US Bank Dinged on Messaging Fails

US Bank

US Bank is the latest financial firm sanctioned for employees’ use of off-channel messaging apps, fined $6 million on Tuesday by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At this point these cases are hardly news any more, but the US Bank enforcement does have a few twists that warrant a compliance officer’s attention. First, as outlined…

Read More

Binance ex-CCO Faces $1.5M Fine

Binance

Don’t overlook this detail in the settlement announced Tuesday against Binance and its chief executive officer: the cryptocurrency exchange’s former chief compliance officer is also looking at a $1.5 million penalty and severe restrictions on any future compliance career he might want to have.  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which gets a piece of the…

Read More

CFTC Seeks Help on Carbon Frauds

climate

Here’s a new twist on whistleblower award programs run by government agencies: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission just published a bulletin calling for tips from the public about potential fraud in the market for carbon offsets. To the best of my recollection, that’s new. The CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have both encouraged tips…

Read More

The Bonkers Allegations Against Binance

Binance

You may have heard by now that earlier this week, regulators filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency trading platform Binance. I just read the complaint, and have good news: however whacko your own company’s bad habits might be, the allegations against Binance are way more crazy. The regulator responsible for this bombshell of bizarreness is the…

Read More

Another Regulator Talks ‘Gatekeepers’

gatekeepers

We’ve seen a lot of mess in the cryptocurrency world lately. Last week a leading voice on the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission called for one specific group to step up and do better with this bedraggled bit of the finance industry: gatekeepers. CFTC commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, a Democratic appointee and head of the…

Read More

CFTC’s $200M Whistleblower Award

whistleblower

Here’s news that will leave whistleblowers speechless: the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission just gave out the largest whistleblower award in U.S. history, a $200 million windfall reportedly going to a former Deutsche Bank executive who provided crucial help in unraveling the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal. The CFTC won’t confirm the whistleblower’s identity, but the person…

Read More

CFTC Stresses Compliance Programs

cftc

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission updated its enforcement manual last week for the first time in 26 years, with a heap of attention paid to the importance of corporate compliance programs when firms are looking to reduce potential monetary penalties.  The update, published as a four-page memo from the CFTC Enforcement Division on May 20,…

Read More