DOJ Says Missteps by Ericsson and its Outside Lawyers Led to $207 Million in Fines

Missteps by Ericsson and Its Lawyers Led to New Sanctions Against Company

A court filing by federal prosecutors earlier this month lays out details about a series of alleged missteps that led Ericsson SA to agree to pay $207 million in fines. Prosecutors highlighted in particular how failures by the Swedish telecommunication company’s outside lawyers contributed to their decision to seek the new penalties.

The Justice Department in early March said it would take the rare step of tearing up a $1 billion settlement that Ericsson entered into in 2019 to resolve bribery offenses in China, Djibouti and three other countries. In a filing explaining how Ericsson allegedly breached the agreement, prosecutors attributed specific missteps to Ericsson’s outside legal counsel, including lawyers at firms Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.

Why Was KPMG Still Auditing Silicon Valley Bank?

The main lessons from SVB’s collapse surround the board’s poor risk management and banking supervisors’ failures. But there may well be lessons on audit quality too. The US Securities Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should be asking if auditors have sufficient understanding of banking business models to provide a useful supporting narrative to the numbers. They should ask whether there may have been independence failings here and, either way, put audit-firm rotation back on the agenda – never mind the industry pushback.

There is ethical porn under capitalism

Ethical Capital Partners! Yes look if you are setting up a brand-new private equity firm with five of your lawyer/cannabis-investor buddies for the sole purpose of buying a porn company, you will be tempted to name it, like, Porn Capital Partners, or We Bought a Pornhub LP, or 69/420 Capital Partners, or, I mean, I’m sure you have worse ideas. But “Ethical Capital Partners” is a much better idea. Just a thin but necessary layer of deniability there. Your public-pension-fund limited partners, at their board meetings devoted to environmental, social and governance issues, can be like “and this quarter we allocated some funds to Ethical Capital Partners,” and the directors will be like “ah yes that sounds very ethical, what exactly do they do again,” and then there’s an awkward silence and the investment team is like “well they do porn.” But if they don’t ask then it’s great.

Elizabeth Warren Calls for Investigation of SVB and Signature Bank CollapsesSen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) called for an independent investigation into the recent failures of two U.S. regional banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

In a letter Sunday to the inspectors general of the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, Ms. Warren called for the probe to examine the management and oversight of the banks ahead of their collapses this month. She said preliminary results from the investigation should be provided within 30 days.

The bank’s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures. But this mismanagement was allowed to occur because of a series of failures by lawmakers and regulators,” said Ms. Warren, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee.

SEC seeks sanctions against VW in emissions cheating case

In its filing on Friday, the SEC alleged VW had violated a U.S. federal magistrate’s February 10 order requiring the company to make Duesterdiek available for a deposition.

“Thorsten Duesterdiek is likely the most important witness in this case, and he is a big problem for VW. He had cradle-to-grave involvement in VW’s long-running defeat device fraud,” wrote SEC lawyer Daniel Hayes in Friday’s filing. The SEC said Duesterdiek was a “managing agent” and that from 2012 to 2016 led a diesel engine department at VW.

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VW’s lawyers argued in January that the federal magistrate could not compel the company to produce Duesterdiek for a deposition because he is not currently “an officer, director or managing agent of VW.”

Elizabeth Holmes Makes Plea to Put Off Prison as She Appeals

Five weeks before she’s due to report to prison, Elizabeth Holmes made her pitch to remain free on bail as she appeals her fraud conviction.

The Theranos Inc. founder on Friday made what will likely be her last appearance before US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, who presided over her four-month trial in 2021 and sentenced her in November to serve 11 1/4 years of incarceration for deceiving investors in her blood-testing startup.

Bitcoin Believers Revel in Told-You-So Moment as Banks Crumble

He drove a Budget moving van directly in front of the building’s entrance, so all could see the message plastered on the side: “BE YOUR OWN BANK,” it read, between a doctored image of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holding a “Buy Bitcoin” sign and the orange logo for the original cryptocurrency. A video of the made-for-social-media stunt, set to Pink Floyd’s “Money” as soundtrack, was tweeted by an account with the handle @cryptograffiti, with text that said “btc>svb.”

Following an epically awful 12 months for the cryptocurrency industry, Bitcoin evangelists are enjoying a moment — not to mention a huge rally in their favorite coin, which has soared more than 30% in the past seven days, putting the key level of $30,000 in sight. To them, the reverberations from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank only serve to underscore a key vulnerability in the fractional-reserve banking system that Bitcoin was meant to fix: It’s all based on faith that your money will be there when you need it.

Biden Seeks Tougher Penalties on Executives of Failed Banks

President Joe Biden urged Congress to approve measures enacting tougher punishments on banking executives if mismanagement contributed to their institutions failing, following the recent collapse of three regional banks.

Biden said laws on the books currently limit the administration’s ability to hold executives accountable.

“When banks fail due to mismanagement and excessive risk taking, it should be easier for regulators to claw back compensation from executives, to impose civil penalties, and to ban executives from working in the banking industry again,” he said.Source: