Fifa corruption: Paraguay's Juan Angel Napout jailed for nine years

Juan Angel Napout, the former president of South America's football governing body Conmebol, has been jailed for nine years for his part in the Fifa bribery scandal.

He was found guilty in December last year at a trial in Brooklyn, New York.

The Paraguayan was convicted of racketeering conspiracy and two wire fraud charges.

The former Fifa vice-president will also have to forfeit $3.37m (£2.6m) and pay a fine of $1m (£767,000). read more »

SEC Charges Florida Cash Advance Company, Former CEO With Defrauding Retail Investors

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against 1 Global Capital LLC and its former chief executive officer for allegedly defrauding at least 3,400 retail investors, more than one-third of whom invested their retirement funds. The Florida-based cash advance company and former CEO Carl Ruderman allegedly fraudulently raised more than $287 million since 2014 in unregistered securities sold through a network that included barred brokers.

On August 23, the Honorable Judge Beth Bloom of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted the SEC’s request for a temporary asset freeze against Ruderman and other Ruderman companies charged by the SEC as relief defendants. The court also granted the SEC’s request to appoint a receiver over certain of the relief defendants – Bright Smile Financing LLC, BRR Block Inc., Digi South LLC, Ganador Enterprises LLC, Media Pay LLC, and Pay Now Direct LLC. The court scheduled a hearing for September 7 for Ruderman and the relief defendants to show cause, if any, why the asset freeze order should not continue for the pendency of the litigation or until otherwise ordered by the court.

According to the SEC’s complaint unsealed Tuesday, although investors were promised profits from 1 Global’s loans to small and mid-sized companies, a large portion of their money went to Ruderman’s lavish personal spending and to his consumer-loan companies, Bright Smile Financing and Ganador Enterprises, which had nothing to do with 1 Global’s cash advance business. Investors in 1 Global allegedly were given bogus account statements and were falsely told that it had an independent auditor, and that its secured loans, typically for small amounts, had low default rates. According to the complaint, in contrast to what it told investors, 1 Global marketed itself to business borrowers as a low-hassle way to access cash quickly, often made large, unsecured loans, and had significant problems with collections. 1 Global declared bankruptcy in July and Ruderman resigned from the company.

“The misconduct that we’ve alleged occurred in this case directly impacted retail investors,” said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “We filed this action on an emergency basis to protect those investors from further harm.” read more »

BNP Paribas Settles Benchmark Manipulation Case

BNP Paribas personnel deliberately traded to move the ISDAfix benchmark in a direction at the precise time it was being set, says the CFTC.

ISDAfix is widely used to price swaps transactions, commercial real estate mortgages, and structured debt securities.

In a statement, the CFTC said the bank attempted to manipulate ISDAfix to benefit derivative positions, and that multiple traders and supervisors were involved.

Between 2007 and 2012, the CFTC alleges, BNP Paribas deliberately traded to move the benchmark in a direction at the precise time it was being set. Regulators said the bank submitted false pricing reports to further influence the benchmark in a direction that would increase profits. The CFTC said the skewed submissions benefited the bank at the expense of its derivatives counterparties and clients.

BNP Paribas agreed to pay $90 million to settle charges from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission related to attempted manipulation of the U.S. Dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association Fix, or ISDAfix, benchmark.

“We won’t stop until all wrongdoers are held accountable — no matter how broadly the misconduct stretches across the industry,” said CFTC Director of Enforcement James McDonald.

The settlement was the seventh enforcement action related to the U.S. dollar ISDAfix.

Traders for the bank described their activities as ways to “play the fixing” and referred to lyrics from a Montell Jordan song from 1995, “that’s a great fixing,” “this is how we do it here :-P.” read more »