A London-based nonprofit group is calling for investigations of at least five financial institutions over their correspondent links to a Central Asian bank at the center of a money laundering probe.
The U.S. Justice Department has issued a rare letter exculpating a former top American Express banker fired in the wake of a multimillion-dollar anti-money laundering deferred prosecution agreement reached in August 2007.
An ousted bank chairman's quest to win an apology from the U.S. Justice Department is raising questions about the power of federal prosecutors to dictate the firing of employees.
The U.S. Justice Department entered into 60 percent fewer pre-trial agreements with corporations seeking to avoid criminal prosecutions in 2008 than in the previous year, according to a study released Friday.
A group of 90 American, Israeli and Canadian citizens are suing American Express Bank and Lebanese Canadian Bank for $650 million, alleging the institutions provided financial services to blacklisted terror group Hizbollah.
Rick Small, head of global compliance at GE Money, joins American Express Co. this month as vice president of anti-money laundering and sanctions risk management. Separately, Wachovia Bank has hired Dan Soto, former chief compliance officer at RBC Centura, to head its AML efforts.
U.S. authorities have unfairly escalated the penalties for Bank Secrecy Act violations by overusing criminal proceedings in cases that should be considered civil matters to be solved by regulators, legal professionals say.
Two Venezuelan businessmen accused by U.S. prosecutors of acting as clandestine agents for Hugo Chavez's government have dropped a lawsuit against American Express Bank International related to $25 million the men had placed with the bank.
The $1.1 billion sale to U.K. bank Standard Chartered PLC follows enforcement actions issued in August requiring American Express Bank Ltd., the American Express private banking subsidiary, to pay $65 million in penalties and acknowledge its responsibility for AML and Bank Secrecy Act failures.
But the bad news continued this week for the company as its American Express Bank Ltd. unit reached an agreement on Tuesday with the New York State Banking Department to improve its AML regime.
A senior DEA official confirmed that the agency is investigating the company's Miami-based private banking unit and said the case involves money laundering schemes known as black market peso exchanges, according to a report slated for publication in the July issue of Forbes.
The private banking unit is overseen by the company's Miami-based American Express Bank International, and has been plagued by anti-money laundering related regulatory trouble for more than a decade.
American Express Co. has set aside $60 million for regulatory and legal matters related to a U.S. Justice Department investigation of anti-money laundering compliance programs at its private banking operation.
The bank, which is based in the Netherlands, said Thursday that it has set aside €365 million in anticipation of the settlement of a Justice Department criminal probe into ABN's dollar clearing activities, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions compliance and other issues.