Credit Suisse Raided, Client Assets Seized in Probe

Credit Suisse Group AG, some of its employees and hundreds of account holders are the subjects of a major tax evasion and money laundering probe that spans five countries.

Investigators in the Netherlands arrested two individuals on Thursday, seizing a gold bar, paintings, jewelry and bank account information. They allegedly concealed millions of euros from authorities by placing them in Swiss bank accounts, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service said in a statement Friday. Criminal investigations are also underway in Australia, Germany, the U.K. and France.

Credit Suisse said Friday that its offices in London, Paris and Amsterdam were searched Thursday by authorities in connection with client tax matters.

The U.K. tax authority is investigating "senior employees" at a global financial institution, it said in a statement. Australia’s Serious Financial Crime Taskforce said it had identified 346 of its citizens "with links to Swiss banking relationship managers alleged to have actively promoted and facilitated tax evasion schemes." read more »

Madoff Deals Locked in Safe at Center of U.K. Hedge-Fund Lawsuit

Principal Financial Group Inc. accused the managers of Liongate Capital Management LLP of hiding investments with Bernie Madoff while negotiating to sell half of their London hedge fund to Principal.

Founders Randall Dillard and Jeff Holland, and Head of Research Benjamin Funk sold the stake in March 2013 without disclosing secret investments in the largest of several Madoff "feeder funds,” according to legal filings produced by Principal. It may be seeking as much as $66 million in damages in its London lawsuit.

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Park Geun-hye’s Life in Jail: Cheap Meals and a Mattress on the Floor

As president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye never appeared in public until stylists had arranged her hair in the trademark updo of her mother, a popular first lady who was killed by an assassin in 1974.

On Friday, Ms. Park was required to remove the hairpins she uses to maintain that style before entering the jail where she now resides. Inmates at the Seoul Detention Center cannot have metal hairpins, because they could use them to hurt themselves, officials said.

“When she wakes up in the morning and realizes that she can’t do her hair anymore, she will be faced with the stark new reality,” Lee Yong-ju, a former prosecutor who is now an opposition lawmaker, said in a radio interview on Thursday.

Ms. Park, who was jailed before dawn Friday on charges stemming from the corruption scandal that ended her presidency three weeks ago, now lives alone in a cell, eating $1.30 meals, washing her own tray and sleeping on a foldable mattress on the floor. It is a stark comedown for someone who spent more years living at the Blue House, South Korea’s sprawling presidential palace, than anyone else — first as daughter of the long-ruling dictator Park Chung-hee, and later for four years as president herself. read more »

Wall Street’s New Favorite Way to Swap Secrets Is Against the Rules

Dirty jokes and NSFW GIFs. Snaps of unsuspecting colleagues on the trading floor. Screenshots of confidential client positions.

All that -- and, on occasion, even legally dubious information -- is increasingly being trafficked over the new private lines of Wall Street: encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal.

From traders to bankers and money managers, just about everyone in finance is embracing these apps as an easy, and virtually untraceable, way to circumvent compliance, get around the HR police and keep bosses in the dark. And it’s happening despite the industry’s efforts to crack down on unmonitored communications, according to conversations with employees at more than a dozen of Wall Street’s most recognizable firms.

Just this week, a former Jefferies Group banker was fined in the U.K. for sharing confidential data on WhatsApp. read more »

CFTC Acting Chairman Giancarlo Appoints James McDonald as Enforcement Director

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Acting Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo today announced the appointment of James McDonald to be the Director of the agency’s Enforcement Division. Mr. McDonald, who was most recently a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, brings to the agency a successful track record of pursuing white collar and other crimes. Mr. McDonald will assume his duties at the agency on April 10.

“Jamie McDonald’s appointment as the Director of the Enforcement Division is a signal to those who may seek to cheat or manipulate U.S. markets that there will be no pause, no let up and no relaxation in the CFTC’s mission to enforce the law and punish wrongdoing,” said Acting Chairman Giancarlo. “Mr. McDonald is an accomplished Federal prosecutor and skilled agent of American law enforcement, and I am pleased he will take over this important job.” Giancarlo added, “I am grateful for Vince McGonagle’s service as Acting Director of Enforcement and delighted that he will continue his fine work at the Commission under Mr. McDonald.” read more »

Home Health Agency Owner Pleads Guilty to Conspiring in $17 Million Medicaid Fraud Scheme

Largest Provider Attendant Services Fraud in Texas History

The owner and operator of five Houston-area home health agencies pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare and the State of Texas’s Medicaid-funded Home and Community-Based Service and Primary Home Care programs of more than $17 million.  He also pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money.  These health care programs provided qualified individuals with in-home attendant and community-based services that are known commonly as “provider attendant services” (PAS).  This case marks the largest PAS fraud case charged in Texas history. read more »