Paris-based banking giant Société Générale and its wholly owned subsidiary, Société Générale Acceptance N.V. (SGA), are settling with the U.S. Justice Department, the CFTC, and a French authority, Parquet National Financier (PNF), a variety of charges in two cases: a bribery scandal involving officials in Libya, and separately the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered… Read More >>
Merrill Lynch Settles CFTC Case of Supervisory Breaches
The CFTC has required Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. to pay a $2.5 million civil monetary penalty for “failing to supervise its employees’ and agents’ handling of the firm’s response to a CME Group investigation into futures block trade execution and recordkeeping practices at Bank of America.” Bank of America, N.A., or BANA,… Read More >>
CFTC Settles Wash Sales Charges Against Trader & Firm
The CFTC reports that it has simultaneously filed and settled charges against Chicago-based Rosenthal Collins Capital Markets (now known as DV Trading), and one of its former traders. RCCM is accused of “engaging in illegal wash sales in order to generate rebates of exchange fees based upon increased trading volumes,” according to the CFTC, which… Read More >>
SEC Charges Ex-Ops Head at ITG in ADR Case
The SEC reports additional charges in an enforcement investigation involving the improper handling of American depositary receipts (ADRs) by a former supervisor at broker-dealer ITG Inc.’s securities lending desk. The SEC investigation alleges that Anthony Portelli, ITG’s former managing director and head of operations, who ran ITG’s securities lending operations and was responsible for the… Read More >>
SEC Freezes Broker’s Accounts in Insider Trading Scheme
The SEC reports that it has secured an emergency court order freezing the brokerage accounts of Shaohua (Michael) Yin, who is accused of holding $29 million in “illegal profits from insider trading in advance of the April 2016 acquisition of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. by Comcast Corp.” Yin is a Wharton Business School graduate with… Read More >>
RBS Pays $85M Fine in Benchmark-Rigging Case
U.S. regulator CFTC fined the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) $85 million for its alleged role in manipulating the ISDAfix benchmark, which is tied to the $311 trillion interest rate swaps market. The civil penalty against the U.K. state lender is the fourth settlement the regulator has struck in its four-year-long investigation. All of the… Read More >>
FINRA Expels Lawson Financial, Bars CEO on Fraud Charges
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) reports that it has expelled Phoenix-based Lawson Financial Corporation, Inc. (LFC), and has barred Robert Lawson, LFC’s CEO and president, from the securities industry on charges of committing securities fraud when Lawson “sold millions of dollars of municipal revenue bonds to LFC customers.” The municipal revenue bonds Lawson sold… Read More >>
Deutsche Bank Fined $631M for Laundering Rubles
Deutsche Bank will be paying $631.5 million in fines to U.S. and U.K. authorities for violations of anti-money laundering (AML) that were part of a “mirror trading” scheme that involved the German institution’s Moscow, London and New York branches, and resulted in the laundering $10 billion out of Russia. The transactions in question occurred between… Read More >>
Citi Pays $18M Penalty to Settle Overbilling Charges
The SEC reports that Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (CGMI) has agreed to pay $18.3 million for over-billing investment advisory clients and misplacing client contracts. In fact, the SEC contends that “at least 60,000 advisory clients were overcharged approximately $18 million in unauthorized fees because Citigroup failed to confirm the accuracy of billing rates entered into… Read More >>
