Rogue Oil Trader Causes $320 Million Loss at Mitsubishi Corp. Unit

Mitsubishi Corp. said a rogue oil trader at its Singapore unit lost $320 million in unauthorized transactions disguised as legitimate hedges for customers.

The employee, a Chinese national working at Petro-Diamond Singapore Pte, has been fired and reported to police, Mitsubishi said in a statement, declining to name him. The trader, hired in November 2018 to handle oil business with China, “repeatedly” engaged in the unauthorized deals since January, disguising them to “look like hedge transactions,” the parent company said. read more »

Who are the Sacklers, the family behind maker of OxyContin?

For a family with its name on a wing of one of the world’s most famous museums and a school at a prestigious university, members of the Sackler clan have done a remarkable job of vanishing from public life.

The family owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which filed for bankruptcy this week as part of an effort to settle some 2,600 lawsuits accusing it of helping spark the national opioid crisis that has killed more than 400,000 people in the U.S. in the last two decades.

Any settlement deal is likely to take a cut of their future income, and some states have sought to go after the Sacklers’ wealth, much of which has moved through a complex chain of companies and trusts in offshore tax havens. In a filing Wednesday, Purdue asked a bankruptcy court to halt all litigation against family members as well as the company.

The relatives have rarely spoken publicly in recent years and did not show up to the first bankruptcy hearing this week, in White Plains, New York. Here are some basic facts about the family. read more »

CFTC Charges Trader and his Company with $7 Million Fraud

Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the filing of a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia charging Tate Street Trading, Inc. of Richmond, Va. and Leonard J. Cipolla of Chesterfield, Va. with misappropriating customer funds and fraudulent solicitation in connection with a commodity pool. read more »

U.S. appeals court reinstates Nomura bond trader's conviction

U.S. appeals court reinstated the conspiracy conviction of a former Nomura Holdings Inc. trader accused of lying to customers about mortgage bond prices, in a victory for prosecutors in their crackdown on improper sales tactics.

Nomura agreed in July to pay $26.5 million in fines and restitution to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges it failed to properly supervise Gramins and four other bond traders, without admitting wrongdoing.

Prosecutors accused Gramins of training subordinates to lie to customers such as asset managers, hedge funds and insurers about bond prices, to make more money for Nomura. read more »