Wells Fargo cuts 700 commercial banking jobs in first slew of layoffs that could see 'tens of thousands' of employees across all business lines out of work
- Wells Fargo has cut more than 700 commercial banking jobs across the division
- The layoffs are expected to affect 'nearly all functions and business lines'
- Comes after the bank resumed layoffs in August after pausing redundancies in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic
Wells Fargo has cut more than 700 commercial banking jobs as part of workforce reductions that could ultimately impact 'tens of thousands' of staff, according to a new report.
The San Francisco-based company has made layoffs for positions across the whole division, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
It comes after the bank became the first major lender to resume job cuts in early August after pausing layoffs in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A company spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed the commercial banking sector has seen 'job displacements' which are expected to extend to 'nearly all functions and business lines.'
Wells Fargo has cut more than 700 commercial banking jobs across the division in the first round of layoffs expected to affect 'tens of thousands' of employees
'We are at the beginning of a multiyear effort to build a stronger, more efficient company for our customers, employees, communities and shareholders,' spokeswoman Katie Ellis told the news outlet.
The cost-cutting effort will see the bank 'reduce the size of our workforce through a combination of attrition, the elimination of open roles and job displacements.'
Ellis said the company is yet to set a target for total number of job reductions.
Wells Fargo said in July it would launch a broad cost-cutting initiative this year as the bank braces for massive loan losses caused by the pandemic and continues to work through expensive regulatory and operational problems tied to a long-running sales scandal.
Layoffs, branch closures and cuts to third-party spending are on the table, the bank's executives had then said.
Big US banks had postponed decisions about staff cuts when the virus outbreak first began to take hold, with executives saying they were unsure how long the outbreak would hurt the economy and worried about being unprepared if business suddenly snapped back.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected major banking institutions across the globe, prompting many to make reductions to their workforce
Goldman Sachs Group Inc said last month it plans to move forward with 'a modest number of layoffs'.
Bloomberg reports about 68,000 job cuts are expected to take place at 30 banks across the world, the majority at London-based HSBC, which earlier this year announced plans to lay off 35,000 people.
At the end of the third quarter earlier this month, financial analysts were predicting big banks to report a 30 to 60 per cent plunge in profits on the year-ago period due to the pandemic-induced recession and near record low interest rates.
Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co, the third- and fourth-biggest US banks by assets respectively, were estimated to report net income down by about 60 per cent, according to I/B/E/S analyst survey data from Refinitiv.
JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America Corp, which rank first and second in assets respectively, were predicted to show profits down about 30 per cent.
Pandemic-driven lockdowns have put tens of millions of Americans out of work and plunged the US into a recession.
US output is forecast to fall 3.7 per cent in 2020, the Federal Reserve said.
Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
JAMIE DIMON - STILL
ON THE LAM. PROBABLY HOLED UP WITH THE OBOMB!
Bank Shares Slide on
Reports of Rampant Money Laundering
21 Sep 20208
Shares
of some major banks are tumbling
before
the market open Monday following a
report
alleging those including JPMorgan,
HSBC,
Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche
Bank
and Bank of New York Mellon continued
to
profit from illicit dealings with disreputable
people
and criminal networks despite being
previously
fined for similar actions.
According to the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists, leaked government documents show that the banks continued moving
illicit funds even after U.S. officials warned they’d face criminal
prosecutions if they didn’t stop doing business with mobsters, fraudsters or
corrupt regimes.
The consortium says the documents indicate that JPMorgan moved
money for people and companies tied to the massive looting of public funds in
Malaysia, Venezuela, and the Ukraine. The bank also processed more than $50
million in payments over a decade for Paul Manafort, the former campaign
manager for President Donald Trump, according to the documents, which are known
as the FinCEN Files.
JPMorgan’s stock declined 4.4 percent in premarket trading.
The consortium’s investigation found the documents identify more
than $2 trillion in transactions between 1999 and 2017 that were flagged by
financial institutions’ internal compliance officers as possible money
laundering or other criminal activity — including $514 billion at JPMorgan and
$1.3 trillion at Deutsche Bank. Shares of Deutsche Bank dropped 7.7 percent.
Report: Chinese Companies Helped North Korea Launder
Money Through U.S. Banks
21
Sep 202049
3:37
North Korea moved nearly $175 million through prominent
U.S. banks in recent years in a money-laundering scheme that used shell
companies and help from Chinese companies, according to confidential bank
documents reviewed by NBC News in a report published Sunday.
For several years, the international
community has imposed sanctions on North Korea to deprive the nation of
financial resources that could contribute to its rogue nuclear program. Some of
the sanctions specifically target money transfers to block Pyongyang’s access
to the global financial system. Despite the sanctions, North Korea has managed
to move funds across international borders in recent years, according to the
report.
“The suspected laundering by North
Korea-linked organizations amounted to more than $174.8 million over several
years, with transactions cleared through U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase
and the Bank of New York Mellon,” the report claimed.
According to the documents, “Wire
transfers from North Korean-linked companies with opaque ownership sometimes
came in bursts, only days or hours apart, and the amounts … transferred were in
round figures with no clear commercial reasons for the transactions.” The
suspicious details of the wire transfers are considered red flags of attempts
to move illicit funds.
A suspicious activity report filed
by the Bank of New York Mellon shows that Ma Xiaohong, the chief
of Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Corp. in Dandong, a Chinese
city on the North Korean border, allegedly funneled resources to North Korea.
“Ma and Dandong Hongxiang
routed money to North Korea through China, Singapore, Cambodia, the U.S. and
elsewhere, using an array of shell companies to move tens of millions of
dollars through U.S. banks in New York,” according to the documents.
“One
transaction in 2009 featured a Singapore shipping concern called United Green
Pte. Ltd., whose directors included Leonard Lai,” a man sanctioned by the
U.S. Treasury Department in 2015, along with his Singaporean company, Senat
Shipping Ltd., “for their links to a North Korean shipping company that was
alleged to have tried to move weapons from Cuba to North Korea,” according to
the report. The 2015 sanctions remain in place.
In 2015, New York Mellon
reported handling “suspicious transfers of $85.6 million.” The document seen by
NBC “details $20.1 million of those transactions.” In 2016 and 2019, U.S.
authorities indicted Ma and other Dandong Hongxiang executives on charges of
money laundering and helping North Korea evade international sanctions. So far,
“no one has been extradited, and charges remain pending,” according to the
report.
The leaked bank documents seen by
NBC were obtained by BuzzFeed as part of a collaborative project with over 400
other journalistic agencies around the world.
“The project examined a cache of
secret suspicious activity reports filed by banks with the [U.S.] Treasury
Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, as well as
other investigative documents,” the report claimed. The documents span a time
period from 2008 to 2017, during which both the Obama and Trump administrations
worked to tighten financial sanctions against North Korea in an effort to
pressure the nation to denuclearize.
BEFORE HIS
FIRST DAY IN OFFICE AS PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA HAD ALREADY SUCKED OFF MORE
BANKSTER BRIBES THAN ANY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW THAT
THE REST OF US DID NOT?
A key factor
in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his
presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street
firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor
Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other
high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least
$400,000 a clip.
“Money
laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate
economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize
nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of these people in crisp white
shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all
over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions
investigator for Wachovia.’”
BLOG EDITOR:
JP MORGAN IS BARACK OBAMA’S FAVE CRIMINAL BANKSTER. THEY HAVE BEEN VERY
GENEROU$ TO OBOMB AND HIS BIDENBOY.
“The other
banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase (whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once
known as Obama's "favorite banker"), New York Mellon, Standard
Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and
Citibank.”
HSBC HAS
LONG HAD A HISTORY AS THE CHOICE BANKSTER FOR THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. OBAMA’S
BANKSTER REGIME MADE SURE THAT NO ONE WENT TO PRISON AT HSBC. DURING HIS 8
YEARS BANKSTER-OWNED ERIC HOLDER, A SOCIOPATH LAWYER, MADE SURE THAT NO
BANKSTER PERIOD SAW PRISON TIME. NOT THEY’RE BACK AT IT. WHO WOULD HAVE
THOUGHT?!?
The report
goes on to explain that “even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial
misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche
Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected
criminals.”
In 2012, the
Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank,
HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and
Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel
in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying
their body parts.
“Attorney General Eric
Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden
Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
“Judicial Watch’s records
request is designed to expose how California state legislators are wasting tax
dollars to take care of another corrupt politician – Eric Holder – under the
guise of resisting the rule of law on immigration and other matters,”
stated Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “His
record at the Clinton and Obama Justice Departments demonstrates a willingness
to bend the law in order to protect his political patrons.”
And
it all got much, much worse after 2008, when the schemes collapsed and, as
Lemann points out, Barack Obama did not aggressively rein in Wall Street as
Roosevelt had done, instead restoring the status quo ante even when it meant
ignoring a staggering white-collar crime spree. RYAN COOPER
“The Obama/Biden was the most
corrupt, criminal
administration any of us has ever
seen, yet the
media cheered or covered up all the
abuse of
power, obstruction of Justice
and other crimes. “ JACK HELLNER
During his
presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only
thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact,
Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the
2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration
oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the
top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers
and autoworkers.
“This was not because of difficulties in
securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric
Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration
chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have
a negative impact on the national economy.”
Report
documents criminality and corruption at heart of global banking system
22 September 2020
An explosive
report published Sunday by BuzzFeed
News documents the role that major US and international banks
knowingly play in laundering and circulating trillions of dollars in dirty
money from terrorist organizations, drug cartels and assorted international
financial criminals.
The report
is an unanswerable indictment not only of the banks, but also of Western
governments and regulatory agencies, which are fully aware of the banks’ illegal
but highly lucrative activities and tacitly sanction them.
BuzzFeed writes
that its investigation demonstrates “an underlying truth of the modern era: The
networks through which dirty money traverses the world have become vital
arteries of the global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so
wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the
so-called legitimate economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it
so.”
The report
continues: “Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing
countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to
flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the
banks’ own employees.
“Money
laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate
economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize
nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of these people in crisp white
shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all
over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions
investigator for Wachovia.’”
The report
goes on to explain that “even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial
misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche
Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected
criminals.”
The
extensive report is based on more than 21,000 “suspicious activity reports”
(SARs) filed by some of the world’s biggest banks with the US Treasury
Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, between 1999 and
2017. FinCEN makes its database of SARs available to more than 450 law
enforcement and regulatory agencies across the United States.
What BuzzFeed calls the
“FinCEN Files” were leaked to the news outlet more than a year ago. It has
since been combing through them, in collaboration with the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coauthored the report.
BuzzFeed
News notes that it also shared the SARs with more than 100
other news organizations in 88 countries. The report, titled “Dirty Money Pours
into the World’s Most Powerful Banks,” includes only a small and redacted
sample of the news outlet’s hoard of suspicious activity reports.
The US
government maintains a policy of total secrecy in relation to the SARs,
refusing to release them even in response to Freedom of Information requests.
Earlier this year, the Treasury Department issued a statement declaring that
the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime. In an obvious attempt at
intimidation and threat of prosecution, the statement added that the matter was
being referred to the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s
Office of Inspector General.
The initial
response of the American corporate media has been to bury or entirely ignore
the BuzzFeed revelations.
Monday’s print edition of the New
York Times carried a report on page eight of its business
section. The print editions of the Washington
Post and the Wall
Street Journal made no mention of the exposé.
The report
is based on more than 22,000 pages of documents concerning over 10,000 subjects
and involving more than 170 countries and territories. Nearly 90 banks and
other financial institutions are included in the institutions that submitted
the SARs.
Deutsche
Bank recorded the highest total value of transactions listed in the FinCEN
Files: $1.3 trillion, based on 982 suspicious activity reports.
BLOG EDITOR:
THE CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION OF WELLS FARGO HAS LONG OWNED THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN
AND NOW KAMALA HARRIS. AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CA, HARRIS MADE SURE NO WELLS
FARGO EXECS WENT TO PRISON DESPITE THE MASSIVE ECONOMIC DEVASTATION THIS BANK
CAUSED. WELLS FARGO HAS CONTINUE TO BE A CRIME TIDAL WAVE EVER SINCE. AFTER
ALL, IT’S EASY AND CHEAP TO BUY A POLITICIAN.
The other
banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase (whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once
known as Obama's "favorite banker"), New York Mellon, Standard
Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and
Citibank.
One report,
filed by JPMorgan in August, 2014, lists over $355 billion in suspicious
activity relating to more than 100,000 wire transfers “sent, received or
transferred” over the course of a decade by MKS, a Swiss-based company that
trades in precious metals.
At least 25
of the people named as subjects in the SARs have appeared on Forbes ’ list of
billionaires in 2018, 2019 or 2020.
The findings
featured in the BuzzFeed report include:
● Standard
Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni Exchange, a Dubai-based business
that was later accused of laundering cash on behalf of the Taliban.
● HSBC’s
Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme, to move more than $15 million
even as the business was being barred from operating in three states. Authorities
say the scheme stole some $80 million from investors, mainly Latino and Asian
immigrants. The firm’s owner used the funds to buy two golf courses, a mansion,
a 39.8-carat diamond and mining rights in Sierra Leone.
● Bank of
America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express and other financial firms
processed millions of dollars in transactions for Viktor Khrapunov, the former
mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even after Interpol issued an order
for his arrest. Khrapunov fled to Switzerland and was later convicted in
absentia on charges including bribe-taking and defrauding the city.
A separate
piece by NBC News presents evidence that JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon and
other banks helped move more than $150 million for companies tied to the North
Korean regime.
In other
words, the biggest US and international banks have made countless millions in
profits serving as money-launderers for organizations labeled
"terrorist" such as the Taliban and governments of so-called “rogue
states” such as North Korea—with the knowledge and tacit approval of the
governments of the US and other major powers—even as these same governments
were waging or threatening war against the targeted organizations and overseas
regimes.
The BuzzFeed report describes
the cynical rationale behind the formality of banks filing SARs, which, for the
most part, are never even read by the staff of FinCEN. Over the past decade,
the number of SARs filed by major banks has sharply increased, indicating a
growth of money laundering and other illegal activities on behalf of criminal
clients. Over the same period, the staff of FinCEN has shrunk by 10 percent.
Banks are
legally required to file a SAR with FinCEN if they suspect a transaction might
be linked to illegal activity. Large banks file tens of thousands of such
reports every year. In 2017, 19 large banks filed a total of 640,000 suspicious
activity reports, according to a study by the Bank Policy Institute, a lobbying
group.
But as
the BuzzFeed report
explains: “So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating
criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal
prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass
to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.”
In its
article on the FinCEN Files report, the New
York Times noted that JPMorgan wired money to banks in
Switzerland, Lebanon and Nigeria on behalf of a convicted money launderer,
reported the transactions to British and American authorities, and continued
doing business with the client. The Nigerian government is now suing the bank
in British court.
This
collusion between gangster bankers and capitalist government regulators is a
continuation of longstanding policy. In 2012, the
Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank,
HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and
Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel
in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying
their body parts.
That was in
keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any
accountability for illegal activities, including those that led to the collapse
of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in what at that time was the
deepest slump since the Great Depression. To this day, not a single leading
executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for fraudulent
activities that led to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation
of working class living standards in the US and around the world.
Here, in a
nutshell, is the modern-day aristocratic principle that prevails behind the
threadbare trappings of “democracy.” The financial robber barons of today are a
law unto themselves. They can steal, plunder, even murder at will, without fear
of being called to account. They devote a portion of their fabulous wealth to
bribing politicians, regulators, judges and police—from the heights of power in
Washington down to the local police precinct—to make sure their wealth is protected
and they remain immune from criminal prosecution.
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