Manhattan, NY, United States (AHN) – The New York prosecutor subpoenaed American bank Goldman Sachs to investigate the institution’s role into the credit crisis.

The court summons is in relation to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s report that accused Goldman Sachs of misleading buyers of mortgage-linked investments as one of the reasons behind the collapse of the financial markets.

Reports said that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is studying the possibility of initiating civil proceedings against Goldman Sachs on the basis of the subcommittee’s report. But any case that Vance could file would not lead to the filing of criminal charges against the bank or its employees.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment on specific regulatory or legal issues, but said receiving subpoenas are a normal part of the judicial system’s information request process. The bank promised to cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation.

Shares of Goldman Sachs dropped 16 percent in New York trading since the subcommittee report was released in April. On Thursday, the bank’s stocks went down 1.3 percent to $134.38 at the New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

In 2010 Goldman Sachs was penalized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over claims related to the bank’s marketing of complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations. The settlement was over claims that Goldman Sachs did not disclosed that hedge fund Paulson & Company was betting against and influenced the selection of CDOs that the bank was packaging and selling.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Two funds have filed a lawsuit against British bank Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for profiting from hedge fund Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Alpha Prime Fund and Senator Fund filed a claim against HSBC before a New York bankruptcy court on Friday. The two funds said HSBC served as custodian of Madoff’s funds and failed in its duty to monitor the discredited banker.

It is the second claim filed against HSBC after Madoff trustee, lawyer Irving Picard, filed a lawsuit against HSBC and several feeder funds for $9 billion in December. Picard charged that the bank and funds should have spotted Madoff’s fraud.

Irving claimed that HSBC asked accountancy firm KPMG twice to investigate the bank’s suspicion that Madoff’s investment company was involved in fraud, but the bank had a strong financial incentive to take part in the scheme by being silent about it.

HSBC previously said that KPMG did not conclude in its two reports that fraud was being committed by Madoff’s firm. The bank claimed lack of knowledge about the Ponzi scheme and cited a $1 billion loss as proof that it , too, was a victim of Madoff. HSBC previously asked a New York district court judge to dismiss Picard’s lawsuit.

Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence in a North Carolina federal prison, confirmed that HSBC went over his company’s books twice, but missed things.

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New York, NY, United States (NewsBahn) – The founders of three of the largest Internet poker companies doing business in the United States are among 11 people accused Friday of bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses.

The charged were unveiled Friday when federal authorities unsealed a indictment in Manhattan.

The government also seeks at least $3 billion in civil money laundering penalties and forfeiture from the poker companies and the defendants. A federal district court has issued an order restraining approximately 76 bank accounts in 14 countries.

Five Internet domain names used by the poker companies also were seized.

Among those charged were Isai Scheinberg and Paul Tate of Poker Stars, Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick of Full Tilt Poker and Scott Tom and Brent Buckley of Absolute Poker.

In a statement, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara said: “As charged, these defendants concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits. Moreover, as we allege, in their zeal to circumvent the gambling laws, the defendants also engaged in massive money laundering and bank fraud. Foreign firms that choose to operate in the United States are not free to flout the laws they don’t like simply because they can’t bear to be parted from their profits.”

The statement said owners of the poker sites “arranged for the money received from U.S. gamblers to be disguised as payments to hundreds of non-existent online merchants purporting to sell merchandise such as jewelry and golf balls. Of the billions of dollars in payment transactions that the poker companies tricked U.S. banks into processing, approximately one-third or more of the funds went directly to the Poker Companies as revenue through the ‘rake’ charged to players on almost every poker hand played online.”

After U.S. banks refused to accept payments from the gambling sites, which would have in violation of federal law, federal authorities said the companies persuaded a few small local banks in financial trouble to process their payments “in return for multi-million-dollar investments in the banks.”

John Campos, vice chairman of the board of a small private bank, SunFirst Bank of Saint George, UT, was among those charged in the indictment.

Four other men – Ryan Lang, Ira Rubin, Bradley Franzen and Chad Elie – were accused of being “highly compensated ‘payment processors’” who “lied to banks about the nature of the financial transactions they were processing, and covered up those lies, by, among things, creating phony corporations and websites to disguise payments.”

The indictment notes that in a press release dated Oct. 16, 2006, Absolute Poker announced that the company would continue its U.S. operations because “the U.S. Congress has no control over” the company’s payment transactions.

Two of the men were arrested Friday: Campos in Utah and Elie in Las Vegas. A third defendant, Franzen, is expected to appear in New York on Tuesday for arraignment. Bitar, Scheinberg, Burtnick, Tate, Tom, Beckley and Rubin are believe to be outside the U.S. and have not yet been arrested.

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Asian Development Bank or ADB has projected India’s gross domestic product for the current fiscal year (2011-12) at 8.2 percent, down from an estimated rate of 8.7 percent, on the back of surging global oil prices and the Reserve Bank of India or RBI’s tight monetary policy. The forecast, however, is in sharp contrast to the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council projection of 9 percent growth in the current fiscal.

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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Britain’s Financial Services Authority reported Wednesday that for the past six months it received almost one million complaints against high street banks. Topping the list of the banks was Barclays, which was the subject of over 275,000 complaints.

Barclays was followed by Santander (195,000), Lloyds TSB (175,00) and Bank of Scotland (123,000).

On the average, the FSA got more than 5,000 complaints a day. With the majority of the complaints for below standard services and poor advice on pensions and insurance.

The FSA mandated the banks to disclose the number of complaints they got in a bid to improve customer service by publicly identifying the erring financial institutions.

The City regulator upheld a higher 49.3 percent of the customer complains for the second half of 2010, which is almost double the 25.8 percent figure for the first half of the same year.

An FSA official said that the growing number of complaints received is an indicator that there is something wrong with customer service and design and sales of financial products. The official said that the unneeded complexity of many accounts, policies and fees cause bank customers to get a raw deal.

The official added the government is making consultations on how the FSA could address the growing problems with design, marketing and sales of financial products.

Because of the complaints, banks, insurance and investment firms paid a total of $681 million (GBP 454 million) compensation to customers, which is an 11 percent rise compared to the same period last year.

Most of the new complaints were about payment protection insurance, which is used to cover credit card and mortgage payments for people who become sick or unemployed.

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Manhattan, NY, United States (AHN) – The trustee appointed by the court to run after hedge fund operator Bernard Madoff’s millions told the court Tuesday that the bank account of Madoff’s wife, Ruth, received at least $14 million from the fraud.

Irving Picard, based his claims on monthly bank statements, canceled checks and other financial records of the Madoff couple from January 2002 to December 2008.

Picard said the money that was deposited in Ruth’s personal bank account came from the companies established by her husband.

When the Ponzi scheme of Madoff collapsed in 2008, the funds become property of Madoff’s clients, Picard argued when he filed a lawsuit in 2009 against Ruth.

Ruth, who is scheduled to respond to the lawsuit on March 31, gave up houses, jewelry and bank accounts to the U.S. government in June 2009.

According to reports, she has severed ties with Bernard and no longer visits him in jail after their son Mark took his life late last year out of shame.

She has moved to Florida from New York and lives a more frugal life. Friends of Ruth said she barely spends and lives in a house in Boca Raton loaned to her since the government also seized Madoff’s home in Palm Beach, Florida and a yacht.

Ruth got a $2.3 million deposit in her Bank of New York account that came from a Madoff brokerage firm used to buy the yacht, Picard disclosed. Most of the deposits were masked as interest payments on loans made to Madoff’s companies.

Aside from the 2009 lawsuit Picard filed against Ruth to recover $44.8 million profit from the Ponzi-like fraud, the trustee included her in another $1-billion lawsuit he filed against owners of the Mets baseball team – Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz – who were also partners in Sterling Equities where the Madoffs invested $12 million.

Ruth reportedly dyed her hair red and uses her maiden name of Alpem as part of her attempt to maintain a low-profile life in Florida. She drives a 14-year-old car and has been seen renting $1 DVDs from a kiosk at a Publix grocery.

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ROTHSCHILD BANK has launched a tender process to find advisers to help break the impasse between property investor Noel Smyth and bondholders owed £184m (€218m) by his UK property empire Alburn Limited.

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D.C., Washington, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Treasury announced Monday the freezing of $30 billion of Libyan assets in a bid to unseat Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi from his 42-year old hold on power.

Treasury acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said the $30-billion asset freeze under U.S. jurisdiction is the largest blocking under any sanctions program. The seizure was based on an executive order issued Friday by U.S. President Barack Obama.

The freeze order covers Gaddafi’s assets, that of his four children, the Libyan government and other Libyan institutions such as the Libyan Central Bank and the Libyan Investment Authority. Cohen said the order covers any bank organized under U.S. laws or any overseas branch operations of a U.S. bank.

Cohen added the Treasury is still studying if it would add individuals to the freeze order. With the U.S. action, combined with the sanctions taken by the European Union and the U.N. Security Council, the undersecretary said all of Qaddafi’s and Libyan assets worldwide could not be withdrawn.

Aside from freezing Gaddafi’s assets, the Pentagon repositioned its forces in the Libyan region as western nations mull using intervention to oust the dictator. Among the options that Washington is eying is to establish a no-fly zone in the troubled region, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said.

Observers said the repositioned U.S. forces could be used to enforce a no-fly zone to prevent the Libyan leader’s aircraft from attacking protestors. Among the military forces that Washington could tap are the USS Enterprise, currently in the Red Sea, and the USS Kearsarge, which has helicopters and 2,000 Marines aboard.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – American bank JPMorgan Chase is planning to open a new fund to invest in social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Groupon.

The bank hopes to raise $500 to $750 million from wealthy investors.

The bank suggested investing in social networking sites with well established business models and good income stream before these companies list publicly.

Even before Facebook and Groupon go public, these companies have generated high interest among potential investors. Groupon raised $950 million from several large investment companies after it rejected a $6-billion offer from Google.

Goldman Sachs had gone one step ahead and invested $500 million in Facebook and has so far raised $1 billion for the most popular social networking site with 500 million members. Goldman, however, limited investors to foreigners to avoid a possible problem with U.S. securities regulations.

Goldman created a special investment vehicle that permitted Facebook to keep the number of investors to less than 500 to skirt securities regulations that companies with 500 or more investors, even if not publicly listed, must release their financial information to the public.

JPMorgan is scheduled to hold Tuesday its yearly day-long investor conference to review its businesses and plans for the next 12 months. Among the directions that the bank will take is to seek new growth opportunities, including overseas, according to JPMogran Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon.

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At a House committee hearing, he defends actions by the central bank to stimulate economic growth, including recently buying billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the central bank’s continued efforts to stimulate the economy, even as he acknowledged a strengthening recovery and gave a slightly more upbeat assessment of the nation’s employment situation.

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