2017 Banks TBTF | Richashell.com

Why did Ocwen continue to harm thousands of borrowers, years after first being caught? Part of the answer lies in the irresponsibly weak 2013 settlement, the vast majority of which Ocwen didn’t even have to pay itself. Thursday’s lawsuit, in fact, is an indictment of the way the government fails to police financial institutions, letting problems linger and allowing companies to devastate customers for years without intervention. The picture that emerges from the 93-page lawsuit, based on internal audits, company e-mails, third-party reviews by investors and consultants, and employee testimony, is that Ocwen has no ability to execute the basic functions of mortgage servicing.
An outside review concluded that Ocwen’s REALServicing computer system “lacks the basic system architecture and design necessary to properly service loans,” which is, you know, the entire job. REALServicing routinely generated inaccurate loan information, spitting out thousands of communications to borrowers with the wrong interest rate or loan terms. Ocwen’s own head of servicing called the system “an absolute train wreck” in an internal e-mail. An internal 2014 audit found improper corrections in 63 percent of all loans reviewed.

It was all well-known back in 2013. The CFPB settlement at the time alleged most of the same deficiencies: unauthorized fees, forced insurance purchases, wrongful foreclosures. But in that consent order, Ocwen didn’t have to admit wrongdoing. This shielded the company and its executives from legal exposure. Foreclosure victims who lost their homes got a measly $1,200 check for their trouble. The rest of the penalty went to “consumer relief” for distressed borrowers. But Ocwen didn’t own any loans; this burden fell entirely on the loan investors. The total cost to Ocwen of a “$2.1 billion settlement” was $66.9 million, the company admitted in a regulatory filing.

Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, once sat on the Ocwen board; clearly the current regime isn’t inclined to do a thing about this menace. ~ by David Dayen

LIBOR

2017 HSBC settles bondholders' claims of Libor manipulation

HSBC Holdings Plc has settled claims by a group of U.S. bondholders that it conspired with rivals to rig the Libor benchmark interest rate, according to a New York court filing on Monday by the bondholders' attorneys. The filing did not disclose the terms of the settlement, which it said must be approved by U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan federal court. Libor, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, is used to set rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars of transactions, including for credit cards, student loans and mortgages. It is calculated based on submissions by banks. A variety of investors have accused HSBC and other banks of suppressing Libor before, during and after the 2008 financial crisis to boost earnings or make their balance sheets look healthier. If approved, the settlement announced Monday would cover a class of bondholders claiming that Libor rigging caused them to receive artificially low returns on more than $500 billion of dollar-denominated debt whose interest payouts were linked to Libor. The bondholders announced in October that they had settled similar claims against Barclays Plc and UBS AG, which are among the banks that have been sued alongside HSBC.

2017 Big German Bank, Key to Trump’s Finances, Faces New Scrutiny

During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump pointed to his relationship with Deutsche Bank to counter reports that big banks were skeptical of doing business with him. After a string of bankruptcies in his casino and hotel businesses in the 1990s, Mr. Trump became somewhat of an outsider on Wall Street, leaving the giant German bank among the few major financial institutions willing to lend him money. Now that two-decades-long relationship is coming under scrutiny. Banking regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Mr. Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, which caters to an ultrarich clientele, according to three people briefed on the review who were not authorized to speak publicly. The regulators want to know if the loans might expose the bank to heightened risks. Separately, Deutsche Bank has been in contact with federal investigators about the Trump accounts, according to two people briefed on the matter. And the bank is expecting to eventually have to provide information to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.
In reality, Magnitsky reported the $230 million tax fraud to the authorities in 2008 shortly before he was detained. According to an investigation ordered by the former president Dmitry Medvedev, Magnitsky was then held illegally, beaten, and left to die in his pretrial jail cell in 2009. As Rohrabacher pitched for support in the weeks after returning from Russia, Rinat Akhmetshin set to work on lobbying House members. A U.S. congressional staffer told The Daily Beast that former California Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA) and Akhmetshin showed up at their office without an appointment. “They said they were lobbying on behalf of a Russian company called Prevezon and asked us to delay the Global Magnitsky Act or at least remove Magnitsky from the name,” the staffer said. “Mr. Dellums said it was a shame that this bill has made it so Russian orphans cannot be adopted by Americans.” Prevezon’s lawyer at the time was Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was working to defend the Cyprus-based company against U.S. money laundering allegations related to the massive fraud uncovered by Magnitsky.
Last week, the New York Times revealed that Donald Jr and Kushner met in June 2016 at Trump Tower with a bevy of government-connected Russian contacts. They include Kremlin-allied attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya; Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military intelligence officer accused of spearheading a hacking enterprise; and Ike Kaveladze, whom federal investigators accuse of laundering over a billion dollars worth of Russian money.

Donald Trump Jr. Met Russian Accused of Laundering $1.4 Billion
Federal investigators say Kaveladze immediately began laundering money for Russians.
Kaveladze was the president of International Business Creations, a Delaware corporation. Between 1991 and 2000, IBC and sister corporation Euro-American moved $1.4 billion from Eastern Europe through U.S. banks and back to Europe, the Government Accountability Office found in 2000. Kaveladze was not named in the report, but he was reportedly identified as its accused figure. “What I see here is another Russian witch hunt in the United States,'' Kaveladze told the New York Times in 2000 about the allegations.
IBC and Euro-American “created corporations for Russian brokers and established bank accounts for those corporations,” GAO said. The bank accounts were opened at Citibank and the Bank of New York.
Approximately 2,000 corporations were formed for Russian brokers, GAO found, and 236 bank accounts were opened at Citi and BONY.

Special Report: How the Federal Reserve serves U.S. foreign intelligence
When foreign holdings at the New York Fed plunged about $115 billion, U.S. officials confirmed what others could only suspect, according to two former Fed officials: Russia's central bank had pulled its funds. While the Kremlin's public response was defiant, Fed and Treasury officials concluded Moscow feared the United States would freeze Russia's assets even though the account was not included in the narrow scope of the sanctions, according to one former official. After about two weeks, Russia's central bank returned most of the money to its Fed account, but the incident made officials monitor the account more closely for signs the sanctions had forced Moscow to draw down its reserves, the same source said. It was unclear what effect the sanctions had.

Bill Browder Head of Global Magnitsky Justice campaign explains why Putin is our enemy.
Putin is one of the richest man in the world, or one of the richest men in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth that was stolen from Russia. Putin “understands he could one day be targeted by the Magnitsky Act” if he ever loses power. The Panama Papers showed Putin was part of the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky. If targeted, assets would be frozen. Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin and their campaign need to lift Magnitsky sanctions so that Putin can get his hands on the 200 billion dollars of dark money his hides away in off shore accounts.
IT IS GOP REP DANA ROHRABACKER THAT GETS IN THE WAY OF THE MAGNITSKY JUSTICE CAMPAIGN

Contents

An indictment of the way the government fails to police financial institutions