of the benchmark rate. John Cryan, the British former chief financial officer of UBS, will replace Jain as co-chief executive. When Fitschen departs he will not be replaced, leaving the 54-year-old Briton in sole charge.
[June 5 Deutsche Bank AG and its role in Ruble flight]
Deutsche Bank CEO Juergen Fitschen dances with Friederike Lohse
Transactions involving stocks bought by Russian clients in rubles through Deutsche Bank, and simultaneous trades through London in which the bank bought the same securities for similar amounts in U.S. dollars allowed Russian clients to move funds out of Russia “without properly alerting the authorities,” Deutsche Bank AG ithinks this may have involved about $6 billion over more than four years.
The Bank of Russia approached Deutsche Bank in October asking the firm to examine the stock-trading activities of some clients in the country, said one person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The German lender is analyzing data from 2011 through early 2015, and has alerted Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, the European Central Bank and Germany’s Bafin of the investigation.
Since 2006, , Russian individuals have sent nearly $200 billion out of the country—or more than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product for 2013. And the flow of cash accelerated, up from $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 2013 to $13.4 billion in the third quarter of 2014.
[April 23 Germany’s largest lender by assets will book a profit and “near record revenues” for the first quarter, despite LIBOR fine]
Deutsche Bank AG’s alleged involvement in rigging of foreign-exchange markets, is likely to involve an even higher fine than the Libor investigations. Deutsche Bank is also being probed for alleged violations of U.S. sanctions on countries such as Iran and over high-frequency trading.
Deutsche Bank will agree to plead guilty to manipulation and acknowledge that its internal monitoring systems were insufficient to prevent the manipulation of Libor. Deutsche Bank is nearing a settlement fine of more than $2.15 billion with British and American regulatory authorities. The bank is subject to 180 regulatory investigations and faces 1,000 lawsuits with a claim value of more than €100,000 each, Deutsche Bank has paid more than €5 billion over the past two years for settlements and fines stemming mostly from the financial crisis. Annual revenue 2014 $47.30 B
[November 17 2014 JPM legal costs reserve $5.9 billion: possible 2006 Mortgage Operations problem]
Mortgage operations post-election caper ot DOJ?
“The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare”
Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as “massive criminal securities fraud” in the bank’s mortgage operations.
Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she’s kept her mouth shut since then
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106#ixzz3IOZStO6H
President and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, James “Jamie” Dimon
Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into foreign exchange trading by JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPMorgan’s filing came on the same day that HSBC set aside $1.6 billion for legal costs, some of which is earmarked for an ongoing investigation into that bank’s foreign exchange trading business by U.K. regulators. JPM might need as much as $5.9 billion to cover losses beyond reserves for legal matters, up $1.3 billion from the end of June, and the most since since mid-2013. In October, Citigroup — another bank in settlement talks with regulators — slashed its previously-reported third-quarter profits in order to factor in an additional $600 million in legal costs. Large banks, especially in Europe, have taken billions of dollars worth of hits to their profits in the third quarter to deal with expected legal costs stemming from investigations into foreign exchange manipulation. RBS set aside $640 million, Deutsche Bank has had a $1.1 billion legal charge, and Barclays has had a $800 million charge.
“Credit Default Swaps Investigations and Litigation. In July 2013, the European Commission (the “EC”) filed a Statement of Objections against the Firm (including various subsidiaries) and other industry members in connection with its ongoing investigation into the credit default swaps (“CDS”) marketplace. The EC asserts that between 2006 and 2009, a number of investment banks acted collectively through the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (“ISDA”) and Markit Group Limited (“Markit”) to foreclose exchanges from the potential market for exchange-traded credit derivatives. The Firm submitted a response to the Statement of Objections in January 2014, and the EC held a hearing in May 2014. The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) also has an ongoing investigation into the CDS marketplace, which was initiated in July 2009.
Separately, the Firm and other industry members are defendants in a consolidated purported class action filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers and sellers of CDS. The complaint refers to the ongoing investigations by the EC and DOJ into the CDS market, and alleges that the defendant investment banks and dealers, including the Firm, as well as Markit and/or ISDA, collectively prevented new entrants into the market for exchange-traded CDS products. Defendants moved to dismiss this action, and in September 2014, the Court granted defendants’ motion in part, dismissing claims for damages based on transactions effected before the Autumn of 2008, as well as certain other claims.
Foreign Exchange Investigations and Litigation. DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation, and various regulatory and civil enforcement authorities, including U.S. banking regulators, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) and other foreign government authorities, are conducting civil investigations, regarding the Firm’s foreign exchange (“FX”) trading business. These investigations are focused on the Firm’s spot FX trading activities as well as controls applicable to those activities. The Firm continues to cooperate with these investigations and is currently engaged in discussions with DOJ, and various regulatory and civil enforcement authorities, about resolving their respective investigations with respect to the Firm. There is no assurance that such discussions will result in settlements.”
In 2013, JPMorgan paid over $20 billion in settlements, fines, and compensation to settle investigations into mortgage securities trading, its massive “London Whale” derivatives loss, and its relationship with Bernie Madoff. JPMorgan’s lawyers accepted the $1.7 billion penalty, stemming from two felony violations of the Bank Secrecy Act for turning a blind eye to the Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff. The bank also agreed to pay $350 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, accepting the agency’s only offer,
[October 31 $6.5 to $35B may be collected from banks in forex investigation]
Major U.S. and European investment banks this month boosted to as much as $6.5 billion their collective war chest/reserves for settling with global regulators who are investigating allegations of collusion and manipulation in the of the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. Earlier this year, banking research firm Autonomous put the worldwide total at around $35 billion.
October 8 U.S. prosecutors expect Banging the close action soon]
U.S. prosecutors are pressing to bring charges against a bank for currency-rate rigging by the end of the year, and actions against individuals will probably follow in 2015, according to people familiar with the probe. are looking into allegations that traders shared data about orders with people at other firms using instant-message groups with names such as `The Cartel` and `The Bandits Club.`
One focus is whether dealers sought to move the WM/Reuters benchmark rate in their favor by pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmark is set at 4 p.m. in London each day, a process known in the industry as âbanging the close.â
[March 14 European Commission fines over banging the close]
https://screen.yahoo.com/new-york-times/currency-fix-banging-close-065950331.html
[December 4 2013]
A record total of 1.71 billion euros ($2.3 billion) on December 4 was awarded for rigging financial benchmarks. The penalty is the biggest yet to be handed down to banks for rigging the benchmarks used to determine the cost of lending, one of the most brazen violations of conduct since the financial crisis. It is also the highest antitrust penalty ever imposed by the Commission, the EU’s competition regulator. The other banks penalized are Societe Generale, JPMorgan and brokerage RP Martin. Deutsche Bank received the biggest fine of 725.36 million euros. The European Commission said it would continue to investigate Credit Agricole, HSBC, JPMorgan and brokerage ICAP for similar offences.
[Earlier] Standard Chartered has put one of its senior forex traders, Matt Gardiner on leave. Richard Usher,J P Morgan chief currency dealer in London, and Citi’s Rohan Ramchandani also went on leave after regulators probing forex manipulation started investigating traders’ use of an instant-message group. [October 29] The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, a top federal prosecutor said on October 29, in the first public acknowledgement of such a probe in the United States. Criminal and antitrust authorities have an “active, ongoing investigation” into the possible manipulation, Mythili Raman, the acting head of the department’s criminal division, said. [October 7] Swiss authorities said they were investigating whether financial institutions had colluded to manipulate foreign exchange markets. Traders could potentially influence exchange rates by pushing through large orders exactly at the right time. If those suspicions are proved correct, it could result in yet another embarrassing reputational scandal, not just for individual banks but also for the integrity of the global financial sector. The $4.7-trillion-a-day (CHF4.2 trillion) currency market, the biggest in the financial system, is also one of the least regulated, according to experts. Even the smallest movement in exchange rates could affect the value of investments made by institutional investors, including pension funds. Finma, said it was investigating several Swiss banks but did not name them. The agency also said it was cooperating with authorities in other countries and that banks outside the country were also suspected. UBS is fourth among global banks in currency trading, according to Euromoney. Credit Suisse is a relatively minor player, with 3.7 percent of the currency market vs. 10.1 percent for U.B.S. The largest currency trader globally is Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, with 15.2 percent of the market. The probes come after reports that dealers at banks pooled information through instant messages and used client orders to move benchmark currency rates. Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority said that month it was reviewing the allegations. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also been reviewing potential violations of the law with regards to foreign currency markets, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. Authorities around the world are investigating the alleged abuse of financial benchmarks by the firms that play a central role in setting them. [August 28] In the space of 20 minutes on the last Friday in June, the value of the U.S. dollar jumped 0.57 percent against its Canadian counterpart, the biggest move in a month. Within an hour, two-thirds of that gain had melted away. The same pattern — a sudden surge minutes before 4 p.m. in London on the last trading day of the month, followed by a quick reversal — occurred 31 percent of the time across 14 currency pairs over two years. For the most frequently traded pairs, such as euro-dollar, it happened about half the time, the data show. The recurring spikes take place at the same time financial benchmarks known as the WM/Reuters rates are set based on those trades. Fund managers and scholars say the patterns look like an attempt by currency dealers to manipulate the rates, distorting the value of trillions of dollars of investments in funds that track global indexes. The recurring spikes take place at the same time financial benchmarks known as the WM/Reuters (TRI) rates are set based on those trades. Now fund managers and scholars say the patterns look like an attempt by currency dealers to manipulate the rates, distorting the value of trillions of dollars of investments in funds that track global indexes. In June that dealers shared information and used client orders to move the rates to boost trading profit. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is reviewing the allegations, a spokesman said. “We see enormous spikes,” said Michael DuCharme, head of foreign exchange at Seattle-based Russell Investments, which traded $420 billion of foreign currency last year for its own funds and institutional investors. “Then, shortly after 4 p.m., it just reverts back to what seems to have been the market rate. It adds to the suspicion that things aren’t right.” Authorities around the world are investigating the abuse of financial benchmarks by large banks that play a central role in setting them. Barclays Plc (BARC), Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG (UBSN) were fined a combined $2.5 billion for rigging the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, used to price $300 trillion of securities from student loans to mortgages. More than a dozen banks have been subpoenaed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission over allegations traders worked with brokers at ICAP Plc (IAP) to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark used in interest-rate derivatives. ICAP Chief Executive Officer Michael Spencer said in May that an internal probe found no evidence of wrongdoing. Dralers at banks, which dominate the $4.7 trillion-a-day currency market, may be executing a large number of trades over a short period to move the rate to their advantage, a practice known as banging the close. Because the 4 p.m. benchmark determines how much profit dealers make on the positions they’ve taken in the preceding hour, there’s an incentive to influence the rate, DuCharme said. Dealers say they have to trade during the window to meet client demand and minimize their own risk. [April 2013] The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) recommended April 25 in its latest annual report to Congress that policymakers “promptly” identify other interest rate benchmarks that could replace the London Interbank Offered Rate, which the council said was “unsustainable in the long run.” The lending gauge, known as Libor, comprises a set of rates used to price financial instruments worldwide and is based on self-reported borrowing costs for unsecured loans between banks. The regulators’ call to move from a regime in which banks self-report their borrowing costs to one anchored in actual, observable transactions would shake up the current underpinnings of the financial system. The recommendation is the first of its kind for FSOC, a collection of regulators ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was formed after the financial crisis to spot risks. [March 23] Bank of America Corporation; Bank of America,N.A.; Barclays Bank PLC; British Bankers Association; BBA Enterprises, Ltd.; BBA LIBOR, Ltd; Citigroup, Inc.; Citibank, N.A.; Cooperative Centrale Raiffeissenboerenleenbank,B.A.; Credit Suisse Group AG; Credit Suisse International; Deutsche Bank AG; HSBC Holdings PLC; HSBC Bank USA,N.A.; J.P.Morgan Chase & Co.; J.P. Morgan Chase,N.A.; Lloyds Banking Group,PLC; HBOS PLC; The Norinchukin Bank; Royal Bank of Canada; The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC; The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC; The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd; UBS Ltd; Westlb AG; and Portigon AG. read more
Tiger misses the cut 2019 PGA Championship
18 May, 2019
Tiger Woods, who has been battling a cold, shot a three-over 73 in the second round to miss the cut 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black.
Elin Nordegren, now 39, reportedly kept quiet for the sake of their two children – daughter Sam Alexis, 12, and son Charlie Axel, 10 – and still hasn’t spoken out against her ex.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/9096442/tiger-woods-relationship-erica-herman-elin-nordegren/
[April 10 2019 Tiger/Masters:”according to our model” [wins] ]
[March 15 2019 Tiger tied for 30th Players ]
Brazil’s International Bidding Club cartel
17 May, 2019
Daurio Speranzini
Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, GE, and Koninklijke Philips NV wre being targeted by the FBI for alleged bribery in Brazil. GE’s former chief executive for Latin America, Daurio Speranzini, and 22 others were charged last year in the first case stemming from the alleged scheme. GE was a member of the cartel, which he said was known by its members as the “International Bidding Club. Speranzini first took part in the cartel as the head of the Philips Healthcare operation in Latin America from 2004 until the end of 2010. A whistleblower told Philips’ compliance office about the fraud, and Speranzini was fired after an internal probe, according to the documents.
He was hired by GE a few months after leaving Philips. Investigators say they have strong evidence that Speranzini continued with the scheme while at GE. In addition to paying kickbacks through intermediaries to secure contracts, some suppliers charged Brazil’s government inflated prices – up to eight times the market price – to help cover the cost of their bribes. Daurio Speranzini, served at Philips Medical Systems, where he served as Senior Vice President of Latin America. Prior to Philips, he served positions as Vice President of Worldwide Operations and Vice President, Latin America Operations for Guerbet Group, where he led operations in the South American Mercosur countries for AkzoNobel, and also held positions as Business Manager and Production Manager for DuPont South America.
[January 8 2019 Brazil’s Carwash: Petrobas & Vitol in Houston ]
Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg Glencore — founded by late fugitive Marc Rich
Luiz Eduardo Loureiro Andrade was detained in the U.S. on Dec. 20, for acting as a middleman between top executives at Vitol Group, allegedly funneling bribes to Petrobras officials in exchange for sweetheart deals from the state-run firm. Brazilian prosecutors allege crimes were carried out by Petrobras traders based in Houston and that some illicit funds moved through the U.S. and European banking systems, raising the chance that jurisdiction for investigating the case could widen. The cases are the latest part of Brazil’s “Car Wash” investigation, launched in 2014 to investigate contracting graft at Petrobras. Prosecutors said at least $2.85 million in bribes were involved in the cases involving the oil traders, and have called their discoveries so far the “tip of the iceberg.” Brazilian and U.S. prosecutors have worked closely in the past on Car Wash cases.
[December 5 2018 Houston desk of Petroleo Brasileiro SA charged ]
At Petrobras’ trading desk in Houston, Texas, and in the company’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s “Car Wash” investigation charges Vitol, Trafigura and Glencore paid over $30 million in bribes to employees at state-owned oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA in return for business. Prosecutors said bribes from employees of Glencore, Trafigura and Vitol accounted for half of the total graft uncovered, or some $15.3 million, between 2009 and 2014. The names of other investigated companies were not revealed.
Employees involved worked at Petrobras’ trading desk in Houston, Texas, and in the company’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, prosecutors said.
[October 20 2018 Petrobras will pay about 2 percent of its gross revenues ]
On Sept. 27, 2018, Petrobras agreed to pay about $1.8 billion in combined DOJ and SEC penalties, disgorgement and interest for FCPA violations in connection with a bribery scheme that allowed contractors and suppliers to obtain Petrobras contracts, and facilitated improper payments to politicians and political parties in Brazil. The FBI’s International Corruption Squad in Washington, D.C. investigated the case. Petrobras will pay about $1.8 billion, which amounts to about 2 percent of its gross revenues last year.
[May 21 2017]
French financial prosecutors have launched an investigation into a 6.7 billion euro ($7.5 billion) 2008 contract between naval supplier DCNS and Brazil that included the sale of five submarines..
The investigation, started in October last year, concerns potential “corruption of foreign officials” and is linked to a Brazilian inquiry dubbed Lava Jato, or Car Wash, that was initiated in 2015 to investigate alleged bribery involving hundreds of politicians and public figures.
In the current climate, where Asian countries are buying submarines from is nearly as important as the fact that they doing so—so that Australia’s decision last year to choose French contractors over the Japanese, for instance, was seen as a win for Beijing and a blow to Tokyo.
[February 2 New Justice Justice Edson Fachin]
Lula da Silva
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-crash-idUSKBN1532WH
Justice Edson Fachin was chosen by random electronic selection from among a group of five of the court’s 10 members and will take over the corruption cases from Justice Teori Zavascki, who died in a plane crash two weeks ago.
[October 16 2016]
Report Zavascki, Minister of the SFC (Supreme Federal Court), gave authorisation, October 6, for Operation Lava Jato to be split into several targeted investigations. He agreed that one of these would specifically focus on the role ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva may have played in the alleged corruption scandals.
One part of the investigation, so-called the “Quadrilhão” (“The Big Gang”), looks in particular at the political nucleus involved in the Petrobras corruption scheme. In response to a plea by Brazil’s Attorney General of the Republic, Rodrigo Janot, SFC Minister Zavaski divided the trial into four separate investigations.
[February 25 2015 HSBC Swiss accounts: $110m belonged to individuals linked to Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” ]
Lily Watkins Cohen Monteverde Bendahan Safra
Brazil haslaunched an investigation into whether accounts included in the files are linked to a major corruption scandal which in recent months has engulfed the Brazilian government and state-owned oil company Petrobras.
Analysis of the files indicates that 11 accounts held at HSBC Suisse between 2006 and 2007, which in 2007 had deposits totalling in excess of $110m (£71m), belonged to individuals linked to the investigation, known as “Operation Car Wash”.
Separately, Brazil’s tax authority said on February 13 it would probe 6,600 undeclared accounts with HSBC’s Swiss private bank linked to Brazil.
[February 14 Link between HSBC Swiss accounts, Petrobras scandal and Lily Safra?]
Operation Carwash . Police and prosecutors believe Petrobras contracts were overinflated and the cash either creamed off for personal use or paid off to political parties, including the Workers Party of newly re-elected President Dilma Rousseff. So far more than 40 people have been detained over their involvement in the scandal, which is known in the country as “Operation Car Wash.”
The second source said that “there is a clear link between ‘Operation Car-Wash’ and the HSBC Swiss bank accounts.” He declined to elaborate further and Reuters could not independently verify his account
HSBC’s Swiss unit was largely acquired as part of its purchase of late Brazilian-Lebanese financier Edmond Safra’s Republic New York Corp and Safra Republic Holdings. HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) bought Republic New York Corporation and its sister company Safra Republic Holdings for $10.3 billion (£6.3 billion) – In 1972 Safra used the $40M of capital that he accumulated from dealings in Italy to buy into a small Geneva finance house and, propped up by the assets of his wife, the former Brazilian heiress Lily Monteverdi. The business was eventually to expand and grow into the Trade Development Bank, a large private and trade finance bank, The Safra Group, which comprises a number of European private banks and Safra National Bank of New York, Republic’sTDB French operations and London-based banknote business were sold back to Safra. Safra left 50% of his assets to several charities, with the remainder divided up between his family members and wife who received $ 800 million
Aug 9 13 HSBC Private Bank International has charged Safra National Bank of New York for allegedly poaching seven bankers liable for $4 billion in private banking assets and attempting to steal clients. HSBC has sued Safra and five of the former HSBC bankers, who provided wealth management services for HNW clients in Central America, for allegedly conspiring to help Safra build a Latin American private banking business to compete directly with HSBC. HSBC said that Manuel Diaz and Jose Ortega, presidents of the bank’s Latin American private banking business based in Miami, had been talking with Safra since May 2013, about helping the competitor build a Latin American business. According to the lawsuit, Ortega and six other employees resigned between July 15 and July 31 and Safra has met 11 HSBC employees to offer them a job with a better compensation package. The lawsuit also names former HSBC bankers Jorge Hine, Jessica Valera and Diana Saludes as defendants along with Diaz and Ortega.
read more
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is facing charges of illicit financing for his failed 2012 re-election bid. On May 17 2019, the Constitutional Council ruled that a criminal trial was justified on the grounds that it concerned “the potential breach of probity by candidates or elected officials.” Prosecutors claim Sarkozy spent nearly 43 million euros ($51 million) on his lavish re-election bid — almost double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros — using fake invoices, and demanded he answer the charges in court.
[October 5 2018 trial decision: an appeal hearing has been postponed to the 25th of October ]
The Paris court of appeal has postponed to the 25th of October its decision on the appeal of the former president of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy against his removal before the correctional court in the case of slip-ups in financial his presidential campaign of 2012, the so-called “Bygmalion”.
“The case has been litigated on may 16, but apparently the court needs additional time to decide”, noted the lawyer of the former head of State, Thierry Herzog,
[March 29 2018 trial decision: an appeal hearing June 25 ]
Nicolas Sarkozy must go to trial along with one of his lawyers and a former magistrate on charges of active corruption and influence peddling. “He will … calmly wait for the result of the motion for a declaration of invalidity. He does not doubt that once again the truth will triumph,” the statement said. The court scheduled an appeal hearing for June 25.
[March 22 placed under investigation 1 year after Fillon [hmm] ]
Sarkozy, 63-years-old, who held power from 2007 to 2012, was told by investigators after two days of questioning in police custody on Wednesday, March 21, he was formally suspected of passive corruption, an offense that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in jail. In France, being “placed under investigation” is a step that judicial investigators can take if they have serious grounds for suspecting an offense. It often but not always leads to trial.
2017-03-15
French presidential candidate François Fillon has been placed under formal investigation into allegations he had his wife and children paid hundreds of thousands of euros for parliamentary jobs they may never have performed.
[ March 21 “Garde à vue” – custody ]
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken into police custody for questioning over allegations that he received campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi. Mr Sarkozy clinched big trade deals for France with Libya’s Gaddafi in 2007 when he was president, but he then put France at the forefront of NATO-led airstrikes against Gaddhafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime in 2011.. “Garde à vue” – custody – means he can be held and questioned by police for up to 48 hours. Then he may appear before a judge and may face charges.
Mary-Kate Olsen, 31, and banker husband Olivier Sarkozy, 48, 6′ 2″. Mary-Kate splits time between her and Sarkozy’s $6.25 million Manhattan townhouse and their Paris residence.
[January 14 2012 Merkozy: Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy ]
Having initially been dubbed “Merkozy” by the French press, the moniker has been gaining traction since the autumn. It has become even more prevalent as the pair thrash out proposals to toughen up fiscal discipline ahead of a make-or-break eurozone summit .
FOREX: EU adds $1.2b to U.S./U.K $10b
16 May, 2019
The European Union fined Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan, MUFG and Royal Bank of Scotland a combined 1.07 billion euros ($1.2 billion) on May 16 2019 for rigging the multi-trillion dollar foreign exchange market.
Citigroup was hit with the highest fine of 310.8 million euros, while Swiss bank UBS was not fined as it had alerted the two cartels to the European Commission.U.S. and British authorities have since fined seven of the world’s top banks a total of around $10 billion for trying to manipulate foreign exchange rates.
[April 1 2019 Colin Bermingham, 5 years and Carlo Palombo, 4 years: Euribor rate-rigging ]
Colin Bermingham, 62, and Carlo Palombo, 40, both former Barclays traders, were convicted of conspiracy to defraud – Euribor rate-rigging.
Mr Bermingham received a five year jail term, while Mr Palombo was jailed for four years.
Another trader, Sisse Bohart, has been acquitted.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Michael Gledhill echoed controversial remarks by Mr Justice Cooke, who presided over the first interest rate rigging trial in 2015 of former UBS trader Tom Hayes, saying he wanted “a message sent out to the world of banking”.
“Those convicted of manipulating interest rates will face substantial custodial sentences,” he said.
Mr Hayes was sentenced to 14 years in prison, which was reduced on appeal to 11 and a half years.
[February 20 2019]
National Finance Prosecutor’s Office (Parquet National Financier or PNF) has found UBS AG is guilty of illegally soliciting clients in France and laundering the proceeds of tax evasion, and ordered it to pay 4.5 billion euros ($5.1 billion) in penalties. The combined penalties are a record for France and more than double the $2.46 billion the bank has set aside to cover potential losses from litigation and regulatory requirements.
The French trial follows a similar case in the United States, where UBS accepted a $780 million settlement in 2009, and in Germany, where it agreed to a 300 million euro fine in 2014. UBS last month reported a 2018 net profit of $4.9 billion.
The National Public Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) is a French judicial institution created in December 2013 to track down economic and financial crime. Since its installation, on March 1, 2014, the public finance attorney deals with the highly complex cases for which it has jurisdiction over the entire French territory.
[November 18 2018 DOJ sues UBS on subprime and other risky mortgage loans ]
The U.S. government on 11/9/2018 filed a civil fraud lawsuit accusing UBS Group AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, of defrauding investors in its sale of residential mortgage-backed securities leading up to the 2008-09 global financial crisis. The lawsuit came after UBS rejected a government proposal that it pay nearly $2 billion to settle.
UBS was accused of misleading investors about the quality of more than $41 billion of subprime and other risky mortgage loans backing 40 securities offerings in 2006 and 2007, the Department of Justice said in a complaint filed with the federal court in Brooklyn.
[ Verdict in Libor case: Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black guilty ]
Matthew Connolly
Matthew Connolly, 48, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and Gavin Black, 53, of London, were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, which is used to value trillions of dollars of financial products, from 2004 to 2011, after a monthlong trial in Manhattan federal court,
[Mau 10 2018 Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc to pay $4.9 billion for 2008 bubble ]
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said it reached a tentative agreement to pay a $4.9 billion penalty to resolve a long-running U.S. probe into its packaging and sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis. Analysts had estimated the firm would pay more to resolve U.S. scrutiny of its mortgage business. Analysts at Deutsche Bank AG projected $9 billion, while Bloomberg Intelligence foresaw more than $11 billion. The deal in principle with the DOJ comes after Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion to settle its U.S. probe in March, securing a penalty less than half of what U.S. authorities originally demanded. Rivals also charged by the DoJ include Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. The DOJ penalty comes after RBS’s $5.5bn settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency last year, and its $500m settlement with New York state last month.
[ January 12 Trump waives Libor for Deutsche Bank, Barclays, UBS (UBS), The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Rabobank and Lloyds Banking Group]
The Applicant requests that the description of the charged conduct—the clause beginning “for engaging in a conspiracy”—be omitted. The Applicant states that this description is inaccurate and incomplete, will lead to disputes with counterparties to the detriment of plans, and will make it unlikely that plans will benefit from or be protected by this exemption.
After consideration of the Applicant’s comment, the Department has revised the exemption in the manner requested by the Applicant.
The Trump administration has waived part of the punishment for Deutsche Bank and five megabanks , Barclays, UBS (UBS), The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Rabobank and Lloyds Banking Group,whose affiliates were convicted and fined for manipulating global interest rates. One of the Trump administration waivers was granted to Deutsche Bank — which is owed at least $130 million by President Donald Trump and his business empire, and has also been fined for its role in a Russian money laundering scheme.
The waivers were issued in a little-noticed announcement published in the Federal Register during the Christmas holiday week. They come less than two years after then-candidate Trump promised “I’m not going to let Wall Street get away with murder.”
December 27 2016 Euribor fixing: Swiss franc Libor rate rigging— Lloyd’s traders]
U.K. prosecutors have called in a number of former Lloyds Banking Group PlcLibor traders for questioning over manipulation of the benchmark rate, more than two years after the bank was fined nearly $400 million over the scandal.
The Serious Fraud Office asked the traders to come in for interviews under caution in recent months,
[December 27]
Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays are among banks hit with SFr99m (£78m) of fines by the Swiss competition regulator for operating four separate cartels over Swiss franc Libor rate rigging, as the international fallout from the Libor rate-rigging scandal spreads.Deutsche Bank received immunity for blowing the whistle on the cartel.
The two British lenders were hit with a combined £37m in fines, while HSBC, Lloyds and City of London brokers Icap, Tullett Prebon and RP Martin all remain under investigation by Switzerland’s competition commission, Comco.The probe also saw France’s Société Générale fined £2.6m, while proceedings remain open against JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Rabobank.
RBS was granted immunity in a separate probe into collusion with JP Morgan to influence the Swiss franc version of the Libor interest rate, after it told regulators of the activity.The scale of the Swiss regulator’s penalties pale in comparison to those dished out by European competition authorities.
[December 12 fines for late-settlers ]
European antitrust regulators on December 7 fined Crédit Agricole, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase a total of just over 485 million euros for colluding to fix benchmark interest rates tied to the euro, euribor.
The penalties, equivalent to about $520 million, came more than two years after the European authorities issued a statement of objections — a formal step in antitrust investigations — against the three banks. The inquiry began in 2011.
In December 2013, the European Union fined a group of global financial institutions a combined €1.7 billion to settle charges that they had colluded to fix benchmark interest rates, including the euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor. It was the largest combined penalty ever levied by European competition authorities.
The three banks fined on December 7 did not settle in 2013. The potential fines against those that did settle were reduced 10 percent.
[October 14 Flash trader Sarao to be extradited ]
Navinder Singh Sarao
Britain’s High Court denied a renewed application to appeal against extradition by Navinder Singh Sarao, who did not attend the High Court hearing, and he is due to be sent to the US within 28 days. Theresa May, the Home Secretary at the time, signed off his extradition in May, but the process was delayed when Mr Sarao appealed.
The High Court judges will set out their reasons for rejecting his appeal “in due course”. Navinder Sarao, a 37-year-old from Hounslow, has been fighting the US authorities’ bid to extradite him since he was arrested at his home in April 2015.
He has been charged with 22 offences that come with a maximum sentence of 380 years in total. His trading strategies, run from his bedroom in his parents’ home, generated $40m (£32m) in profits, prosecutors allege
[August 19 Manipulating BBSW-based derivatives prices, Bank bill swap rate, the Australian equivalent of Libor, by a posse of banks? Big Short Guy ]
Richard Dennis
PMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley ,BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Macquarie Group Ltd., Royal Bank of Canada and Credit Suisse Group AG. Brokers ICAP Plc and Tullett Prebon Plc are also defendants. Sonterra Capital Master Fund Ltd., various FrontPoint Financial funds and Florida-based derivatives trader Richard Dennis are complainants.
The case, filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by attorney Vincent Briganti,
Dennis et al v. JPMorgan Chase & Co. et al
New York Southern District Court
Judge: Lewis A Kaplan
Case #: 1:16-cv-06496
Nature of Suit 410 Other Statutes – Antitrust
Cause 15:1 Antitrust Litigation (Monopolizing Trade)
Case Filed: Aug 16, 2016
Derivatives trader Richard Dennis , legendary American commodity speculator and a hedge fund firm depicted in the The Big Short movie for earning billions betting against US subprime mortgages are plaintiffs suing Australian banks in New York for allegedly manipulating market interest rates.
Dennis made his name taking huge bets on commodity futures such as grain, soybeans and pork belly in the 1970s and 80s and went on to help pioneer the renowned Turtle quantitative trading strategy.
“He was the most famous person in the [trading] pits in Chicago back then,” Brian Procter, a floor operations manager for Mr Dennis in the 1980s and now a managing director at US investment firm EMC Partners, told The Australian Financial Review on Thursday in the US.
“He would take gigantic positions, as big as the exchange would allow him.”
Mr Dennis, 67, is a class action plaintiff suing 17 international banks, including the big four Australian banks and Macquarie Group, for allegedly artificially fixing local Bank Bill Swap Rate (BBSW)-based derivative prices from 2003 onwards, according to a claim submitted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York this week.
Florida-based Mr Dennis traded hundreds of Australian dollar futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
[August 10 Block release of HSBC money laundering report
DOJ asked 2d USCA on July 21 to block release of an HSBC money laundering report, HSBC Holdings Plc is working to improve its money laundering controls after the British bank was fined $1.92 billion.In the 2012 settlement, HSBC admitted to violating U.S. sanctions laws and failing to stop Mexican and Colombian cartels from laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds through the bank.
HSBC agreed to monitoring by former New York prosecutor Michael Cherkasky, now the executive chairman of the compliance company Exiger. One of the bank’s mortgage customers filed a motion to unseal Cherkasky’s report to find out whether the bank continued to engage in what the customer claimed were unsafe business practices.
“Public disclosure of the monitor’s report, even in redacted form, would hinder the monitor’s ability to supervise HSBC,” the government’s court filing said, adding that bank employees would be less likely to cooperate with the monitor if they knew their interactions could be released. n an earlier court filing, the government said that while HSBC has made significant progress since the agreement, it is still not doing enough to thwart money laundering.
The case is U.S. v. HSBC Bank USA NA et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-308
[June 1 Deaths of Martin Senn and Paul Wauthier
The cantonal police confirmed an application May 27 to run the investigation.
Martin Senn is said to have shot himself. The cantonal police confirmed an application May 27 to run the investigation. He had quit as chief executive of Zurich Insurance Group in December following a series of profit warnings and a botched takeover of British rival RSA. His death follows the suicide of Zurich’s finance chief Pierre Wauthier in August 2013.
Pierre Wauthier, the 53-year-old chief financial officer of one of the world’s biggest underwriters, Zurich Insurance Group ZURVY, was found hanging in the Wauthier family home, in the small upscale Zurich exurb of Walchwil, Two suicide notes, one to his family, the other to the company. At first glance, the second looked like a business communiqué, typewritten under the heading, “To Whom It May Concern.”
[April 5 2016 FCA fine prompts U.S. charges ]
Ross McLellan
McLellan, Pennings and others conspired from February 2010 to September 2011 to add secret commissions to fixed income and equity trades performed for the six clients of a unit of the bank to overcharge their clients by millions of dollars through secret commissions on trades worth billions of dollars.
Ross McLellan former State Street executive vice president, McLellan was released and is due in court again on May 19.
Edward Pennings, a former senior managing director at State Street who is believed to be living overseas and was not arrested,
The case followed a 2014 settlement between State Street and the UK Financial Conduct Authority in which the bank paid a fine of £22.9 million (about $37.8 million) for charging the six clients “substantial mark-ups” on certain transitions. The case is U.S. v. McLellan, 16-cr-10094, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
[December 21 2015 Tom Hayes conviction upheld ]
[November 23 Spoofing Forex]
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is investigating the posting of false bids and offers in the foreign exchange options market for emerging market currencies, a person familiar with the matter said on November 23.
Subpoenas were issued last week to four brokerages: BGC Partners (BGCP.O), GFI Group, TFS-ICAP (IAP.L) and Tullett Prebon Financial Services (TLPR.L). U.S. authorities have increased their scrutiny of so-called ‘ghosting’ or ‘spoofing,’
This month, a jury in Chicago convicted a high-frequency trader of commodities fraud and spoofing in the U.S. government’s first criminal prosecution of the trading practice.The trader, Michael Coscia, was convicted under a relatively new statute that was part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulatory overhaul, although as a state official Schneiderman operates under different legal authority.
[November 13 SFO: like Libor, so Euribor
Christian Bittar, eblink
Euribor is the average rate at which large banks lend to each other in euros. It is a daily reference rate and is published by the European Banking Federation. 10 people are charged by the SFO on November 13 for manipulating Euribor:
Christian Bittar (Deutsche Bank)
Achim Kraemer (Deutsche Bank)
Andreas Hauschild (Deutsche Bank)
Joerg Vogt (Deutsche Bank)
Ardalan Gharagozlou (Deutsche Bank)
Kai-Uwe Kappauf (Deutsche Bank)
Colin Bermingham (Barclays Bank)
Carlo Palombo (Barclays Bank)
Philippe Moryoussef (Barclays Bank)
Sisse Bohart (Barclays Bank)
[November 10 LIBOR RBS Rabobank]
caption width=”413″ align=”aligncenter”] Anthony Conti, 46, senior trader[/caption]
A Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc executive told a client at Brevan Howard Asset Management as early as August 2007 that banks were setting Libor rates to support their own trading. Property Alliance Group, which is suing RBS over losses from interest-rate derivatives pegged to the benchmark, cited the evidence as it asked a London judge for permission to add allegations of fraud Thursday. Ex-RBS head of corporate Johnny Cameron sent an e-mail to other executives after meeting with the Bank of England in April 2008 that officials “wanted banks to play U.S. Libor very straight,” according to Lord.
The message was sent around by another RBS employee who said it was “Best not to forward this please. Just verbally update the troops please,”
Rabobank traders guilty
Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti, both UK citizens, participated in a five-year conspiracy at Rabobank to rig Libor rates in dollar and yen at the Dutch Rabobank They will be sentenced next March and were not remanded in custody. Of 13 people charged by the Justice Department with offences related to Libor rigging, seven are former Rabobank traders, including Allen and Conti, who earlier this year waived their right to extradition to fight the charges. Lawyers for Allen and Conti argued that while others at the bank may have been trying to rig Libor, their clients had submitted honest rate estimates. Rabobank was fined £662m by regulators in October 2013 over the Libor scandal, sparking a move by the bank’s chairman, Piet Moerland, to step aside earlier than he had planned.
[October 13 LIBOR trial assigned to Judge Jed S. Rakoff USDC SDNY begins]
The trial of Anthony Allen, 44, and Anthony Conti, 46, in federal court in Manhattan marks the first in a case by the U.S. Justice Department spilling out of a global investigation into whether various banks sought to manipulate Libor.
U.S. v. Allen, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-cr-00272.
Allen, Rabobank’s former global head of liquidity and finance, and Conti, a senior trader, were indicted in the United States in October 2014, a year after the bank reached a $1 billion deal resolving related U.S. and European probes.
Their trial follows an earlier one in London involving alleged yen Libor manipulation that led to the conviction of Tom Hayes, a former UBS AG (UBSG.VX) and Citigroup Inc (C.N) trader who was sentenced in August to 14 years in prison.
This case is assigned to Judge Jed S. Rakoff, United States Southern District Court of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl St., New York, NY 10007-1312.
The indicted defendants include:
[1] Paul Robson
[2] Paul Thompson
[3] Tetsuya Motomura
[4] Takayuki Yagami
[5] Anthony Allen
[6] Anthony Conti
[7] Lee Stewart
Sentencing has been set for Paul Robson on June 9, 2017, at 4:00 PM before Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
On March 23, 2015, Lee Stewart, of London pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 9, 2017.
On March 20, 2015, Anthony Allen, the Global Head of Liquidity and Finance at Rabobank’s London desk, made his initial appearance and was arraigned. He pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud and eighteen substantive counts of wire fraud filed in an October 2014 superseding indictment. Allen is the first defendant charged in the LIBOR cases to waive extradition and be arraigned with the intention of contesting the charges. The court released Allen on a $500,000 bond and set a trial date for Oct. 5, 2015.
On October 16, 2014, Anthony Allen, the global head of liquidity and finance at Rabobank’s London desk; Paul Thompson, Rabobank’s head of money market and derivatives trading for Northeast Asia; Tetsuya Motomura, a senior trader and head of global financial markets trading-Tokyo at Rabobank’s Tokyo desk; and Anthony Conti, a senior trader on Rabobank’s money markets trading desk in London, were charged in a superseding indictment with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud and various substantive counts of wire fraud. Two co-defendants have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme. The charges stem from a scheme to manipulate and attempt to manipulate LIBOR.
On August 18, 2014, Paul Robson, a former rate setter and senior trader at Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. (Rabobank) pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud charged in an April 2014 indictment. The charge stems from a conspiracy to manipulate Rabobank’s Yen LIBOR submissions to benefit trading positions.
On April 24, 2014, three former senior traders at Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. (Rabobank), Paul Robson of the United Kingdom, who was also a rate setter; Paul Thompson of Australia; and Tetsuya Motomura of Japan, were indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and various substantive counts of wire fraud relating to a conspiracy to manipulate LIBOR. The defendants initially were charged by complaint in January 2014.
According to the superseding indictment, at the time relevant to the charges, LIBOR was an average interest rate, calculated based on submissions from leading banks around the world, reflecting the rates those banks believed they would be charged if borrowing from other banks. LIBOR was published by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), a trade association based in London. LIBOR was calculated for 10 currencies at 15 borrowing periods, known as maturities, ranging from overnight to one year. The published LIBOR “fix” for U.S. Dollar and Yen currency for a specific maturity was the result of a calculation based upon submissions from a panel of 16 banks, including Rabobank.
LIBOR serves as the primary benchmark for short-term interest rates globally and is used as a reference rate for many interest rate contracts, mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other consumer lending products.
Rabobank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice on Oct. 29, 2013, and agreed to pay a $325 million penalty to resolve violations arising from Rabobank’s LIBOR submissions.
According to allegations in the superseding indictment, Allen, who was Rabobank’s Global Head of Liquidity & Finance and the manager of the company’s money market desk in London, put in place a system in which Rabobank employees who traded in derivative products linked to USD and Yen LIBOR regularly communicated their trading positions to Rabobank’s LIBOR submitters, who submitted Rabobank’s LIBOR contributions to the BBA. Motomura, Thompson, Yagami and other traders entered into derivative contracts containing USD or Yen LIBOR as a price component and they asked Conti, Robson, Allen and others to submit LIBOR contributions consistent with the traders’ or the bank’s financial interests, to benefit the traders’ or the banks’ trading positions. Conti, who was based in London and Utrecht, Netherlands, served as Rabobank’s primary USD LIBOR submitter and at times acted as Rabobank’s back-up Yen LIBOR submitter. Robson, who was based in London, served as Rabobank’s primary submitter of Yen LIBOR. Allen, in addition to supervising the desk in London and money market trading worldwide, occasionally acted as Rabobank’s backup USD and Yen LIBOR submitter. Allen also served on a BBA Steering Committee that provided the BBA with advice on the calculation of LIBOR as well as recommendations concerning which financial institutions should sit on the LIBOR contributor panel.
The charges in the superseding indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
[September 2 Tom Hayes appeal: the Libor benchmark rigging allegations are novel.]
Far from London in Tokyo trading yen
Sir Jeremy Lionel Cooke (born 28 April 1949), styled The Hon Mr Justice Cooke at the Queen’s Bench in the High Court, ,sentenced Tom Hayes to 14 years of imprisonment on eight counts of conspiracy to defraud, separating Hayes’ conduct at each of the banks where he worked, making the sentences in respect of each consecutive rather than concurrent After the judge finished his remarks, the guard took Mr. Hayes, toting a blue-green duffel bag packed with his clothes and other belongings, into custody. He began serving his sentence immediately. Hayes will no doubt appeal the sentence, and the Court of Appeal will need to consider whether the sentence is wrong in principle or manifestly excessive in its totality. The Libor benchmark rigging allegations are novel.
The 14-year sentence eclipses those handed out in some other high-profile financial-crime cases. In 2012, Kweku Adoboli, who was convicted of fraud in causing a $2.3 billion trading loss at UBS, was sentenced by a British court to seven years in jail. Hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, convicted in the U.S. for insider trading, received an 11-year sentence.The 35-year-old Briton argued that his behavior while at UBS Group AG and Citigroup Inc. was in line with industry standards, that his bosses knew about and condoned what he was doing and that he never realized his behavior was improper.
His case was closely followed—the riverside Southwark Crown Court, anticipating capacity crowds, issued tickets in advance—as the first instance of a trader being put on trial for manipulating Libor.
Replay of the LIBOR fraud. The first detail is that after LIBOR became well-established as a basis for interest rates on loans, the finance industry began to use LIBOR as the basis for lots of more complex financial transactions: for example, “exchange-traded eurodollar futures and options available from Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, and over-the-counter derivatives including caps, floors, and swaptions (that is, an option to engage in a swap contract).” I won’t plow through an explanation of those terms here. The key takeaway is that the benchmark LIBOR interest rate wasn’t just linked to about $17 trillion in US dollar loans. It was also linked to $106 trillion in interest rate swap agreements, and tens of trillions more in interest rate options and futures, as well as cross-currency swaps. As a result, if you had some information on how LIBOR was likely to change on a day-to-day basis–even if the change was a seemingly tiny amount that didn’t much matter to borrowers or lenders–you could make a substantial amount of money in these more complex financial markets.
The second detail involves how LIBOR was actually calculated. Banks did not actually submit data on the costs of borrowing; indeed, someone at a bank responded to a survey each day with an estimate of what it would cost that bank to borrow–even though on a given day many of these banks weren’t actually borrowing from other banks. In addition, during the financial crisis as it erupted in 2007 and 2008, no bank wanted to admit that it would have been charged a higher interest rate if it wanted to borrow, because financial market would be quick to infer that such bank might be in a shaky financial position.
So on one side, LIBOR is a key financial benchmark that affects literally tens of trillions of dollars of continuously traded and complicated financial instruments. On the other side, you have this key benchmark being determined by a survey of the opinions of fairly junior bank officers who have some incentive to shade the numbers. The British court found that Tom Hayes led a group of traders who sent messages to the bankers who responded to the LIBOR survey, requesting that the LIBOR rate be jerked a little higher one day, or pushed a little lower another day. Again, those who were just using the LIBOR rate as a benchmark for loans probably wouldn’t even notice these fluctuations. But traders who knew in advance how the LIBOR was going to twitch up and down could make big money in the options and futures markets.
In a similar scandal from earlier this year, Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS pled guilty to felony charges for their actions in foreign exchange markets. Again, these are very large markets, and so small acts of dishonesty can add up to large amounts. As the US. Department of Justice described it:
“According to plea agreements to be filed in the District of Connecticut, between December 2007 and January 2013, euro-dollar traders at Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays and RBS – self-described members of “The Cartel” – used an exclusive electronic chat room and coded language to manipulate benchmark exchange rates. Those rates are set through, among other ways, two major daily “fixes,” the 1:15 p.m. European Central Bank fix and the 4:00 p.m. World Markets/Reuters fix. Third parties collect trading data at these times to calculate and publish a daily “fix rate,” which in turn is used to price orders for many large customers. “The Cartel” traders coordinated their trading of U.S. dollars and euros to manipulate the benchmark rates set at the 1:15 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. fixes in an effort to increase their profits.
As detailed in the plea agreements, these traders also used their exclusive electronic chats to manipulate the euro-dollar exchange rate in other ways. Members of “The Cartel” manipulated the euro-dollar exchange rate by agreeing to withhold bids or offers for euros or dollars to avoid moving the exchange rate in a direction adverse to open positions held by co-conspirators. By agreeing not to buy or sell at certain times, the traders protected each other’s trading positions by withholding supply of or demand for currency and suppressing competition in the FX market.”
A trader at Barclay’s reportedly wrote in the group’s electronic chat room: “If you aint cheating, you aint trying,”
[August 5 Tom Hayes faces 9½ plus 4½ years]
Justice Jeremy Cooke sentenced Tom Hayes, a 35-year-old who worked for UBS in Tokyo trading yen, to serve nine and a half years in prison on four counts of conspiracy to manipulate a global benchmark interest rate known as Libor, to be followed by another four and a half years in prison on the remaining four counts for 14 years in total. Mr. Hayes faced as much as 10 years in prison on each count.
During his four years at UBS he was paid £1.3million/$ 2, 028, 390 in total. But ‘dissatisfied’ he quit for Citigroup in 2009, where he earned £3.5million/$ 5, 461, 400 before being sacked after nine months when his methods were discovered.
British authorities have been criticized in the United States for not being as aggressive as the Justice Department when it comes to pursuing financial crime.
[May 26 First Libor criminal trial begins]
Tom Hayes, trial starts nine years after first accused
Tom Hayes, 35, pleaded not guilty in December 2013 to four counts related to UBS, between 2006 and 2009, and four related to Citigroup, between 2009 and 2010 in relation to Libor, the benchmark rate at which banks lend to each other. Trial began in a London court on May 26. Conspiracy to defraud carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
His trial, which is expected to take more than two months, comes nine years after he is first accused of rigging the rate.
[April 26 Spoofing is good because it prevents front running?]
HFT is now reckoned to account for three-quarters of trading on US stock markets. More trading in more places, some think creates more activity, which leads to enhanced pricing that benefits everybody. But HFT firms whose goal is to “profit from regular investors by “front running” their orders – use computers to spot trading patterns and get in ahead of them. This can be reduiced by allowing spoofing. “Nav” Sarao used a system called “layering” – for example sending out a series of “sell” orders he intended to cancel but
I am the target text.
which created the illusion of downward pressure on the market. As other computers reacted to that artificial pressure, Navinder Singh Sarao, proprietor of Nav Sarao Milking Markets Ltd. [Nevis] would profit by buying at a lower price and then selling when prices returned. He figured out that the machines that execute the stock market trades of others might be gamed — and he gamed them.
Hounslow.
[April 22 Spoofing Brit out on bai]l
British trader Navinder Singh Sarao has been given conditional bail until May 26, must remain at his home in Hounslow, London, and provide £5.05 million security.
[August 28 Sarao delay request denied]
District judge Quentin Purdy ruled the expert evidence was of “no assistance to this court” as he had to decide whether the US charges would also be offences under British law, not the facts of the case. The date for the extradition hearing has been set for 25 September.
[April 21 Dynamic Layering yielded $40 m and an arrest – the Hounslow connection]
Hounslow home
Navinder Singh Sarao, 37, faces US extradition after allegedly ‘spoofing’ global financial markets by placing £134m of false trades from his Hounslow home. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said that Sarao and his company profited by more than $40m (£27m). The DOJ detailed a series of supposed coups, including episodes where Sarao is said to have made profits of more than $820,000 during a day’s trading.
Sarao allegedly employed a “dynamic layering” scheme to affect the price of E-Minis. By allegedly placing multiple, simultaneous, large-volume sell orders at different price points—a technique known as “layering”—Sarao created the appearance of substantial supply in the market. As part of the scheme, Sarao allegedly modified these orders frequently so that they remained close to the market price, and typically canceled the orders without executing them. When prices fell as a result of this activity, Sarao allegedly sold futures contracts only to buy them back at a lower price. Conversely, when the market moved back upward as the market activity ceased, Sarao allegedly bought contracts only to sell them at a higher price. Also. one count of “spoofing,” a practice of bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution.to have made profits of more than $820,000 during a day’s trading.
Sarao allegedly employed a “dynamic layering” scheme to affect the price of E-Minis. By allegedly placing multiple, simultaneous, large-volume sell orders at different price points—a technique known as “layering”—Sarao created the appearance of substantial supply in the market. As part of the scheme, Sarao allegedly modified these orders frequently so that they remained close to the market price, and typically canceled the orders without executing them. When prices fell as a result of this activity, Sarao allegedly sold futures contracts only to buy them back at a lower price. Conversely, when the market moved back upward as the market activity ceased, Sarao allegedly bought contracts only to sell them at a higher price. Also. one count of “spoofing,” a practice of bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution.
one Alex (Oleksandr) Milrud
Aleksandr Milrud has been accused by U.S. officials of recruiting stock traders in China and Korea to place high-speed buy or sell orders and then quickly cancel them, known as layering or spoofing, Aleksandr Milrud is charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud for manipulating stock prices through a process called “layering,” according to federal prosecutors. Layering, also known as “spoofing,” is a form of manipulative, high-speed stock trading in which a trader places non-bona fide orders to buy or sell securities and then quickly cancels them before they are executed. The case is the first of its kind to be brought against a trader in the stock market. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil case against him. Critics have warned that high-speed trading could make it easier to engage in practices such as “layering” or “spoofing,” both of which involve placing fake orders to create the appearance of increased activity in a stock or other asset in order to move its price.
Milrud used a network of overseas traders and brokerage accounts to place fake orders for individual stocks to move their prices in a particular direction. The fake orders would be canceled before they could be filled, but traders working for Milrud would also make real trades in the stocks to take advantage of their temporarily inflated or depressed prices.
According to prosecutors, Milrud hired a software company to program “hotkeys” so orders could be made and canceled using just a few keyboard strokes. Milrud allegedly believed his fake orders would be untraceable, but U.S. authorities convinced the owner of an offshore broker-dealer he was using to cooperate with their investigation.
[December 9 2014 Spoofing, canceled bids and offers, and Icap]
Michael Spencer and Sarah Milford Haven formerly married to to Prince Philip’s cousin, the Marquess of Milford Haven, termed Sarah, Marchioness of Milford Haven, is seeing moneybroker Michael Spencer, 53, Spencer stood down as treasurer and member of the board of the Conservative Party in October 2010 , formerly considered to be the most powerful man in the City of London.(2008) ICAP’s chief executive, Michael Spencer has cut hundreds of jobs once held by voice brokers—who take orders and execute trades manually by phone or computer—while expanding electronic-trading services.
Executives from three of the biggest market-making firms say an electronic bait-and-switch tactic known as spoofing, which is already the focus of a manipulation allegation at a futures exchange, needs to be investigated in cash Treasuries.. Spoofing in Treasury bonds and related futures contracts has cost traders $500,000 to $1 million a day, an executive at one of the market makers said. Spoofers try to make money by feigning interest in buying or selling at a certain price, creating the illusion of demand in an attempt to get other traders to move the market. The spoofer cancels the original trade and buys or sells at the new price to make a profit. It’s sometimes called “pull and hit.”
The market for trading cash Treasuries by institutional investors is dominated by Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.’s ESpeed system and BrokerTec, owned by ICAP Plc. (IAP) Earlier this year, ESpeed touted shaving 100 millionths of a second from data delivery to lure traders to its service.Committee members, who weren’t named in the minutes of the meeting, told the group that like stocks and currencies, “fixed income markets had begun to see a noticeable increase to volumes traded electronically.” They added: “Some committee members also suggested that the liquidity provided in the market through electronic trading was small.”
That’s not what brokers say. Two years before the meeting, Michael Spencer, the CEO of ICAP, said that slightly less than 55 percent of the volume on BrokerTec is conducted via high-frequency trading, which is also known as HFT.
In the CME complaint, a Chicago trading firm called HTG Capital Partners LLC filed an arbitration claim asserting damages from a pattern of canceled bids and offers allegedly meant to mislead traders in Treasury futures, according to people familiar with the matter. Allston Trading LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm, was identified by CME in that arbitration as a counterparty to the HTG transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. The arbitration is ongoing.
[December 5 3 from ICAP plead not guilty to LIBOR manipulation]
Three former brokers at ICAP, the brokerage run by Michael Spencer, pleaded not guilty on December 5 to criminal charges that they attempted to manipulate the Libor interbank benchmark rate.
Colin Goodman, Darrell Read and Danny Wilkinson all entered their not-guilty pleas to a packed courtroom at Southwark Crown Court on December 5 to charges of conspiracy to defraud brought by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.
Mr Read, a Briton who lives in New Zealand, entered his plea via video link. The others appeared in the dock, together with three brokers from RP Martin and Tullett Prebon, with whom they are all set to face a 12-week jury trial scheduled for September 2015. All six are on conditional bail.
All six brokers are accused of conspiring to manipulate the yen-denominated Libor rate to benefit a trader who worked at UBS and then at Citibank.
That trader, who has pleaded not guilty in a parallel case brought by the SFO, faces his own jury trial that is due to begin in May. It will be the first in the world of a defendant charged with Libor-related offences.
The US Department of Justice has also charged 10 people, including seven Britons. That number includes the three ICAP brokers and the former UBS trader. They have not had the opportunity to enter pleas to the DoJ’s charges. Typically if British defendants face similar charges over the same alleged wrongdoing in the UK as well as in another country, they will be safe from extradition.
In the SFO’s case, the former Tullett broker, Noel Cryan, has not yet had a formal opportunity to enter a plea to the charge against him, although he appeared in the dock on Friday. He only had his first magistrates appearance in October.
Gillian Jones, prosecuting for the SFO, confirmed that Mr Cryan would be joined with the other five defendants to face trial in September.The US Department of Justice announced plans to prosecute the three brokers at Icap, the brokerage run by Michael Spencer,(the world’s biggest money brokers he founded in 1986, of which he owns 22 per cent) for colluding to manipulate Libor to benefit a client at UBS who generated lucrative business for Icap
[Novemberr 19 Swiss FINMA: criminal investigations over alleged manipulation in the foreign exchange market]
2008
On November 19, FINMA said it had started enforcement proceedings against 11 former and current UBS employees as part of its forex investigation.Switzerland’s public prosecutor has opened criminal investigations into several individuals over alleged manipulation in the foreign exchange market, becoming the third country to do so after the United States and Britain, but said on November 20 that the investigations did not involve any banks.
The investigations were based on suspicion of “unfaithful financial management”, punishable by up to five years in prison or a fine, and “violation of professional secrecy”, which carries a penalty of up to three years in jail or a fine. The public prosecutor is exchanging information with Switzerland’s financial watchdog, FINMA in its investigations and is also in contact with Switzerland’s competition commission, WEKO, which is investigating possible collusion in the forex market by several banks.
[September 13 LIBOR investigation: A fat rising balloon]
Trial balloon: In the year since the scandal surfaced, regulatory authorities have yet to show proof of criminal activity or manipulation of benchmark exchange rates so maybe a settlement with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on the basis of banks acknowledging lax internal compliance, oversight failures and market conduct breaches by individual employees, but not deliberate manipulation of the $5 trillion-a-day market.
[August 23 Robson pleads to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud
A Rabobank trader became the second to plead guilty in a criminal plot to manipulate a global financial benchmark used to set rates on trillions of dollars in loans.
United Kingdom citizen Paul Robson, pleaded guilty, admitting he helped manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate for Japanese yen between May 2006 and January 2011 in a plot to boost trading profits for himself and others.
Rabobank agreed in October to pay $1.07 billion to international regulators to settle a Libor probe. Mr. Robson, along with former Rabobank yen Libor derivatives traders Paul Thompson and Tetsuya Motomura, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud as well as substantive counts of wire fraud, according to the DOJ. Robson pleaded guilty August 18 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud
[August 6 Deutsche Bank AG, Europe’s largest investment bank. denies unreasonable involvement]
Anshu Jain
“According to the current status of the investigation, no member of the Executive Board was unreasonable in any way an acting or earlier involvement in reference to interest rates,” the bank spokesman said, reiterateing earlier statements.
Germany’s financial regulator, BaFin, is extending investigations into alleged interest-rate manipulation at Deutsche Bank AG, Europe’s largest investment bank.
BaFin mandated audit company Ernst & Young LLP to discover more about when Anshu Jain, the company’s co-chief executive officer, learned first about a potential manipulation of benchmark interest rates in the industry and at Deutsche Bank, according to information from the mandate description. The regulator defined 10 areas at which the auditors are supposed to take a closer look, with Jain being listed as a key person in six of them.
[August 1 Lloyds fine cost of banking? Profits up 32%]
Lord Blackwell, a former Downing Street adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major, is chairman of the state-backed Lloyds Banking Group.
Lloyds posted a 32 percent gain in first-half earnings today after bad loans fell, and said it’s setting aside 1.1 billion pounds for legal redress. Lloyds reported an underlying profit for the six months to the end of June of 3.8 billion pounds ($6.4 billion), up 32 percent from a year ago.
The U.K.’s biggest mortgage lender suspended traders Clive Jones, John Argent and Udit Dewan in London, said the person, asking not to be identified as the details are private. Jones, who joined Lloyds Bank in 1977, was appointed global director of money markets following the merger with HBOS Plc in 2008, according to the lender’s website. Argent returned to work in mid-2012 after being suspended that year amid a probe of potential manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, Jones rejoined Lloyds in mid-2012 as global director of money markets after being suspended for presumably manipulating Libor.
“In the end, the traders win. They always win, because higher-ups don’t get their fat paychecks and bonuses unless the traders make a killing.” Shah Gilani
[July 29 Lloyd’s axed 22 people over $370 million fine]
Lloyds Banking Group has suspended seven employees after it was hit with a £226m bill from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic for rigging LIBOR -crucial interest rates. Among those suspended by Lloyds on July 28 were three of the four unnamed individuals cited by the FCA who may have been involved in depriving the Bank of England of emergency funding fees of almost £8m.
A total of 22 people are understood to be bound up in the latest regulatory crackdown on benchmark manipulation; six had already been suspended before Monday and the rest have already left the bank.
July 28 Libor, the benchmark interest rate: Lloyds fined $105 million by the CFTC, $86 million by the DOJ]
Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s penalty is less than the 290 million pounds Barclays Plc (BARC) paid in June 2012 when the London-based lender became the first to settle Libor-manipulation claims. Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond was forced to resign in the aftermath of the settlement. UBS AG (UBSN), Switzerland’s biggest bank, has paid the most, settling with U.S., U.K. and Swiss regulators in 2012 at the cost of $1.5 billion.
Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY), bailed out by British taxpayers during the financial crisis, will pay 218 million pounds ($370 million) in fines to U.K. and U.S. regulators after manipulating benchmark interest rates.
The lender will pay $105 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $86 million to the Department of Justice and 105 million pounds to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, according to a statement today. Lloyds has also paid a further 7.8 million pounds in compensation to the Bank of England after the actions of its traders reduced the fees the central bank received from one of its emergency-rescue packages. At least nine financial firms have been fined about $6 billion for manipulating Libor, the benchmark interest rate for more than $300 trillion of securities worldwide.
[March 14 Libor manipulated in 2008: FDIC joins the action, sues 16 banks
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued 16 of the world’s largest banks on March 14, accusing them of collusively suppressing interest rates. Named as defendants were Bank of America Corp, Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and UBS AG. Other defendants in the lawsuit include Rabobank, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Societe Generale, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and WestLB AG.
The case is Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, et al, v. Bank of America Corp, et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-1757.
The lawsuit also named as a defendant the British Banks’ Association, the U.K. trade organization which during the period at issue administered Libor. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States federal agency created in 1933 in response to widespread bank failures in the 1920s and early 1930s. The FDIC’s mission is to maintain stability and consumer confidence in the United States banking system by insuring deposits, monitoring the health of financial institutions and managing receiverships.
[January 21]
The trial of Hayes, who last December was also charged with fraud-related offences by U.S. prosecutors
Three former Rabobank bankers were charged by US authorities on January 13 with allegedly manipulating Libor and other key benchmark interest rates as the criminal investigation widened to include another wave of individuals.
The US Department of Justice announced criminal conspiracy and fraud charges against Paul Robson, a former senior rate trader and submitter in the UK who left the Rabobank in 2008, Paul Thompson, an Australian who headed the bank’s derivatives desk in Singapore, and Tetsuya Motomura, a senior trader and supervisor in Japan. They are accused of conspiring to manipulate the yen Libor rate.
The charges announced January 13 follow Rabobank’s settlement in October 2013 with US, UK and Dutch authorities in which it paid $1bn and admitted that 30 employees around the globe manipulated several different interest rates, Euribor and Libor for the US dollar, yen, and pound sterling.
Previously the US charged Tom Hayes and Roger Darin, his former colleague at UBS, for allegedly manipulating Libor. Mr Darin, a Swiss citizen, has not entered a plea to the charges. His lawyer has previously declined to comment.
Tom Hayes has pleaded not guilty to the UK charges and has not entered a plea to the US case.
Three former employees of inter-dealer broker ICAP have also been charged: Darrell Read, Daniel Wilkinson and Colin Goodman. They have not entered pleas.
None of the former Rabobank traders charged are based in the US, which could set up another turf battle with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, which is also investigating the bank and, specifically, Mr Robson’s role.
The SFO indicated last year that it would identify Mr Robson and 21 others as co-conspirators within an indictment that was to be filed against Mr Hayes. The SFO later narrowed the charges and did not include the names.
US authorities allege Rabobank submitters manipulated rates to help their own positions, at times it is alleged that they helped other banks, including UBS, attempt to manipulate rates.
Mr Robson, Mr Thompson and Mr Motomura allegedly entered “ridiculously” high and “silly” low Libor submissions to benefit their own positions, DoJ said.
In May 2006, according to DoJ, Mr Thompson emailed Mr Robson asking him to “sneak your 3m libor down a cheeky 1 or 2 bp” because “it will make a bit of diff for me” on a large position he held.
[December 13 2013]The first three men to face trial in connection with a global investigation into a rate-rigging scandal that has rocked the financial industry pleaded not guilty in court on December 10, being prosecuted by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office.
Tom Hayes, a former UBS and Citigroup trader has been charged with eight counts of conspiring with staff from at least 10 major banks and brokerages to manipulate Libor benchmark interest rates between 2006 and 2010.
Farr and Gilmour, former RP Martin brokers who were arrested alongside Hayes in Britain last December and later also charged with two and one count of conspiracy to defraud respectively by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, also pleaded not guilty. All three are on bail.
The pleas pose a challenge to SFO head David Green, who has staked his reputation on the success of high-profile investigations such as the sprawling investigation into the manipulation of benchmarks such as Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate).
U.S. and European authorities have fined 10 banks and brokerages around $6 billion to date and charged seven men with criminal offences in connection with the rate-rigging scam. Regulators are also now investigating how other benchmarks are set, such as in foreign exchange and swaps markets.
Libor rates, designed to reflect the wholesale cost of loans, are used to help to price hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of financial products worldwide, ranging from derivatives to mortgages.
Prosecutors allege Hayes conspired to defraud with staff of UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan, RBS, ICAP, Tullet Prebon, at least one employee of Deutsche Bank,
Rabobank and HSBC, Farr and Gilmour and another employee of RP Martin while he worked in Japan.
“They dishonestly agreed to procure or make submissions of rates … which were false or misleading in that they were intended to create an advantage to the trading position of Tom Hayes and others and deliberately disregarded the proper basis for the submission of those rates, thereby intending to prejudice the economic interests of others,” the indictment alleges.
Judge Jeremy Cooke set a London trial date for Hayes for January 2015. The trial of Hayes, who last December was also charged with fraud-related offences by U.S. prosecutors, could take 12 weeks, lawyers said.
The provisional trial date of Farr and Gilmour, which is expected to take around 6 weeks, has been set for September 2015, in part to allow the SFO time to bring a case against further alleged co-conspirators.
The SFO’s head Green had been hoping to charge more individuals in connection with the Libor investigation around this autumn.
UBS, which paid $1.5 billion to U.S. and European regulators last year to settle Libor-rigging charges – the biggest Libor-related fine to date – declined to comment as did Citigroup and ICAP.
RP Martin, Deutsche Bank, Rabobank and JPMorgan also declined to comment. Tullett Prebon and HSBC did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
Hayes joined Swiss bank UBS in Tokyo in 2006, becoming a senior trader of interest-rate derivatives indexed to yen-denominated Libor. In late 2009, he left UBS to join Citigroup in Tokyo. He left the U.S. bank less than a year later.
While Hayes was at UBS, Farr and Gilmour are alleged to have conspired with him and other UBS employees, another RP Martin employee, an employee of Rabobank and one at HSBC, among others, by trying to influence yen-denominated Libor.
Farr is also charged with conspiring with Hayes and others while Hayes worked at Citibank.
[January 11 2013]
The Deutsche Bank documents, handed to investigators by a former employee of the bank and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, show for the first time the scope and manner in which a bank painstakingly constructed a string of trades in hopes of profiting from small changes in various rates.
Deutsche Bank AG DBK.XE -0.34% made at least €500 million ($654 million) in profit in 2008 from trades pegged to the interest rates under investigation by regulators world-wide, internal bank documents show.
The German bank’s trading profits resulted from billions of euros in bets related to the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and other global benchmark rates.
Regulators have been investigating allegations that more than a dozen banks, including Deutsche Bank, rigged Libor and other interest rates underpinning trillions of dollars in loans and other financial contracts. The probe has already produced settlements totaling nearly $2 billion with BarclaysBARC.LN +1.51% PLC and UBSUBSN.VX +0.83% AG.
[December 27]
Hong Kong’s de facto central bank said it is investigating possible misconduct by UBS over its submission of interbank rates, raising the possibility that the bank could face more fines a day after it agreed to pay $1.5 billion (922.3 million pounds) for its role in the Libor scandal.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said in a statement on December 28 that it had received information from overseas regulatory authorities about possible misconduct by UBS involving submissions for the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor) and other reference rates in the region.
On December 25 [HK], the Swiss bank admitted to fraud and bribery in connection with efforts to rig Libor and other benchmark interest rates and agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines to regulators in the United States, Britain and Switzerland.
While the bank will hope that settlement will draw a line under its role in Libor manipulation, it remains at risk of action from regulators elsewhere for possible rate rigging.
Besides Hong Kong, an investigation is still ongoing in Singapore into possible manipulation of benchmark interest and foreign exchange rates.
A spokesman for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on December 27 that banks on rate-setting panels in the city-state, including UBS, are still conducting reviews into their rate-setting processes.
“The reviews are ongoing, and it is premature to speculate on the outcome of these reviews at this stage”.
[December 20]
—UBS Securities Japan Co. Ltd. (UBS Japan), an investment bank, financial advisory securities firm, and wholly owned subsidiary of UBS AG, has agreed to plead guilty to felony wire fraud and admit its role in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), a leading benchmark used in financial products and transactions around the world, Attorney General Eric Holder announced today. The criminal information, filed today in U.S. District Court in the District of Connecticut, charges UBS Japan with one count of engaging in a scheme to defraud counterparties to interest rate derivatives trades by secretly manipulating LIBOR benchmark interest rates.
As part of the ongoing criminal investigation by the Criminal and Antitrust Divisions of the Justice Department and the FBI into LIBOR manipulation, two former senior UBS traders also are charged. Tom Alexander William Hayes, 33, of England, and Roger Darin, 41, of Switzerland, were both charged with conspiracy in a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court earlier today. Hayes is also charged with wire fraud, based on the same scheme, and a price fixing violation arising from his collusive activity with another bank to manipulate LIBOR benchmark rates.
UBS Japan has signed a plea agreement with the government admitting its criminal conduct and has agreed to pay a $100 million fine. In addition, UBS AG, the parent company of UBS Japan headquartered in Zurich, has entered into a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the government requiring UBS AG to pay an additional $400 million penalty to admit and accept responsibility for its misconduct as set forth in an extensive statement of facts and to continue cooperating with the Justice Department in its ongoing investigation. The NPA reflects UBS AG’s substantial cooperation in discovering and disclosing LIBOR misconduct within the financial institution and recognizes the significant remedial measures undertaken by new management to enhance internal controls.
Together with approximately $1 billion in regulatory penalties and disgorgement—$700 million as a result of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) action; $259.2 million as a result of the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) action; and $64.3 million as a result of the Swiss Financial Markets Authority (FINMA) action—the Justice Department’s criminal penalties bring the total amount of the resolution to more than $1.5 billion.
[December 19]
UBS AG (UBSN)’s $1.5 billion fine for rigging global interest rates expands the scandal to include bribery and highlights the influence of a trader in Tokyo who colluded with other banks to align their submissions.
The employee led efforts to influence Japanese Yen Libor submissions by paying brokers as much as 15,000 pounds ($24,400) a quarter and offering a payment to another for helping him keep that day’s rate low. The banker, identified by regulators as Trader A, worked at UBS in Tokyo from 2006 to 2009 and directly contacted employees at other banks to influence their submissions at least 80 times.
Trader A wrote to the broker on Sept. 18, 2008, referring to six-month yen Libor. “If you do that … I’ll pay you, you know, $50,000, $100,000… whatever you want … I’m a man of my word,” according to transcripts released by the U.K. Financial Services Authority today.
[December 13]
Thomson Reuters (TRI.TO) said on December 13 it wanted to play a role administrating overhauled interbank lending rates. In September, Martin Wheatley, FSA managing director, recommended changes to how Libor was set, governed and supervised. A replacement for the BBA as Libor administrator is now being selected by an independent panel.
[December 11]
Three British men were arrested on December 11 as part of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the manipulation of Libor. The three are understood to be Thomas Hayes, who has worked at several institutions including UBS and Citigroup, along with Terry Farr and Jim Gilmour. The latter pair are understood to work for RP Martin, a broker which facilitates trading between banks and other financial firms.
The SFO would only say that three men, aged 33, 41 and 47, were taken to a London police station in the early morning after the three properties were searched.
The SFO and City of London police arrested three men aged 33, 41 and 47 after searching a house in Surrey and two properties in Essex.
The three were taken to a London police station to be interviewed “in connection with the investigation into the manipulation of Libor”.
The SFO’s investigation into Libor rigging was sparked by the $450m fine levied on Barclays in June, which led to the departures of the bank’s chairman Marcus Agius, chief executive Bob Diamond and newly promoted chief operating officer Jerry del Missier for allowing traders to rig it and Euribor and for low-balling rates during the 2007/08 credit crunch.
[November 9]
UBS and RBS are next in line to settle with the regulators, people familiar with the case have said.. “Obviously when we first received it there was anxiety that execution of the request could mop up SFO resources,” he said.
“We are anxious to execute it” and will “certainly” assist, he said. Green said the agency, while working closely with the DOJ, is also competing to bring charges first in order to handle the prosecution of any British citizens in the U.K., reducing the chance of extradition.
U.K. prosecutors are poised to arrest former traders and rate setters at UBS AG (UBSN), Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Barclays Plc within a month for questioning over their role in the Libor scandal, a person with knowledge of the probe said.
The arrests will be made by police under the direction of prosecutors at the Serious Fraud Office within the next month, said the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public. Arrests in the U.K. are made at an early stage of the investigation, allowing police and prosecutors to question people under caution and may not lead to charges.
The SFO has 40 people working on the probe into manipulation of the London interbank bank offered rate, a benchmark for financial products valued at $360 trillion worldwide, and has involved the City of London Police, said David Green, the agency’s director.
[August 13] Jay Merchant, the former Barclays employee who has come under federal scrutiny in the Libor manipulation scandal, has left his position as head of swaps trading at UBS, a spokeswoman at the bank confirmed.
(August 12)Former UBS traders and other employees who had relatively junior-level jobs have been offered deals in return for their cooperation with the escalating investigation of suspected interest-rate manipulation, according to a person close to the probe.
No more than a few of the UBS employees under investigation for alleged interest-rate manipulation still work there, and the company has fired or suspended about 20 traders and managers as a result of the four-year inquiry.
[July 25]Appearing before the House financial services committee,US treasury secretary Tim Geithner told the committee that press reports and the New York Fed’s own investigations had convinced him that there was a risk that Libor was designed to give “not just the incentive to under report but also the opportunity”.
“I personally raised this with the governor of the Bank of England,” said Geithner. “We felt, and I still believe this, that it was really going to be on them to fix this.”
[july 18]Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England , has written a letter sent July 18 to members of the Economic Consultative Committee, which he heads, suggesting a dinner on Sept. 9 in Basel, Switzerland, as the forum for exchanging ideas on how to deal with Libor’s shortcomings,
[July 16] When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in 2008, as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, advised the British about improvements in LIBOR setting, he was acting on messages from U.S. ‘market participants’ –banks.
[July 15]The NY Fed knew that banks were lying about their Libor rates back in 2008, according to transcripts of phone calls released today.
[July 10]Whether the BoE instructed Barclays to lower its submissions or not, regulators had a pretty clear motive for wanting lower LIBOR: British banks, in effect, were being shut out of the markets.
[July 9]Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker said no government minister or official pressured him to instruct Barclays Plc (BARC) or any other U.K. commercial bank to lowball its Libor submissions during the financial crisis.
“Absolutely not,”
[July 6]The U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has confirmed that it has formally launched an investigation into the rigging of inter-bank lending rates. Regulators are continuing to look into possible rate manipulation at other banks, while the US Department of Justice is carrying out its own criminal investigations.
[July 5]U.K. lawmakers grilled former Barclays CEO Robert Diamond for three hours July 4 about what he knew about the rating-fixing scandal that led to his resignation earlier this week. In late 2008 Barclay’s – and, Diamond alleges, other banks – apparently low-balled the rates they reported for LIBOR averaging so as to make the banks’ finances look more stable than they were. The idea was to put out a false image of stability to prevent market panic and stave off calls for additional regulation or even nationalization, a solution that looked increasingly likely during the height of the financial crisis. The direct effect for consumers here was to make loans cheaper, but the indirect effect, or the intended one at least, was to lessen chances of government action against the banks. So the banks manipulating LIBOR weren’t just messing with peoples’ finances – they were trying to mess with the peoples’ laws.
[July 3]Two big implications: One is the obvious accusation that the BoE pressured Barclays Plc to lower its stated borrowing rate. The other the implication that EVERY other bank was doing the same thing, since the gist of the call between Diamond and Tucker was that Barclays needed to get into line with the other banks. more
[earlier July 3]Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond resigns with immediate effect. Barclays’ newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, Jerry del Missier, resigns from the bank.
Barclays Bank chairman Marcus Agius, who on July 1 had also quit, was to return to the lender in the position of executive chairman until a new CEO is appointed, Agius faces increasing pressure over the Libor rate-fixing scandal.
[June 27]
Marcus Agius
Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond , Chief Operating Officer Jerry del Missier, and corporate and investment banking chief Rich Ricci
Holger Seger, global head of short-term interest rates trading,
Chris Lucas
Libor May 2008
Barclays Plc (BARC) was fined 290 million pounds ($453.2 million), the largest penalties ever imposed by regulators in the U.S. and U.K., to settle U.S. and U.K. probes into whether it sought to rig the London and euro interbank offered rates. . Derivatives traders requested the false submissions in the Libor and Euribor setting process, as they were “motivated by profit and sought to benefit Barclays’ trading positions,” Britain’s Financial Services Authority said.
As well as Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond , Chief Operating Officer Jerry del Missier, Finance Director Chris Lucas and corporate and investment banking chief Rich Ricci are also forgoing bonuses this year.
[March 7]The Feb. 27 letter to U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan was made public yesterday and is the first public acknowledgment by the Justice Department of the criminal investigation of benchmark lending rates such as the London interbank offered rate, known as Libor.
Buchwald cited the letter at a March 1 hearing in which she denied a request for documents related to the investigation by investors suing Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), Bank of America Corp. and other companies over claims they artificially suppressed Libor.
“The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into alleged manipulation of certain benchmark interest rates,” including those for “several currencies” on the Libor exchange, according to the letter signed by lawyers from the fraud section of the Justice Department’s criminal division and its antitrust division.
UBS traders and cash brokers conspired to influence the Yen London interbank offered rate from 2007 to 2010 to profit on interest-rate derivatives linked to the benchmark. Regulators worldwide are investigating whether banks attempted to manipulate the London, Tokyo and euro interbank offered rates, known as Libor, Tibor and Euribor. The lender is the cooperating party referred to by Canada’s Competition Bureau in court papers filed by the regulator with the Ontario Superior Court in May. UBS has also suspended a number of employees including Yvan Ducrot, co-head of rates, and Holger Seger, global head of short-term interest rates trading,ubs
[February 9]Japan’s regulators said Citigroup traders engaged in “seriously unjust and malicious” conduct in the first findings as authorities in Asia, Europe and the U.S. conduct widening inquiries into whether employees at some of the world’s biggest banks sought to manipulate the London, Tokyo and euro interbank offered rates, known as Libor, Tibor and Euribor, respectively. The rates were used by investors to gauge the ability of firms to borrow money at the height of the 2008 credit crisis and can play a key role in derivatives trades. Regulators are investigating whether rate bids were low- balled during the financial crisis, if traders at banks and hedge funds sought to influence rate-setters to profit on interest-rate derivatives and whether traders received advanced word about which direction rates would move, the FT reported, without saying how it got the information.
[10 February]Traders at different banks appeared to be trying to influence the movement of Libor and similar benchmarks to profit from derivatives tied to the rates, citing information submitted to regulators. According to people familiar with the probe, the CFTC is examining whether traders placed bets on future yen and dollar rates and colluded with bank treasury departments, who help set the Libor index, to move the rates in their direction. It is also looking at whether some banks lowballed their Libor submissions to make themselves appear stronger.
All 16 banks on the London panel in 2007 and 2008 have received information requests. The investigation is being handled by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, Japan’s Financial Supervisory Agency and the U.K. Financial Services Authority. European Union antitrust regulators and the Swiss Competition Commission are also examining Libor rates. Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corporation, J.P. Morgan Chase andamp; Co., HSBC Holdings plc, Barclays Bank plc, Lloyds Banking Group plc, WestLB AG, UBS AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, Deutsche Bank AG, The Norinchukin Bank, and Citibank, N.A., have been named in two separate class actions alleging fraud and the manipulation of LIBOR Rates and Exchange Traded LIBOR Based Derivatives.
Weinstein’s ex-attorney Sullivan loses Dean’s job
12 May, 2019
Neither Ronald Sullivan Jr. nor his wife Stephanie Robinson will continue as faculty deans of Harvard’s Winthrop House when their terms end next month, the university said Saturday.May 11 2019. The action does not change their status as law school professors. Sullivan also serves as director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute. Sullivan and Robinson said they are “surprised and dismayed.”Harvard’s decision comes just a day after Sullivan told the Manhattan judge overseeing Weinstein’s case that Sullivan would, in fact, be leaving the defense team.
Sullivan’s notice to the court is due to be made public May 13 2019.
[March 7 2019 Weinstein sharpers trying to double-book two trials ]
On March 7 2019, Weinstein defense attorneys Jose Baez and Ronald Sullivan were reprimanded by Judge Brian Cogan for essentially trying to double-book two trials: the Weinstein case; and the case of hedge fund manager Mark Nordlicht, who is facing charges of security fraud. Baez and Sullivan represent both clients.
[April 26 2018 Harvey Weinstein to be made into movie: Keith Raniere into TV Series ]
The Pulitzer prize-winning work of reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey is to become a film in the mould of Spotlight and All the President’s Men.
The film will not focus on the producer and his alleged victims, but instead on the journey towards publication of Kantor and Twohey, with Oscar-winning films Spotlight and All the President’s Men cited as inspirations.
It will be financed by Plan B, Brad Pitt’s company, which backed 12 Years a Slave, and by Annapurna Pictures, whose founder, Megan Ellison, has been touted as the next Harvey Weinstein.
Annapurna Television has optioned the rights to New York Times exposé “Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded” that explores Keith Raniere’s alleged cult Nxivm.
[ May 11 2011 Harvey Weinstein buys Paul Thomas Anderson, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix ]
Harvey Weinstein has bought world rights to Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled next film, a religious drama. The film, fully financed by Annapurna Productions, LLC , MARGARET E [Megan] ELLISON, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s daughter, for around $35 million, The deal gives TWC a big title to bring to the Cannes Film Festival this week. more
