RBS squeezed struggling businesses to boost profits, leak reveals

Royal Bank of Scotland secretly tried to profit from struggling businesses, leaked documents show.

The bank bought up assets cheaply from failing businesses it claimed to be helping, the confidential files reveal.

Staff could boost their bonuses by finding firms which could be squeezed in what it called a "dash for cash".

RBS said it had let some small business customers down in the past but denied it deliberately caused them to fail.

The cache of documents, passed by a whistleblower to BuzzFeed News and BBC Newsnight, support controversial allegations in a report three years ago by the government's then entrepreneur in residence Lawrence Tomlinson. read more »

Pound Fails to Shake Off Wounded Image After Week of Flash Crash

The pound resumed its decline as investors waited for clues about the cause of last week’s flash crash and on whether Britain is truly headed for a hard Brexit.

The currency depreciated 4.2 percent last week, its worst performance since June 24, on the news that U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May planned by March to trigger Britain’s two-year withdrawal from the European Union. May will meet with foreign leaders this week in a bid to build understanding for her negotiating position ahead of this month’s EU summit, travelling to Denmark and the Netherlands on Monday. read more »

Investor Sues Tenet After $513M Deal In Kickback Scheme

Tenet Healthcare Corp. got hit with a putative class action Friday from a shareholder who claims the hospital system violated the Exchange Act with misleading statements in the run-up to a $513 million agreement over an investigation into kickbacks for referrals of pregnant immigrant patients.

Shareholder Nicholas Pennington says the hospital chain signed sham contracts for interpreter services that serve Hispanic women, and in exchange, from 2000 to 2013 the clinics sent pregnant customers to Tenet hospitals for deliveries that were billed to Medicaid, but it finalized an agreement to pay about $513 million and enter guilty pleas with federal prosecutors Oct. 3.

The suit says that Tenet violated the Exchange Act by making misleading statements in its SEC filings and that its failure to disclose the details of the scam misled investors who bought their stock, which later dropped after the revelations of the investigation and agreement. read more »

Turnpike agency to pay ex-worker $3.2M in whistleblower suit

A judge has ordered the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to pay a former worker more than $3 million after finding he was wrongly fired in retaliation for blowing the whistle on agency practices.

Ralph Bailets sued the turnpike commission and two of its officials over his 2008 termination. He says he was dismissed for questioning a major computer contract, hiring practices and how large trucking firms qualify for E-ZPass discounts.

Prosecutors in 2013 used his testimony to file corruption charges against several agency officials.

The judge ruled in June that Bailets was wrongly terminated. PennLive.com reports the judge ruled Thursday that Bailets should receive $3.2 million in lost pay and other damages.

Kudos to the SEC

It’s been a pretty good year for the bribery fighters at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It’s been a pretty good year for the bribery fighters at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among recently settled cases are allegations that a hedge fund spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bribe African officials and that a Dutch phone company got into Uzbekistan by funneling $114 million to the Uzbek president’s family.

The public companies involved in these and other recent cases brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act consented to the SEC’s orders but didn’t admit the agency’s findings. They didn’t deny them either, as they ponied up penalties and disgorged profits that have amounted to more than a billion dollars this year.

The SEC got into policing corruption after the 1970s Watergate scandal revealed hidden slush funds that businesses were using to bribe public officials. In 1977, Congress passed the FCPA to bar companies from bribing foreign officials and falsely accounting for such payments in corporate books. read more »