Showing posts with label porn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label porn. Show all posts
Friday, 28 October 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Stanford International Bank liquidators seek to unfreeze funds
The newly appointed liquidators of Stanford International Bank (SIB), Marcus Wide and Hugh Dickson, announced yesterday that they hope to reach a compromise with various governments, including the US Department of Justice, to unfreeze hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in an effort to recover the billions lost by the more than 27,000 creditors of SIB.
“The estate has virtually no funds, but is saddled with obligations that exceed money on hand. Convincing government officials around the world to unfreeze the funds is a top priority,” a press release said.
“We hope to meet with the Department of Justice to understand the reasoning behind their approach and see if a compromise can be reached which will allow the estate to go forward with its own funds, and therefore maximise returns to creditors,” Dickson said.
“To have access to the bank’s own funds presently frozen by the criminal forfeiture proceedings would generate a considerable value to the estate in terms of allowing additional recovery and asset realisations to maximise recoveries,” he added.
The duo, the release said, have contacted officials from the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom, the Prosecutor and Bankruptcy Trustee in Switzerland, and officers of the Attorney General of the Province of Ontario, Canada in recent weeks.
“Our objective has been to determine in the quickest time possible how the financial interests of the account holders, CD holders, and general creditors of the bank are best served,” Wide said.
“We have also been in contact with the US Department of Justice, the US Receiver, and the Creditors’ Committee for the US Receivership, with a view towards meeting with them once we have a better understanding of the issues between them and the SIB liquidation in Antigua,” the communiqué continued.
Dickson and Wide, who by order of the High Court last month replaced Nigel Hamilton-Smith and Peter Wastell as liquidators, also said they are considering the sale of real estate holdings in Antigua and are in the process of forming an advisory creditors committee, the release noted.
“These holdings are extensive and it is likely their value can be greatly enhanced if they are brought to market in an orderly manner over a period of time,” Dickson said.
“The estate has virtually no funds, but is saddled with obligations that exceed money on hand. Convincing government officials around the world to unfreeze the funds is a top priority,” a press release said.
“We hope to meet with the Department of Justice to understand the reasoning behind their approach and see if a compromise can be reached which will allow the estate to go forward with its own funds, and therefore maximise returns to creditors,” Dickson said.
“To have access to the bank’s own funds presently frozen by the criminal forfeiture proceedings would generate a considerable value to the estate in terms of allowing additional recovery and asset realisations to maximise recoveries,” he added.
The duo, the release said, have contacted officials from the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom, the Prosecutor and Bankruptcy Trustee in Switzerland, and officers of the Attorney General of the Province of Ontario, Canada in recent weeks.
“Our objective has been to determine in the quickest time possible how the financial interests of the account holders, CD holders, and general creditors of the bank are best served,” Wide said.
“We have also been in contact with the US Department of Justice, the US Receiver, and the Creditors’ Committee for the US Receivership, with a view towards meeting with them once we have a better understanding of the issues between them and the SIB liquidation in Antigua,” the communiqué continued.
Dickson and Wide, who by order of the High Court last month replaced Nigel Hamilton-Smith and Peter Wastell as liquidators, also said they are considering the sale of real estate holdings in Antigua and are in the process of forming an advisory creditors committee, the release noted.
“These holdings are extensive and it is likely their value can be greatly enhanced if they are brought to market in an orderly manner over a period of time,” Dickson said.
Saturday, 4 June 2011
The SEC and Stanford
A Securities and Exchange Commission worker gave investors false and misleading information about an alleged Ponzi scheme that could have hindered investigation of a fraud in which he also was a victim, the agency’s watchdog said.
The employee, based at SEC headquarters in Washington, shared non-public information with several investors during the SEC’s investigation and litigation of the case, SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz said in his semi-annual report to Congress released today. The report didn’t identify either the SEC employee or the firm accused of conducting the fraud.
Kotz opened his probe in February after a senior official said the employee had contacted fellow investors and told them that the company was legitimate and that investors “would be receiving considerable sums of money,” according to the report. Some or all of the investors knew the man worked at the SEC and believed he had first-hand knowledge of the investigation, according to the report.
“His conduct not only confused certain investors and gave them a false sense of hope, but it also had the potential to adversely affect an on-going enforcement investigation,” Kotz said in the report. The employee was placed on administrative leave, and Kotz referred the matter for disciplinary action “up to and including dismissal,” according to the report.
The SEC sued the firm on Oct. 6 and won a judgment on Feb. 14, according to the report. Imperia Invest, a Web-based entity with a fictitious Bahamian address, was ordered to pay more than $15 million in a default judgment on Feb. 14 after failing to respond to the SEC’s lawsuit, according to court documents.
Becker
Elsewhere in the report, Kotz summarized the status of other on-going investigations, including one involving former SEC general counsel David M. Becker. Kotz said his office has searched 1.7 million e-mails and is beginning witness interviews to determine whether Becker violated conflict-of-interest rules.
Becker, who re-joined the SEC in 2009 after the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme unraveled, has been sued by the trustee liquidating the jailed money manager’s business over profits he inherited from his parents’ Madoff account. Becker helped set SEC policy stemming from the case before leaving in February.
The inspector general’s staff has met with congressional investigators on the Becker probe and plans to issue findings before Sept. 30, according to the report.
Pornography
The report also details new cases of agency employees and contractors viewing pornography on SEC computers, following reports last year that 30 workers had improperly used agency computers for that purpose in the preceding five years.
An accountant based at the agency’s Washington headquarters “successfully accessed numerous sexually explicit photographs from his SEC computer, including graphic depictions of sexual acts” -- often during normal work hours, according to the report. Managers recommended that he be fired, the report said.
Two Washington-based attorneys were also accused of accessing pornography at work. One of them resigned, according to the report, and management recommended that the other -- who used an SEC computer to access “inappropriate images of partially or fully nude women” -- be fired.
In another case, a contractor was fired and escorted from the building after admitting he had been viewing pornography on his SEC computer for at least a year, even as he’d received computer training and notices that such behaviour was banned.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said last year that she was “angry and frustrated that a very few individuals have demonstrated that they are willing to place the credibility of the SEC at risk.”
John Nester, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment on the inspector general’s investigations.
The employee, based at SEC headquarters in Washington, shared non-public information with several investors during the SEC’s investigation and litigation of the case, SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz said in his semi-annual report to Congress released today. The report didn’t identify either the SEC employee or the firm accused of conducting the fraud.
Kotz opened his probe in February after a senior official said the employee had contacted fellow investors and told them that the company was legitimate and that investors “would be receiving considerable sums of money,” according to the report. Some or all of the investors knew the man worked at the SEC and believed he had first-hand knowledge of the investigation, according to the report.
“His conduct not only confused certain investors and gave them a false sense of hope, but it also had the potential to adversely affect an on-going enforcement investigation,” Kotz said in the report. The employee was placed on administrative leave, and Kotz referred the matter for disciplinary action “up to and including dismissal,” according to the report.
The SEC sued the firm on Oct. 6 and won a judgment on Feb. 14, according to the report. Imperia Invest, a Web-based entity with a fictitious Bahamian address, was ordered to pay more than $15 million in a default judgment on Feb. 14 after failing to respond to the SEC’s lawsuit, according to court documents.
Becker
Elsewhere in the report, Kotz summarized the status of other on-going investigations, including one involving former SEC general counsel David M. Becker. Kotz said his office has searched 1.7 million e-mails and is beginning witness interviews to determine whether Becker violated conflict-of-interest rules.
Becker, who re-joined the SEC in 2009 after the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme unraveled, has been sued by the trustee liquidating the jailed money manager’s business over profits he inherited from his parents’ Madoff account. Becker helped set SEC policy stemming from the case before leaving in February.
The inspector general’s staff has met with congressional investigators on the Becker probe and plans to issue findings before Sept. 30, according to the report.
Pornography
The report also details new cases of agency employees and contractors viewing pornography on SEC computers, following reports last year that 30 workers had improperly used agency computers for that purpose in the preceding five years.
An accountant based at the agency’s Washington headquarters “successfully accessed numerous sexually explicit photographs from his SEC computer, including graphic depictions of sexual acts” -- often during normal work hours, according to the report. Managers recommended that he be fired, the report said.
Two Washington-based attorneys were also accused of accessing pornography at work. One of them resigned, according to the report, and management recommended that the other -- who used an SEC computer to access “inappropriate images of partially or fully nude women” -- be fired.
In another case, a contractor was fired and escorted from the building after admitting he had been viewing pornography on his SEC computer for at least a year, even as he’d received computer training and notices that such behaviour was banned.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said last year that she was “angry and frustrated that a very few individuals have demonstrated that they are willing to place the credibility of the SEC at risk.”
John Nester, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment on the inspector general’s investigations.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Time to Demand More From the SEC
I wish there were a way to indict an entire government commission. OK, well, maybe just the senior staff?
I'm speaking, of course, about the Securities and Exchange Commission, where as many as 33 of its top management — including senior lawyers and accountants — were apparently too busy looking at XXX-rated Internet porn sites to notice brewing financial tsunamis like the implosion of the U.S. housing market, the demise of giant Lehman Brothers and rouge billionaire investment gurus like Bernie Madoff and Robert Allen Stanford, who decimated countless thousands of Americans' retirement plans.
It was the SEC's job to look out for our financial well-being, and we now see how miserably it failed. As Wall Street quaked, the financial structure of America began to crumble and Ponzi schemes percolated, these Bozos were more worried about feeding their own sexual appetites.
Just a short time after the Office of Inspector General's recent Porn-Gate report made news, it was revealed that the SEC had filed a blockbuster mortgage fraud suit against investment giant Goldman Sachs. Headlines screamed the news, Congress immediately jumped on the "we've-got-to-have-hearings-on-this!" bandwagon, and attention was averted away from the SEC employees' own criminality.
I want to shine the spotlight back where it belongs. And I don't use the word "criminality" lightly.
Some of these top echelon employees were raking in as much as $222,000 a year — all taxpayer money, of course. These ne'er do wells, one who was reported to have spent at least eight hours a day for weeks on end perusing and downloading porn sites, might as well have walked into a convenience store and stolen all the cash out of the register.
This report on porn viewing at the SEC is chilling in its detail. It concludes that most of the X-rated behavior began in 2008, just as the U.S. economy began to wobble and the problem hasn't stopped! The most recent case of an SEC executive spending more time surfing nasty sites than working on our behalf occurred just a few weeks ago.
One senior SEC attorney spent so much time drooling over and capturing pornographic images on his office computer that he ran out of space on his hard drive. He began to download the lewd material onto discs, which filled multiple boxes and were stored right there in his government office. This is an attorney who surely knew what he was doing was wrong.
A female SEC accountant tried to access vulgar porn sites 1,800 times in just one two-week period. Investigators found 600 pornographic images burned onto her government-issued laptop computer's hard drive.
Another SEC accountant brought his own sexually explicit videos in to work and used the commission's computer to upload them to porn club sites he'd joined online. And a regional staffer's computer showed that he'd tried to access pornographic Websites but was stopped by the commission's Internet filter 16,000 times in one month! That averages out to 800 times every workday! What the heck was this guy doing in between trying to view porn?
Mike Leahy, author of the bestselling book "Porn Nation," asked about that type behavior, said simply, "Trust me, these guys are addicts."
Two years after the porn-fest at the SEC began, it is little comfort that they've now apparently been shamed into using their computers only for official business. It's somehow just not enough when the SEC's spokesman, John Nester, announces that "each of the offending employees has been disciplined or is in the process of being disciplined. ... Some have already been suspended or dismissed."
Really? Just "some" of them? And, what about the possibility of criminal charges being filed against the worst offenders — maybe charges of accepting government funds under false pretenses — because I sure feel like I've been ripped off ... in more ways than one!
It's not just the pornography scandal that should force a major revamp of the SEC. It's the culture of uncaring evident for many years there that must change. Way back in 2000, the SEC was warned about the unscrupulous activities of billionaire con man Bernie Madoff. He should have been thoroughly investigated and stopped then, yet it took nine years to bring him to justice. The SEC first heard that Robert Allen Stanford was up to no good in 1997, yet his scheme continued for more than a decade, growing to an astounding 8 billion dollars.
I don't hear Congress clamoring to hold hearings on the Securities and Exchange Commission, but I think they should. Those SEC scoundrels who spent time sexually arousing themselves instead of doing the job we taxpayers paid for should have to pay a price.
I'm speaking, of course, about the Securities and Exchange Commission, where as many as 33 of its top management — including senior lawyers and accountants — were apparently too busy looking at XXX-rated Internet porn sites to notice brewing financial tsunamis like the implosion of the U.S. housing market, the demise of giant Lehman Brothers and rouge billionaire investment gurus like Bernie Madoff and Robert Allen Stanford, who decimated countless thousands of Americans' retirement plans.
It was the SEC's job to look out for our financial well-being, and we now see how miserably it failed. As Wall Street quaked, the financial structure of America began to crumble and Ponzi schemes percolated, these Bozos were more worried about feeding their own sexual appetites.
Just a short time after the Office of Inspector General's recent Porn-Gate report made news, it was revealed that the SEC had filed a blockbuster mortgage fraud suit against investment giant Goldman Sachs. Headlines screamed the news, Congress immediately jumped on the "we've-got-to-have-hearings-on-this!" bandwagon, and attention was averted away from the SEC employees' own criminality.
I want to shine the spotlight back where it belongs. And I don't use the word "criminality" lightly.
Some of these top echelon employees were raking in as much as $222,000 a year — all taxpayer money, of course. These ne'er do wells, one who was reported to have spent at least eight hours a day for weeks on end perusing and downloading porn sites, might as well have walked into a convenience store and stolen all the cash out of the register.
This report on porn viewing at the SEC is chilling in its detail. It concludes that most of the X-rated behavior began in 2008, just as the U.S. economy began to wobble and the problem hasn't stopped! The most recent case of an SEC executive spending more time surfing nasty sites than working on our behalf occurred just a few weeks ago.
One senior SEC attorney spent so much time drooling over and capturing pornographic images on his office computer that he ran out of space on his hard drive. He began to download the lewd material onto discs, which filled multiple boxes and were stored right there in his government office. This is an attorney who surely knew what he was doing was wrong.
A female SEC accountant tried to access vulgar porn sites 1,800 times in just one two-week period. Investigators found 600 pornographic images burned onto her government-issued laptop computer's hard drive.
Another SEC accountant brought his own sexually explicit videos in to work and used the commission's computer to upload them to porn club sites he'd joined online. And a regional staffer's computer showed that he'd tried to access pornographic Websites but was stopped by the commission's Internet filter 16,000 times in one month! That averages out to 800 times every workday! What the heck was this guy doing in between trying to view porn?
Mike Leahy, author of the bestselling book "Porn Nation," asked about that type behavior, said simply, "Trust me, these guys are addicts."
Two years after the porn-fest at the SEC began, it is little comfort that they've now apparently been shamed into using their computers only for official business. It's somehow just not enough when the SEC's spokesman, John Nester, announces that "each of the offending employees has been disciplined or is in the process of being disciplined. ... Some have already been suspended or dismissed."
Really? Just "some" of them? And, what about the possibility of criminal charges being filed against the worst offenders — maybe charges of accepting government funds under false pretenses — because I sure feel like I've been ripped off ... in more ways than one!
It's not just the pornography scandal that should force a major revamp of the SEC. It's the culture of uncaring evident for many years there that must change. Way back in 2000, the SEC was warned about the unscrupulous activities of billionaire con man Bernie Madoff. He should have been thoroughly investigated and stopped then, yet it took nine years to bring him to justice. The SEC first heard that Robert Allen Stanford was up to no good in 1997, yet his scheme continued for more than a decade, growing to an astounding 8 billion dollars.
I don't hear Congress clamoring to hold hearings on the Securities and Exchange Commission, but I think they should. Those SEC scoundrels who spent time sexually arousing themselves instead of doing the job we taxpayers paid for should have to pay a price.