Compliance News Headlines: Allen Stanford Charged with $8B Fraud, Ken Lewis Subpoena, ITT Settles
There are a lot of interesting stories to direct your attention towards as another week comes close to being in the books. As usual, titles, excerpts, and links to some of the stories that caught our eye this Friday:
SEC Alleges $8 Billion Savings Fraud by Prominent Texas Businessman Allen Stanford
The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday charged R. Allen Stanford, a prominent Texas businessman, and three companies under his control with carrying out a “massive, ongoing fraud” involving the sale of $8 billion in certificates of deposit.
The case is one of the largest alleged financial frauds in U.S. history and comes just two months after the SEC accused New York financier Bernard L. Madoff of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme of up to $50 billion.
Stanford and two colleagues, operating through a web of firms based in Houston and the Caribbean, lied to customers about how their money was being invested and how the firms’ investment portfolios had performed in the past, the SEC said in a civil complaint filed in federal court in Dallas.
>>>read entire article at WashingtonPost.com
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Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis Receives Subpoena
State prosecutors investigating the payment of bonuses at Merrill Lynch have broadened the scope of their probe and issued a subpoena to Ken Lewis, Bank of America chief executive, says a person familiar with the matter.
Investigators in the office of Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General, took testimony from former Merrill chief executive John Thain on Thursday. They are expected to take a deposition from J. Steele Alphin, BofA’s chief administrative officer, by the end of the month, says the source.
>>>read entire article at FT.com
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ITT to pay $1.7 million in SEC bribery settlement
Defense contractor ITT Corp. has agreed to pay about $1.7 million to settle bribery charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged the company’s employees in China made illegal payments to foreign officials.
ITT disclosed in a government filing Friday that it will give up roughly $1 million in profits plus interest and civil penalties.
The company has not denied or admitted any wrong doing as part of the settlement.
>>>read entire article at BusinessWeek.com
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Report finds fraud in 20% of H-1B applications
Federal investigators discovered fraud in more than 20 percent of applications they examined in which employers were requesting H-1B visas to hire foreign professionals in the U.S., a finding they called a “significant vulnerability.”
In a report released late last year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service cited one especially egregious case in which an employer petitioned for a business-development analyst position but later told investigators the worker would be doing laundry and maintaining washing machines.
The report’s findings appear to vindicate some critics of the H-1B program, who have said the hiring of foreign professionals hurts U.S. workers.
>>>read entire article at The Seattle Times
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Tags: allen stanford, bank of america, bribery, Fraud, sec
