With Kleptocrats Untouchable, America Goes Big on Another Strategy: Taking Their Stuff Instead

Accused of involvement in stealing billions from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, Prime Minister Najib Razak did what autocratic leaders around the world do when scandal is in the air. He cleared house.

In the space of a day last July, he fired his deputy prime minister and attorney general and sidelined members of a parliamentary committee looking into the apparent theft.

With the press increasingly muzzled and the country’s opposition leader behind bars, Najib appeared to have weathered the crisis unscathed.

That is, until the United States stepped in. On July 20, the US Department of Justice announced it was launching a case to recover more than US$ 1 billion in assets out of a total of about $3.5 billion allegedly stolen from the sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The Justice Department’s initiative uses civil asset forfeiture, a sometimes controversial legal method that allows law enforcement to seize assets suspected of being proceeds of a crime, without ever actually charging suspected perpetrators. It’s a strategy used in concert with the seeking of record settlements under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that criminalizes bribe-paying by US companies.  read more »

U.S. FCC fines Siemens $175,000 for failing to disclose felonies

Siemens Corp and Siemens Medical Solutions, units of Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE), have agreed to pay a $175,000 fine for failing to disclose corporate felony convictions to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency said on Thursday.

Under FCC rules, wireless license holders, like Siemens, Siemens Medical, and some of their subsidiaries, are required to disclose any felony convictions in their license applications, the FCC said in news release.

The FCC said an investigation found that Siemens AG pleaded guilty in 2008 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Siemens, Siemens Medical, and some of their subsidiaries failed to meet their statutory and regulatory obligation to timely disclose the felony conviction on applications filed between 2007 and 2015, the FCC said. read more »

Barclays Bank PLC to Pay $500,000 for Recordkeeping Violations

The CFTC today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Barclays Bank PLC for failing to create, maintain, and promptly produce required confirmations for a significant number of Exchange for Related Position trades in violation of CFTC Regulations read more »

Bank Regulators Join Investigation Into JPMorgan’s China Hiring

The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency have joined investigations into JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s hiring practices in China, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Fed is seeking a fine of as much as $62 million from the bank, and the OCC is also seeking punishments to settle claims that a breakdown in controls resulted in JPMorgan inappropriately hiring the children of Chinese officials to win business, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. Those probes would come on top of settlements being negotiated with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors.

At issue is whether the bank’s hiring of relatives of influential Chinese officials was tantamount to paying a bribe that ran afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The 1977 law made it illegal to provide pay or benefits to a foreign government official.  read more »

Alabama Pill Mill Doctor Charged with Illegal Prescribing and Health Care Fraud

Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a former north Alabama physician, who was the nation’s highest Medicare prescriber of opioid painkillers at the height of his practice, with illegally prescribing controlled substances and with a health care fraud involving $9.5 million in unneeded and unused urine tests, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance for the Northern District of Alabama and Special Agent in Charge Roger C. Stanton for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.  read more »

U.S. judge throws out Madoff $3 billion feeder fund lawsuit

A U.S. judge has again thrown out a $3 billion lawsuit by investors in two "feeder funds" that sent money to Bernard Madoff, one of the largest lawsuits tied to his Ponzi scheme, after her original dismissal had been overturned.

In a 145-page decision released on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan said the investors lacked standing to pursue all 28 claims against Tremont Group Holdings Inc and other managers, consultants, administrators and auditors for Kingate Global Fund Ltd and Kingate Euro Fund Ltd.  read more »