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A father and son face criminal charges for allegedly using their building supply firm in Florida as a "shadow bank," allowing several companies in Venezuela to wire more than $100 million of suspicious funds into and through the U.S. financial system with little or no regulatory scrutiny.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure Wednesday clearing the way for financial sanctions against Venezuelan officials implicated in the country's violent crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators.
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.
Venezuela's takeover of at least 30 bond brokerages on money laundering charges will do little to stem the tide of illicit proceeds flowing into the country, say analysts.
A Swiss official warns that the United States plans legal action if a deal to hand over UBS account data is blocked, China announces that it has tweaked its counterterrorism laws and Ecuador says it will be off of FATF's blacklist by June, in this week's news roundup.
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.
At least a dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions are considering limiting operations in Venezuela or leaving the country entirely in the wake of threats to nationalize banks.
Brian Stoeckert, president of Los Angeles-based Stoeckert Consulting, Inc. spoke with reporter Larissa Bernardes about risks associated with a Venezuelan bond swap.
The U.S. government Friday blacklisted two senior Venezuelan officials and a former official - all in high-ranking positions pledged to fight criminals and terrorists - for aiding a designated terrorist group, a glancing blow to a country becoming increasingly more hostile to the U.S.
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.
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.
The penalty, the largest against a U.S. institution for AML violations, resulted from a four-year investigation of a Colombian narcotics and money laundering operation.
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.
