News
Lloyds, Bank of Cyprus Cases Highlight Correspondent Banking Issues
By Brian Monroe and Brian Orsak
printWhen reports surfaced in the spring of 2001 that publicly traded software company AremisSoft had inflated its earnings to boost its stock price, the case looked like a straightforward, open-and-shut securities fraud involving the company and some of its principles. The next year, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission brought charges against the company that resulted in a $500 million settlement. By then, the Nasdaq had delisted AremisSoft and a federal grand jury had indicted the co-chief executive officers, Roys Poyiadjis and Lycourgos Kyprianou, for securities fraud. But the widening case resurfaced Monday when U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
Three years after a financial crisis that left its banking system in disarray, Cyprus has been rapidly revoking corporate charters in an effort to satisfy intergovernmental bailout demands.
A federal judge's questioning of the recent DPA between the U.S. Department of Justice and Barclays Bank, could signal that future agreements will be more expensive for financial institutions and more perilous for their top executives, according to legal analysts.
The chief investigator of sanctions violations at Lloyds TSB Bank and Credit Suisse speaks with Editor-in-Chief Kieran Beer about the unprecedented penalties and the need for federal beneficial ownership legislation.
Word that a large penalty against a foreign bank committing sanctions violations is set to be announced is stoking more than just concern among other financial institutions. It's stoking rumor.
Investigations against at least nine foreign banks accused of violating U.S. sanctions will soon result in deferred prosecution agreements with some of the financial institutions, Manhattan's district attorney said Tuesday.
The U.S. Justice Department is planning to appeal a judge's ruling that it does not have the jurisdiction to sue two European banks it believes helped launder nearly $300 million tied to a massive securities fraud.
Despite all the rhetoric, combating the networks that finance terrorism and criminal organizations is not a priority for the international community, according to Jimmy Gurulé, a law professor at Notre Dame.
A federal court ruling dismissing a $300 million U.S. lawsuit against two European banks may limit how the United States enforces its anti-money laundering laws abroad, say former investigators.
Financial institutions adjusted well to August 2007 requirements that they scrutinize some correspondent relationships, according to a study by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Lloyds TSB Bank Plc. has agreed to pay the United States $350 million to settle charges that it hid wire transfers with blacklisted companies, the largest sanctions-related penalty to date.
A London-based bank has forced the closure of accounts for an Islamic charity it believes has ties to Hamas, a Palestinian organization sanctioned internationally for terrorism, the charity disclosed this week.
The Southern District of New York collected over 52 percent less in asset forfeitures in fiscal year 2008 than it did in the previous year, the agency said Thursday.
Misconceptions have often fueled the debate on how to stop terrorist financiers since the attacks of September 11, 2001, according to Ibrahim Warde, a professor at Tufts University in Boston. Warde talked with reporter Brian Orsak about what misinformation has cost financial services .
The bank, which is based in London, expects to reach a "resolution" with the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and New York District Attorneys office, Lloyd's said in a statement Friday.
Lloyds and the Bank of Cyprus are subject to U.S. jurisdiction because Title 18 USC 1956 (b) grants such extraterritorial reach to U.S. courts and because both signed "Consent of Jurisdiction" letters in order to do business in the U.S., according to the Justice Department.
A little-known amendment of the 2001 Patriot Act to the U.S. money laundering laws allows federal prosecutors to obtain court-appointed federal receivers in laundering and terrorist financing cases with the authority to run independent investigations in tracking down assets.
Senior banking executives and compliance officers have lost a great deal of sleep in recent months over a provision of U.S. money laundering law that allows federal prosecutors to seek stiff civil money penalties.
The bank returned its banking license on Jan. 18, three months after the U.S. Justice Department sued the Bank of Cyprus over claims that it aided a Cypriot fugitive launder proceeds from an insider trading scheme.
The cases, seeking nearly $300 million in fines, should be dismissed because they constitute an "unprecedented attempt to apply the U.S. money laundering statute beyond its explicit, but limited" extraterritorial reach, Bank of Cyprus and Lloyds TSB Bank argued in court documents released today.
Prosecutors are seeking nearly $300 million in penalties, charging that the two foreign-based banks helped to launder the proceeds of a massive securities fraud involving shares of software maker AremisSoft.