General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If you have a better suggestion, let's hear it. [View all]FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)Only two years ago UBS paid $800 million in fines to the Justice Department for a multi-year illegal scheme to solicit wealthy American citizens to hide their wealth from the IRS by letting UBS move the assets to tax havens on behalf of 52,000 Americans. The fine would have been far greater had the Swiss government not intervened to warn the US off putting UBS in a fragile financial position. In 2008 the Swiss Central Bank had to inject funds into UBS to rescue it from insolvency.
Best known is the $550 million fine paid by Goldman Sachs for defrauding investors in the offering of sub-prime mortgage backed bonds that were primed to fail. Further investigations into Goldmans actions are bound to result in further cash settlements down the road. In Massachusetts GS had to pay $10 million for s0-called trading huddles where certain good clients were tipped to market news before the general public learned of them.
Just for starters Bank of America has paid fines of $428.6 million for various and sundry violations including rigged bids for municipal financing business. More to come from investigations into the banks huge mortgage operation, much of it inherited from Countrywide Credit.
Then, theres the lesser known $1.2 billion paid by Credit Suisse, Lloyds-TSB and ABN Amro (part of Royal Bank of Scotland) for systematically and secretly violating sanctions against Iran, Libya, Cuba and the Sudan by accepting dollar deposits from those outlawed nations and aiding and abetting their public finances. A great part of these banned operations were done through shell companies established to hide the identity of the rogue state beneficiaries. Their crimes were uncovered by t he District Attorney in NYC, Robert Morgenthau.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/09/18/wall-street-pays-for-its-crimes/
Fines which are ultimately paid for by the end consumer (you and me) offer no deterent to these crooks