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The Morning Risk Report: NatWest Fined for Overlooking Money-Laundering Risks Posed By Client
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Good morning. A NatWest Group PLC subsidiary was fined £264.7 million, equivalent to $351.3 million, in a London court over anti-money-laundering offenses for its failure to follow-up on red flags associated with the cash deposits of a customer.
The fine, imposed Monday by Justice Sara Cockerill of Southwark Crown Court, stems from a guilty plea by National Westminster Bank PLC in October on three offenses of failing to comply with the U.K’s money-laundering regulations. The case is the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority’s first criminal prosecution of a bank for money-laundering breaches.
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The deposits by Bradford-based Fowler Oldfield, a gold dealer, flowed into the bank in a number of suspicious ways, according to sentencing remarks by Justice Cockerill. Beginning in late 2013, the bank’s branches began receiving millions in cash from Fowler Oldfield, in sums so large, for instance, that they would break the black garbage bags in which they arrived and wouldn’t fit in the bank’s safes.
Often, the cash was in Scottish bank notes—unusual for a business based so far from the border between Scotland and England, according to the court—and carried a noticeably musty smell—indicating that the notes had sat in storage instead of being put to business use.
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JPMorgan has faced federal record-keeping probes over the bank’s handling of employees’ messages, people familiar with the matter said. PHOTO: MICHAEL NAGLE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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JPMorgan in talks to pay fine over employee text messages. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is nearing a deal to pay a $200 million fine and admit that it failed to properly monitor employees’ messages, the first settlement to emerge from a regulatory sweep into how banks oversee traders’ chats.
The investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission focused on concerns that the bank didn’t have an adequate system for retaining the chats, according to people familiar with the matter. Banks are supposed to retain employees’ communications, particularly those related to customer dealings, and provide the information to regulators when requested.
The nation’s biggest bank is expected to complete the settlement as soon as this week, some of the people said.
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UBS penalties slashed in French tax case. A French appeals court ordered UBS Group AG to pay around $2 billion for helping wealthy clients in France evade taxes, reducing the size of an earlier penalty of around $5 billion.
The court upheld the guilty verdict against the Swiss banking giant, in a case tried under French criminal law. However, it slashed an earlier fine of 3.7 billion euros, equivalent to around $4.2 billion, to 3.75 million euros, all but eliminating the largest chunk of penalties. It ruled that UBS must still pay 800 million euros in damages and interest, and ordered the confiscation of 1 billion euros.
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Publishers fire back at U.S. antitrust lawsuit. Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster filed their first court response Monday to a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit challenging their planned merger, arguing their deal would benefit authors, retailers and consumers.
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A security guard kept watch outside a San Francisco store last month.
PHOTO: ETHAN SWOPE/GETTY IMAGES
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Flash-mob thefts planned on Snapchat and other apps. A recent rash of thefts by fast-moving mobs at stores in the Bay Area and outside Minneapolis were organized on social media and committed by people who often didn’t know one another, according to law-enforcement officials investigating the incidents.
Snapchat was among the social-media apps and messaging services used by thieves in the Bay Area, one of the law-enforcement officials said.
The organizing tactics, which police say they haven’t seen before, make it difficult to catch or identify perpetrators, that official said. When suspects are arrested, they often don’t have names or information about others who were there.
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Hospital operators such as AdventHealth are dropping their Covid-19 vaccine mandates as labor shortages persist. PHOTO: ZACK WITTMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Hospitals drop Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Some of the largest U.S. hospital systems have dropped Covid-19 vaccine mandates for staff after a federal judge temporarily halted a Biden administration mandate that healthcare workers get the shots.
Hospital operators including HCA Healthcare Inc. and Tenet Healthcare Corp. as well as nonprofits AdventHealth and the Cleveland Clinic are dropping the mandates. Labor costs in the industry have soared, and hospitals struggled to retain enough nurses, technicians and even janitors to handle higher hospitalizations in recent months as the Delta variant raged. Vaccine mandates have been a factor constraining the supply of healthcare workers, according to hospital executives, public-health authorities and nursing groups.
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UPS, Postal Service step up on-time holiday deliveries. Delivery networks have mostly held up during the first major test of the peak shipping season, industry data show, as earlier shopping and increased in-store purchases have eased the usual late-year congestion.
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The Meta shareholders’ proposals come amid criticism of the company following revelations in WSJ’s Facebook Files series. PHOTO: LIU GUANGUAN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE/GETTY IMAGES
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Facebook shareholders press for governance changes. Facebook is facing more calls from shareholders to address harm on its platforms and overall governance as the company, now known as Meta Platforms Inc., responds to pressure from lawmakers and others.
Shareholders, including the New York State Common Retirement Fund and Illinois State Treasurer, are among an investor group that collectively filed eight shareholder proposals for consideration at the company’s annual meeting.
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