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SEC Administrative Action Resolves Foreign Bribery Allegations
On October 24, the SEC released a cease-and-desist order that resolves FCPA allegations against a Michigan-based medical technology company. The SEC alleged that the company’s subsidiaries in five different countries—Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Poland, and Romania—bribed doctors, health care professionals, and other government officials to obtain or retain business. The alleged activities involved approximately $2.2 million in direct payments, travel and conference expenses, and donations to a university associated with a foreign official made over a four-and-a-half year period. The SEC investigation found that the payments were incorrectly described as legitimate expenses in the company’s books and records and were described as, among other things, charitable donations, consulting and service contracts, travel expenses, commissions, and legal expenses. Without admitting the allegations, the company agreed to disgorge approximately $7.5 million in profits obtained through the alleged activities, and to pay a $3.5 million civil penalty plus an additional $2.3 million in pre-judgment interest.
SEC Announces Compliance Penalties Against Investment Advisory Firms, Executives
On October 23, the SEC announced penalties totaling $400,000 against three investment advisory firms and their executives for allegedly repeatedly ignoring problems with their compliance programs, which the SEC deemed inadequate to prevent misleading statements in marketing materials or inadvertent overbilling of clients. The penalties ranged from $25,000 for individuals to $100,000 for one of the firms. Among other things, the SEC highlighted the following deficiencies, which varied among the firms: (i) failing to complete annual compliance reviews, (ii) making misleading statements on company’s website and investor brochures by overstating the amount of assets under management while contradicting the amount the firm presented in its SEC filing, (iii) failing to adopt and implement written compliance policies and procedures, (iv) making false and misleading disclosures about historical performance, compensation, and conflicts of interest, (v) repeatedly over- and under-billing clients, (vi) failing to disclose known compliance deficiencies to potential clients in response due diligence questionnaires or requests for proposals, (vii) inflating the amounts of assets under management in SEC filings, and (viii) improperly removing and retaining nonpublic personal client information by an executive who left one of the firms. In addition to agreeing to the penalties, the firms agreed to hire compliance consultants and adopt specific compliance enhancements. The SEC took the actions as part of its Compliance Program Initiative, which targets firms that fail to effectively act upon SEC warnings about compliance deficiencies.
Nevada AG Announces RMBS Agreement
On October 17, Nevada Attorney General (AG) Catherine Cortez Masto announced that she had finalized an agreement with a financial institution that requires the financial institution to pay $11.5 million, without admitting fault, to resolve the AG’s investigation into the financial institution’s role in purchasing and securitization of subprime, Alt-A, and payment option adjustable rate mortgages. The investigation focused on whether certain lenders had deceived borrowers about the actual interest rate and payments on their loans, and had originated loans with multiple risk features that led to approval of loans without proper consideration of the borrowers’ ability to repay. The investigation also examined the extent to which the financial institution was aware of the lenders’ allegedly deceptive practices when it bought the loans, and whether the financial institution facilitated these lending practices by financing and purchasing such loans. In addition to the monetary penalty, the agreement stipulates that the financial institution will: (i) only finance, purchase, or securitize subprime mortgage loans in Nevada if it has engaged in a review of such loans and determined that the loans comply with the Nevada Deceptive Trade Practices Act and (ii) not securitize loans where upon review it has reason to believe that the lender has not adequately disclosed to the borrowers the existence of an initial teaser rate, the potential for negative amortization on a loan, the maximum adjusted interest rate or payments, and the potential for payment shock if payments increase after a loan reset or recast.
FINRA Report Reviews Broker-Dealer Industry Conflicts Of Interest
On October 14, FINRA released a report on conflicts of interest in the broker-dealer industry, stating that the report is intended to identify potential problem areas and highlight effective conflicts management practices that may go beyond current regulatory requirements. The report identifies the components of an effective conflicts management framework, which include, for example (i) identifying and managing conflicts on an ongoing basis through an enterprise-level approach that is scaled to the size and complexity of a firm's business, (ii) establishing new product review processes that provide independent perspectives and identify potential conflicts raised by new products, (iii) minimizing conflicts in compensation structures between customer and broker or firm interests where possible, and (iv) including "best-interest-of-the-customer" standards in codes of conduct that apply to brokers' personalized recommendations to retail customers.
Federal Authorities Announce Two BSA/AML Enforcement Actions
This week, federal authorities announced the assessment of civil money penalties against two financial institutions for alleged Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) compliance failures. In the first action, FinCEN and the OCC alleged that a national bank failed to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) from April 2008 to September 2009 for activity in accounts belonging to a law firm through which one of the firm’s principals ran a Ponzi scheme. The agencies claim that the bank willfully violated the BSA’s reporting requirements by failing to detect and adequately report suspicious activities in a timely manner, even when the bank’s anti-money laundering surveillance software identified the suspicious activity (the bank subsequently filed five late SARs related to this conduct in 2011). FinCEN and the OCC assessed concurrent $37.5 million penalties. The FinCEN penalty is the first assessed by that agency’s recently created Enforcement Division. In addition, the SEC charged the bank and a former executive with related securities violations and ordered the bank to pay an additional $15 million penalty and to cease and desist from the alleged activity, including providing misleading information to investors as to amounts of money in particular accounts and actions the bank had taken to limit fraudulent activity.
In a second action, coordinated among FinCEN, the OCC, and the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, federal authorities assessed $8.2 million in total penalties against a now defunct community bank for compliance failures related to Mexican and Dominican Republic money exchange houses. The government alleged that the bank willfully violated the BSA by (i) failing to implement an effective AML program reasonably designed to manage risks of money laundering and other illicit activity, (ii) failing to conduct adequate due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts, and (iii) failing to detect and adequately report suspicious activities in a timely manner. FinCEN and the OCC assessed concurrent $4.1 million penalties, and the DOJ will collect an additional $4.1 million through civil asset forfeiture.
NCUA Files Additional RMBS Actions
On September 23, the NCUA announced that it filed separate lawsuits against nine financial institutions on behalf of five insolvent credit unions for alleged violations of federal and state securities laws in the sale of $2.4 billion in mortgage-backed securities. The complaints, which the NCUA filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, claim that the securitizer made numerous misrepresentations and omissions in the offering documents regarding adherence to the originators’ underwriting guidelines, which concealed the true risk associated with the securities and routinely overvalued them. The NCUA claims that when the allegedly risky securities lost value, the credit unions were forced into conservatorship and liquidated as a result of the losses sustained. The NCUA has filed numerous similar suits, and it has previously settled similar claims for more than $335 million with four financial institutions.
Diligence Firm Objects to RMBS Working Group Subpoena
On September 24, a firm that handles due-diligence matters for financial institutions filed its opposition to a motion filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, on behalf of the federal-state RMBS Working Group, to compel production of documents and information the group sought in a July subpoena. In its brief, the firm reviews its cooperation to respond to “six years of subpoenas, investigatory demands, and formal and informal requests for information,” and summarizes the volume and types of information it has provided to the DOJ and the Working Group to date as a third-party witness in connection with the 16 companies the Working Group has identified as subjects of its RMBS investigations. The firm notes the “substantial expense” it has incurred “to educate an ever-growing, and often-changing, number government attorneys and investigators.” The firm argues that the Working Group’s most recent subpoena, which seeks “every document and communication for all 193 clients and for almost 5,000 e-mail custodians,” constitutes a “fishing expedition” and violates the firm’s rights under the Fourth Amendment.
Massachusetts AG Announces RMBS Settlement
On September 9, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (AG) announced the state’s fourth mortgage-securitization related enforcement action. The AG alleged that during 2006 and 2007 a U.K. bank financed, purchased, and securitized residential loans that were presumptively unfair under Massachusetts law. Under an Assurance of Discontinuance, the bank, without admitting the allegations, agreed to pay $36 million to resolve the state’s claims. Under the terms of the agreement over $25 million will be dedicated to principal reduction and related relief for more than 450 subprime borrowers, while approximately $2 million will compensate municipalities that claim to be impacted by foreclosures resulting from the allegedly faulty loans.
Third Circuit Holds Securities Act Statute of Limitations Runs from Discovery, RMBS Claims Still Untimely
On September 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the one-year statute of limitations in section 13 of the 1933 Securities Act establishes a discovery standard for evaluating timeliness, but held that claims brought by a putative class of investors in certain mortgage backed securities (MBS) still were untimely. Pension Trust Fund for Operating Engineers v. Mortg. Asset Securitization Transactions, Inc., No. 12-3454, 2013 WL 5184064 (3rd Cir. Sept. 17, 2013). The investors claimed that a mortgage securitizer made material omissions and misstatements in the offering and sale of certain MBS. On appeal, the court agreed with the investors that they need not plead compliance with the Section 13 statute of limitations and that the district court erred when it determined the claims to be untimely based on its holding that an inquiry standard applied to the statute of limitations. The court held that the discovery standard announced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s in Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 130 S.Ct. 1784 (2010), in which the Court rejected the Third Circuit’s application of an inquiry standard under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and instead applied a discovery standard, also applies to the Securities Act. However, the court held that the investors, based on “storm warnings” they acknowledged existed more than a year before they filed their claims, could have conducted a reasonably diligent investigation earlier that would have yielded the same results as their later investigation that led to the filing of the action. The court concluded that the investors’ claims therefore were untimely and affirmed the district court’s dismissal.
FDIC to Consider QRM Proposal Next Week
This week, the FDIC released the agenda for an August 28, 2013 Board Meeting at which the Board will consider the re-proposal of a rule to implement the credit risk retention requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act, including provisions regarding “qualified residential mortgages” or QRMs. The FDIC and other federal banking and housing agencies originally proposed a rule in April 2011 that would have required sponsors of asset-backed securities (ABS) to retain at least five percent of the credit risk of the assets underlying the securities. Exemptions to the proposed rule included U.S. government-guaranteed ABS and mortgage-backed securities that are collateralized exclusively by residential mortgages that qualify as QRMs. The proposed rule would have established a definition of QRMs incorporating criteria designed to ensure that such QRMs were of very high credit quality, including a 20% down payment requirement or a requirement that the borrower’s debt-to-income ratio not exceed 36%. It recently has been reported that, in response to overwhelming objections from industry participants, the re-proposed rule will loosen those standards and align the QRM definition with the CFPB’s qualified mortgage or QM definition.