- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-02-21T20:32:00
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment advisory firm agreed to pay a total of $5 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that both entities conspired to obscure the value of the church’s investments over more than two decades.
Utah-based Ensign Peak Advisors agreed to pay a $4 million penalty and the church a fine of $1 million to resolve allegations they violated federal securities law with a scheme to create shell companies that obscured the size of the church’s portfolio, which grew to approximately $32 billion by 2018. The alleged scheme took place from 1997-2019.
“We allege that the LDS church’s investment manager, with the church’s knowledge, went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the church’s investments, depriving the commission and the investing public of accurate market information,” said Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a press release Tuesday.
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A pharmaceutical company and its chief executive have agreed to pay $47 million to settle allegations first brought by whistleblowers, that the company paid kickbacks and filed false claims, the Department of Justice said.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined nearly 798 million euros (U.S. $841 million) by the European Commission to resolve the agency’s long-running investigation into alleged “abusive practices” by Facebook Marketplace.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an alert to financial institutions about their obligations to report deepfakes, warning artificial intelligence has given bad actors additional tools in their arsenal.
“Unreasonably delayed reporting” cost one of two claimants whom will unevenly split a $4 million whistleblower award from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for providing information that led to a successful enforcement action.
Paragon Systems, a Virginia-based security contractor, and a subsidiary will pay nearly $54 million to resolve allegations that its corporate executives–including its compliance manager–conspired to win Department of Homeland Security contracts by creating fraudulent small business front companies.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has fined Metro Bank 16.6 million pounds (U.S. $21 million) for an alleged failure by its automated system to adequately monitor money laundering risks.
