from http://www.roguegovernment.com/Bank_of_America_Settles_In_Bid-Rigging_Case/23957/0/8/8/Y/M.html
Source: Courant
Bank of America will pay $137 million in restitution for its part in a nationwide scheme that included bid rigging and other anti-competitive practices that defrauded state agencies, cities and towns, school districtss and nonprofits in the purchase of municipal bond derivative, Connecticut's attorney general said today.
Bank of America will pay $137 million to settle government accusations that it rigged bids to win business from municipal governments, Connecticut's attorney general said today.
Connecticut is among 20 states that will share $67 million of that total in restitution tied to nationwide anti-competitive practices that defrauded state agencies, cities and towns, school districts and non-profits in the purchase of municipal bond derivatives.
Connecticut's share is expected to be about $600,000, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who helped lead the probes by the state attorneys general.
"The settlement is only a first step in an ongoing investigation aimed at recovering restitution from the nation's biggest financial institutions for relentlessly shortchanging taxpayers and nonprofits," Blumenthal said.
Bank of America, Connecticut's largest bank, cooperated with authorities in exchange for leniency. In settling, the bank neither admitted or denied the accusations.
The investigation covers practices occurring between 1998 and 2003. In addition to Bank of America, the wide-ranging investigation is targeting several other major financial institutions.
"Bank of America is pleased to put this matter behind it, and has already voluntarily undertaken numerous remediation efforts," the bank said, in a statement.
In addition to the states, federal agencies involved in the years-long probe included the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve.
2 comments:
LOL. The day any bank agrees to an Ecology of Peace social contract is the day the social contract (if enforced) restricts them from rigging the system. Till then, such 'settlements' are subjectively in Corporate baracuda's minds; just the small change russian roulette jurisprudence cost of doing Multinational Raping and Resource Thieving business; on the War is Peace Oroborous phallic ratrace roundabout. Some corporations pay small change, others walk off scott free.
""El Paso - 200 children - $5 to $10,000 per kid." -- Handwritten notes of Gulf Resources vice president Frank Woodruff, calculating Gulf's liability for poisoning 500 children with lead from its Bunker Hill smelter in Kellogg, Idaho; Gulf concluded it was cheaper to poison the children than to replace pollution control equipment." -- Endgame: Privatization & Externalization: Corporate Criminals: Fines & Settlements: Multimillion Dollar Fines & Settlements Paid by Corporations
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A social contract or peace treaty that ignores finite resource reality as the foundation for its procreation and consumption social contract duties imposed on all signatory parties; is not -- in my opinion -- a Golden Rule social contract, or a sincere peace treaty, because it totally and utterly ignores the ecological finite resource reality foundation and citizen procreation and consumption duties required for peaceful co-existence amongst tribes.
To the contrary, a ‘War is Peace' social contract or ‘Peace treaty’ is simply a psycho-political – soma-pacification, or Trojan horse public relations psychological warfare -- resource theft tactic.
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