Feds give up trying to hold Bank Of America accountable for Countrywide’s “Hustle” mortgage scam
By Chris Morran From Consumerist A nasty four-year legal battle between the Justice Department and Bank of America over a massive mortgage-related scam run by Countrywide Financial has come to a whimpering conclusion, with the DOJ opting to not appeal…
History is repeating itself and America may not survive
By Richard Lawless From Caribbean News Now In 2006 a financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude hit America. Wall Street, with at least complicit support from our legislators, the DOJ and regulatory agencies began to create new financial instruments to sell…
TOO BIG TO JAIL: George Osborne helped HSBC avoid US criminal charges for money laundering
By Oscar Williams-Gru From Business Insider Britain’s Chancellor George Osborne and the UK’s former financial watchdog “hampered” the 2012 US investigation into HSBC’s money laundering and contributed to a watering down of the banks eventual punishment, according to a damning…
US: EFF sues for release of data on decryption requests
By Cheryl Miller, The Recorder SACRAMENTO — Digital liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the U.S. Department of Justice Tuesday for documents that may shed light on how many times—if ever—the federal government has sought a secret court order forcing companies…
Goldman Sachs Pays $5 Billion in latest mortgage settlement
By Sue Reisinger, From Corporate Counsel Federal prosecutors today announced a $5 billion deal with the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to resolve claims over Goldman Sachs’ misconduct in packaging and selling mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007. Such misconduct was…
IRS/DOJ Summons seeks to break Singapore Bank Secrecy on Non-Resident’s Account
By Scott D. Michel & Mark E. Matthews From Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered In late February 2016, the Justice Department filed an action in federal court to compel UBS’s branch in Miami to produce bank records of a Singapore account…
2015 environmental year in review
Authors Byron Taylor, David T Buente Jr, Roger R Martella Jr, Judith M Praitis Contributed by Sidley Austin LLP Environment & Climate Change USA Litigation developments Rulemaking and policy developments Enforcement developments Biotechnology developments Whether the issue was climate change, air quality standards or water…
American charged with defrauding Caribbean immigrants
From Carib News The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) says an American had been arrested and charged with defrauding Caribbean and other immigrants. The DOJ said Helaman Hansen, 63, was arrested after a US federal grand jury returned a…
DOJ probing Irish ‘Bad Bank’ deal involving Brown Rudnick
By Jennifer Henderson, from The Am Law Daily The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly landed on Project Eagle. The code name for the April 2014 transaction, which saw Brown Rudnick advise private-equity giant Cerberus Capital Management on its $1.82…
Airline seats antitrust case heads for takeoff
By Sue Reisinger, From Corporate Counsel More than 75 class action lawsuits have been filed across the country so far against the four major airlines that are the targets of an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice, which is…