The Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to pay $580,000 in a settlement with a former SEC assistant inspector general who said the agency fired him for exposing possible misconduct. The SEC reached its agreement last month with David Weber, whose termination from the agency was rescinded as part of the terms, according to his attorney, Cary J. Hansel. The SEC also agreed to clear his record, removing negative references from his file, Hansel said. More in the Washington Post [...]
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Let’s say that you’ve just been offered a job. Or you’re thinking of investing in a company. Or maybe you’re about to make a major purchase. Ever wonder if the company you’re considering joining, investing in or buying from is fraudulent? More on Forbes [...] Almost five years after his fraud was uncovered, a London court will be the site of a reunion of sorts for Bernard Madoff’s family and colleagues as the liquidators of his U.K. unit seek to recover $50 million. Madoff’s brother Peter and son Andrew are among the defendants who will testify during a six-week trial that starts today in London. Stephen Raven, the U.K. unit’s chief executive officer, and Sonja Kohn, a long-time associate of Madoff, are also defendants. More on Bloomberg BusinessWeek [...] The large depositors at Cypriot banks are shouldering a heavy burden. You’ll recall what happened back in March when the Eurozone financial wizards forced average citizens to participate in what was called a “bail-in.” It seems downright unfair for depositors with more than 100,000 euros to suffer a levy on up to 60% of their deposits. That’s about $140,000, give or take, at current exchange rates. And if you’re a retiree, having the government swipe $84,000 from your $140,000 account just to bail out feckless bankers is a pretty big deal. The dangers inherent in the Cypriot crisis may seem foreign to us, but U.S. bank and brokerage accounts are not as safe as we might think. The federal government may imply that we are preferred customers of the FDIC and the SIPC, but that does not mean we will get the royal treatment should our bank or brokerage firm go belly-up. More on Investor Place [...] The New York trial later this year of five former associates of disgraced Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff (MAY’-dawf) could last five months or more. The government has accused Madoff’s ex-secretary and four others of being in on a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that burned thousands of investors, with Madoff paying off longtime investors with money from newer investors. See ABC News report [...] WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission is paying $580,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former assistant SEC inspector general who accused the agency of firing him in retaliation for bringing possible misconduct to light. The SEC reached the settlement last month with David Weber, who sued the agency in November. Weber’s attorney, Cary Hansel, announced the settlement Monday. Weber was the assistant inspector general for investigations, one of those responsible for probing allegations of misconduct by SEC officials and employees. He is an attorney and a certified fraud examiner. More in USA Today [...] The trustee for convicted Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff’s defunct brokerage, who has appealed a ruling by a Manhattan federal judge that permits New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to complete a $410 million settlement with Madoff investor J. Ezra Merkin, accused the judge of “abuse of discretion” in saying the trustee waited too long to stop the deal. Trustee Irving Picard said he wasn’t trying to stop the settlement “for all time,” only until he had taken money from Merkin. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff also erred in “holding that the trustee had an obligation to rush to the courthouse and file suit,” rather than negotiating with Schneiderman for a delay, as he had tried to do, Picard said in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York yesterday. The settlement will compensate Merkin investors who lost money in the Ponzi scheme and aren’t eligible for compensation from the Madoff estate run by Picard, the attorney general has said. Picard, who also has appealed rulings barring him from collecting $30 billion from banks, seeks to take $500 million from Merkin for a different set of Madoff investors. Rakoff dismissed what he called Picard’s entire effort to “derail” the accord, saying that by law, he waited too long to assert his own claim as trustee. More on Bloomberg [...] Bernard Madoff lulled thousands of investors into complacency while he ran a massive Ponzi scheme with their money. Now he’s in jail. Recently, he spoke on why and how people get scammed by Wall Street. Talking to Madoff now is a bit like hiring a former computer hacker as a security consultant. You think you’re going to learn something technical, some insider’s trick. More in Forbes [...] Informed Americans think they know all about the Madoff affair: for decades charismatic fund manager Bernard Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme, thereby bilking the cream of New York society, but he was eventually found out and jailed. What is less well known – and far more geopolitically important – is what the Madoff affair says about the truly abysmal state of U.S. financial regulation. Not to put too fine a point on it, the SEC emerges from the affair not so much incompetent, as many have charitably assumed, but corrupt. Frankly it is hard to find a similarly lamentable instance of regulatory malfunction outside the Third World. More in Forbes [...] U.S. regulators on Wednesday launched the first lawsuit against a bank tied to the blow-up of brokerage Peregrine Financial, alleging U.S. Bancorp knowingly let Russell Wasendorf Sr. use customer money held at the bank to fund his lavish lifestyle. Peregrine founder Wasendorf, who has been dubbed ‘the Midwest Madoff’ for his near two-decade long scheme, began serving a 50-year sentence in February for bilking $215 million from customers. |
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