The Man From FCPA

Tom Fox looks at the alleged looting of Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB and the implications it has for fighting global corruption.

Jorge Luis Arzuaga, a former managing director at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, pled guilty to having arranged the transfers of more than $25 million in bribes for corrupt FIFA officials. This is the first guilty plea in the plethora of service provides who facilitated the massive corruption scandal engaged in by FIFA officials.

The attempted takeover of the U.S. company MoneyGram International Inc. by China-based Ant Financial Services raises regulatory concerns and questions.

The first foreigner, Jens Sturzenegger, a former branch manager at Falcon Private Bank in Singapore, was recently convicted in the 1MDB scandal. Tom Fox reports.

The recent case of LafargeHolcim’s involvement in keeping a cement facility in Syria safe and operational during civil war has raised questions regarding a company’s responsibilities for ensuring monies it pays out do not go to fund terrorism.

Deutsche Bank demonstrates that the costs of continuing to fail to meet regulatory requirements regarding anti-money laundering can be astronomical. Tom Fox looks at the Financial Conduct Authority’s Deutsche Bank investigation and what it means for the financial firm’s future.

Ian Narev, chief executive officer of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, may soon join the ranks of those CEOs who depart once a corruption scandal goes public.

In recent years money laundering has engulfed numerous international institutions, such as the Vatican, which has been roundly criticized by Italian prosecutors for both its failure to carry out appropriate due diligence over its customers and its inability to track suspicious transactions. Those criticisms have led to some dramatic changes, including the appointment of René Bruelhart to help the Church’s bank implement modern-day AML practices. See inside for what Bruelhart has planned.

A prominent Mexican football star finds himself on OFAC's black list for allegedly fronting for a known drug kingpin. Just when you thought soccer couldn't get any more dramatic.

Tom Fox looks at further reverberations from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB scandal concerning one giant red flag: a reference provided by a third party to vouch for that third party.

As Singapore considers cracking down on money laundering, the impact of such a move may ripple far beyond that nation’s own banking system. Tom Fox has more.

U.S. regulators want companies to take firm disciplinary action against employees who are involved directly—or even indirectly—in the conduct at the heart of violations. 

A London bus tour that features the proceeds of corruption, exploring properties alleged to have been purchased with monies purloined from the country of Nigeria by the country’s former oil minister, the disgraced and now arrested, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

When banks and regulators work together to halt the transfer, hiding, and parking of corrupt funds, the war on corruption takes one more giant step forward.

Last week the Swiss government announced that it had found improprieties in the conduct of the Malaysian government’s sovereign wealth fund, 1Malyasia Development Berhad. The problem for the government of Malaysia is that the sovereign wealth fund is headed by the country’s Prime Minister, who had over $700 million deposited in a personal account. If corrupt governments cannot escape scrutiny in this former haven of banking secrecy, it will be a huge step forward. But could it also mean a lateral move for corrupt governments to another known tax haven?

Recently, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would begin demanding to know the names of folks behind the shell companies, which ultra-wealthy foreigners use to hide behind multimillion-dollar real estate purchases. Efforts by the U.S. Treasury Department to police more closely large cash purchases of real estate as a method for money laundering are an important step toward combatting terrorism. But more work remains to be done.

The recent $101M heist from the Central Bank of Bangladesh would have been impossible had it not occurred over a weekend, and had weekends themselves not been observed on different days of the week in Bangladesh than they are in the United States. One thing’s for sure: Whenever the weekend happened, everybody was unhappy by Monday.

U.S. banking regulators have long understood the connection between bribery, corruption, money laundering. and security. It will be interesting to see if the ECB and European countries are willing to become as aggressive as their U.S. counter-parts in fighting the global scourge of money laundering. 

Tom Fox takes a closer look at the continuing saga of the 1 MDB scandal involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and the need to have robust corporate compliance around all parties.