Sunday, November 4, 2018

The Malta Mafia Black Hole in the Sea

Sadly, Man has proven throughout history that given the opportunity, he will find the lowest common denominator.  Sociologically speaking we are in a time of “Peak Freedom” man has never been so free.  But this comes at a cost, and as we will see in this article, a cost so great entire civilizations can rise and fall because of it.  If you give a naughty teenager a million dollars and tell him ‘do whatever you want’ probably he will not build a business empire or cure cancer.  Likewise, supported by the European Union, Malta was given a pack of matches and using simple household chemicals made it into an IED but as powerful as a Nuclear Bomb; which is about to explode in their face.
Malta created a wormhole allowing black criminal elements a ‘shortcut’ to legitimize themselves with an EU Passport; but it was the EU which allowed them to do this, and thus it will be the EU that first faces Malta about this issue.  Before digging deeper let’s go through a little background about Malta this little ‘hole in the sea’ near Italy.  Malta is a culture with ancient roots dating back to Phoenicians.  Throughout history Malta has served as neutral territory for negotiations and even ‘staging grounds’ for the crusades, Knights of Malta (Knights Templar) and other groups.  So, Malta has a history of selling their soul to the highest bidder.  As there are no natural resources on Malta, they rely on tourism and financial services like many islands in similar situations.  But you can only sell so much sun; more than 1 Million Tourists visit Malta each year[1], and their current infrastructure can’t even support that.  The real-estate construction boom (which is fitting for Malta as they have a natural obsession with Cranes) is expanding more than most developed countries, but it still can’t keep up.  There are even internet problems as experienced by companies like Bet Fair who have had to limit the amount of on-shore staff in Malta due to connectivity issues[2].
Malta joined the European Union (EU) in 2004, and for a period of about 10 years promoted Malta as a place to do financial business and gambling; ending in 2013 with the election of Joseph Muscat (note that, this is a Maltese name and not related to the rodent Muskrat[3]).  During this 10-year period Malta was promoted in the Forex community, among others, and saw a boom in retail and institutional Forex operation moving to the island and had barely a single fraud.  Compared to similar jurisdictions like Cyprus especially, Malta was white.
Muscat changed all this with an aggressive Passport selling program that netted Malta substantial profits both in actual fees and in capital flowing to the island.  It was the sort of thing that was common in Cyprus, and one reason why many avoided Cyprus in favor of Malta and other white places.  But what rules were in place, to check the participants in this program, their backgrounds, and other important information?  Or did the Maltese simply take the money and look the other way, which is so easy to do when you have the strong EU behind you.  Malta seems to believe that it can have its cake and eat it too; getting quick money from the black market without the risks and liabilities associated with it.  Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way, and Malta is in for a big wake up call.
Prior to his sudden death, Gaddafi began to implement a plan to create and sustain a Gold backed Dinar for black Africa – a real threat to USD and EU global hegemony.  Wikileaks emails have revealed explicitly that this was the reason for the Libya intervention and subsequent toppling and killing of Gaddafi[4].  This story is really an algorithm that has been replayed hundreds of times since World War 2 which is the sole and exclusive reason the US Dollar remains the supreme and only settlement currency for global business.  It is also the reason why countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and many others – freely accept US Dollars and do not attempt to start their own competitive versions of the US Dollar.
This more obvious, practical, economic policy motif is not on the surface, but it is real.  As a matter of policy enforcement, the US takes an aggressive stance on terrorist financing on the financial level (if terrorists cannot be financed, they don’t exist.)  This policy was enforced globally well before the Patriot Act and other post 9/11 measures.  Financial tools were even used in the Cold War – ‘spending them to death’.
The US Dollar is backed by bombs, vis a vis the US Military[5].  The alliance between Washington, Wall St. has been very close since World War 2, because after World War 2 USA was the only country that wasn’t bombed into oblivion and was tasked to literally ‘rebuild the world’ which included structuring of a new global monetary system agreed upon at Breton Woods[6].  Although the world has changed much in 60 years, the unipolar power system of global management, using the US Dollar as the funding currency, has not.  Despite rhetoric from socialists, libertarians, and anarchist commentators – emerging markets such as BRICS pose a limited or non-existent threat to this system of global management.
The way that this system survives and has survived for 60 years, is by eliminating any threat to its existence.  There are a few types of threats; the most obvious and pulpable being that of a currency alternative to the US Dollar which is not controlled by the Fed, such as proposed by Gaddafi.  Another threat that is subtler is a means by which unsavory actors like criminals can completely avoid the US Dollar system, such as proposed by some Crypto Currency alt-coins.  Malta has created these means with their no questions asked passport program, and thus has opened the gates of hell into a previously impervious barrier of entry into the EU-US system.  Having an EU passport is nearly just as good as having a US passport not only for travel but for banking reasons.  An example from our Forex business; Russian nationals are subject to several layers of additional checks when opening a new investment account, which can be so complicated they are impossible even for the legitimate Russian investor to complete.  They can ask for notarized documents from previous addresses you lived, which is not possible to collect in Russia.  Or they can ask for multiple forms of ID, which may not be easily accessible.  Russia is considered a ‘red flag’ country and thus additional scrutiny and AML checks are required in most compliance systems.  As they should be – the amount of crime and corruption in Russia is widespread, so much so that it is considered to be endemic (part of the system).  In this example by having the Malta issued EU passport the Russian criminal could completely circumvent AML rules designed stop terrorist financing, money laundering, and other criminal activities.
These topics are not abstract issues for academic discussion they are serious issues that can have devastating effects.  Bloomberg broke the ice on this topic very politely in Bloomberg style:
For critics of Muscat, one powerful symbol of cronyism is Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, head of Pilatus Bank, the institution allegedly in the middle of the suspicious transactions involving the Panamanian shell companies linked to government officials. Sadr is an Iranian national, but when establishing and registering the bank in Malta he used a passport he’d purchased from St. Kitts. While Sadr was enmeshed in controversy in Malta, a parallel investigation into him and his bank culminated in his arrest by U.S. authorities, who charged him this spring with setting up a network of shell companies and bank accounts to hide money being funneled from Venezuela to Iran—transactions that allegedly violated economic sanctions against Iran. Prosecutors also alleged that Sadr established Pilatus Bank using illegal funds. Sadr pleaded not guilty and has been released on bail in the U.S.; his lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Ali Sadr Hasheminejad is a character which deserves his own article so in order not to get distracted we will just say that he’s been charged in New York with setting up a “Sanctions evasion scheme” to the tune of $115 Million USD – using his bank in Malta as the go between[7] This is unrelated to the passport scheme mentioned earlier, which is why we needed to allow the reader to connect the dots for yourself to see what’s going on here.  A client of Pilatus bank could, in theory (we haven’t seen the client lists yet) could buy an EU passport and as an account holder of Pilatus bank, launder money to any country in the US-EU sphere, which is 90% of the Western world.  What this means is a figure from organized crime for example, could ‘wash’ himself both his money and his identity, through Malta.
This dual fake ID money laundering scheme is the first of its kind in the modern world.  What’s sad is that Malta was previously mostly a white country (meaning not criminal) 95% catholic, with a strong tradition of ‘trading’ as merchants.  Cyprus has been polluted with criminal elements for a long time, but people know it, and many avoid it.  But even in the twisted world of Cyprus black mafia, something like this never existed.  What the Maltese have done is in one-way criminal genius, and in another way extremely stupid.  We can say that ‘studies show crime doesn’t pay’ but that’s not necessary here.  Just look at the political fallout from Malta’s handling of the Pilatus situation (car bombing reporters who won’t shut up).  The Global Perception of Malta has done a complete 180, but the war against Malta is only beginning.  They violated untold and unagreed rules of the game, by exploiting the fairness of the EU system for their own profit and passing the liability to their EU owners. 
(Guys, a country is a Currency, you gave up sovereignty in 2004 Brussels is not going to allow this.)
Furthermore, Malta has a convoluted understanding of law, but it is with reason.  Malta doesn’t have a unique legal system and history of precedent as exists in Great Britain, or Switzerland.  They have a ‘mixed system’ which is a little of this and little of that[8], and when you mix it together it becomes a big pile of crap.  It’s like keeping 3 sets of laws and using which one is convenient to you at the time.  Nice try, but the world doesn’t work like that, especially when you have allowed criminals to violate US sanctions.
We can assume that, Iranians avoiding sanctions are just part of the VIP client list at Pilatus bank.  Since 2013 the number of wealthy Russians in Malta has exploded, as they are preferring the passport program and ease of banking in Malta’s new program over their previous choice of Cyprus.  Russia is a growing economy and part of early stage capitalism is the growth of quasi illegal robber baron class as was in the United States during the late 19th century.  It’s unfair to call them ‘Mafia’ because they aren’t really ‘criminals’ any more than John Rockefeller was a criminal, but for the purposes of this article we can add “Russian Mafia” to the list.  And certainly many Russians who have bought passports are legitimate businessmen, but consider this.  US imposed sanctions on Russia over the 2014 Ukrainian dispute, and by having an EU passport from Malta, it circumvents those sanctions.
Those who forked out for Maltese and - by default - EU citizenship last year included Arkady Volozh, the founder of Yandex, a Russian Uber-type firm, and his entire family.  They also included: Alexey Marey, the former CEO of Alfa Bank Russia, the country's largest private lender; Alexey De-Monderik, a co-founder of Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab; and Alexander Mechatin, the CEO of Beluga Group, Russia's largest private spirits company.  The newly-minted Maltese nationals emerged in a list of more than 2,000 names published in the country's legal gazette at the end of last year.  The gazette does not say who bought passports in 2016 and who was naturalised for other reasons.  But the names of wealthy foreign nationals stand out as the most likely to have paid the €1.1 million in fees, Maltese bond, and Maltese real estate investments that it costs to get nationality.  The Russian roll-call for 2016 went on to name: Dmitry Semenikhin (a media millionaire); Alexander Rubanov (energy firm executive); Roman Trushev (oil and gas); Andrey Gomon (transport magnate); Alexey Kirienko (investment broker); Dmitry Lipyavko (petroleum products tycoon); Andrei Melnikov (cobalt and uranium magnate); and Anatoly Loginov (owner of an online payment systems firm).  It also named Russian real estate developers, retailers, and agricultural land owners.  It came out after the previous gazette showed that 40 percent of new passport buyers in 2015 were also Russians.  Owning a Maltese passport gives people the right to visa-free travel to 160 countries, including the US, and to live and move around their money anywhere in the EU.  The surge in Russian applications comes after the EU and US imposed economic sanctions and visa-bans and asset-freezes on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine in 2014.  It also comes amid US plans to create a new blacklist on 29 January 2018 of cronies of Russian president Vladimir Putin over his meddling in the 2016 US election.
Right now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is embroiled in a scandal targeted at Trump using Russia as a scapegoat.  Forces inside the US Government, for the first time, are staging what can only be referred to (and has been) as a cold coup on the legitimately elected President.  These powerful deep-state actors are in agencies like FEMA, CIA, FBI, IRS, and others.  These are powerful agencies.  Now is not a good time to be hiding or laundering money for Russians! 
And we’re only getting started!  Malta recently adopted the world’s first Crypto Currency legislation, right at a time when the public is learning thatbillions of dollars have been laundered through Bitcoin, and that hot money from Asia was a leading cause to the rapid rise of Bitcoin.  The point is that Crypto Currency is now the leading solution for money laundering.
So why are they being so flagrant?  Are they stupid, bold, or a little of both?
Non-Maltese foreigners in the island have reported that the regulators do not understand the underlying business.  There are other anecdotal accounts, such as from a tourist:
We were staying in a hotel that had a kitchen and living room it was like a hybrid half hotel half apartment, there was daily cleaning service, but we cooked our meals on the stove.  So early in the week we bought salt, oil, spices, and other basic kitchen elements.  Near the end of our stay, near the last day, the maid approached me and asked if she could have the salt.  It was almost empty.  It cost about $0.25 cents.  To which I said, “But we might use it we are still here for another day, but I will leave it here for you, ok?”  To which the maid replied, “But the other maid has a shift tomorrow and she will get it.”  Over a pinch of salt! 
Anyone who has been to Malta can attest to their peculiar behavior.  If you want to close a corporation, you have to appoint a special liquidator (similar to a bankruptcy judge) who must wear a special hat and sit on a special ‘throne’ in the town square, where he must by voice ask if there are any company debts.  These outdated traditions are more than antiquated, they are a problem if you are a serious professional company that wants to do business in Malta.
Malta is rated 84 out of 100 by the World Bank ‘ease of doing business[9]’ What it takes 1 man to do in New Zealand, it takes 8 men in Malta.  Must be all the heavy lifting from those big stones.
This can work for you because it protects your empire from new competition, but sadly, they are using this ‘bureaucratic fog’ for aiding and abetting international criminals.
Let’s take a look at Iran’s currency 10 year chart:



















Here’s why we believe Malta is about to be pummeled into submission. 
  1. Malta is providing a way for those on the OFAC list to avoid / circumvent sanctions
  2. By providing an OFAC loophole, Malta is as a state, aiding and abetting criminals (who are criminals according to the United States)
  3. As a side business, it is easy for these participants to launder money directly (for themselves) or for their criminal network friends.  It is possible, and likely, that copy cats of Pilatus have setup laundry businesses using similar and less obvious loopholes.
  4. On the regulated front, Malta is providing a backdoor to the European Union (EU) with light regulation.  This isn’t necessarily, by itself, a bad thing – but combined with the other more serious problems, it becomes a matter of discussion.
  5. Malta’s financial system can survive Pilatus bank and Ali Sadr trial.  But what’s next?  What next scandal lies in the shadows, another fraud to be unraveled?  Could it involve a high-profile Russian diplomat on DOJ’s black list?  If Pilatus is isolated, Malta can survive.  As soon as the next mole pops up in the garden, it will be impossible for Malta to whack them all.
Some material facts:
  • Not only is the case about Ali Sadr Hasheminejad disturbing by itself, his bank, which was financed with his own illegal gains, was used to open a bank.  That bank, among other things, was a laundry for Iranian capital.  The bank was approved by MFSA, Malta’s regulator, who recently asked the ECB to rescind its bank license[10].
  • The creator of this passport program, Joseph Muscat, is accused of taking bribes from wealthy criminals from banned/blocked places due to his name appearing in the Panama Papers[11].  We need to note here that we have not seen the contents of these documents, so there is no smoking gun evidence.  But the timing is otherwise too coincidental for a forensic auditor.
The most significant financial whistleblower in US history, and perhaps in all history, said that it was the CIA behind the Panama Papers.  While this story has been featured on CNBC, the analysis of the implications has died on the vine:
Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he'd be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.
Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.
"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," Birkenfeld said.
Let’s run with that for the moment, especially since the CIA has such a deep history in Central and South America.  How is Malta connected to NATO, Ukraine, and the periphery of the EU?  Does Malta represent the opposite of what’s happening in Britain, Catalonia, and other potential breakaway states?  Is Malta leading the way to corporate national Fascism? Is this pleasing, or worrisome to their friends in Washington?  These are the types of questions we need to answer to really understand how this small country plays a big role in regional politics, with their bold cash for passports program.
What are the interests here, in the proxy jurisdictions like Malta?  Libya for one, not only due to Malta’s close presence to Africa, but both Libya and Malta gained independence within 13 years of each other[12].  Certainly, there was a lot of oil business run through Malta, for reasons of convenience if anything. 
Malta is not, the vortex of criminal activity in the Mediterranean, that is Cyprus.  In Cyprus, you can find drug trafficking, human trafficking, gambling, money laundering, and more – all in a country that can lose power for days on end.  Cyprus is the real black hole in the Sea.  There is no comparison in size, the criminal industry in Cyprus is 100x greater than Malta could ever grow to.  But 2 wrongs don’t make a right and being another criminal island in the sea doesn’t make the case here against Malta any less disturbing.  But there are some big differences we need to understand, such as:
  1. For Malta, this is a recent phenomenon, that started around 2013. 
  2. Cyprus isn’t flagrantly taunting violating US rules.  Russian Mafia has been in Cyprus for decades, but so are many other interests as well.  Malta’s passport program and the Panama Papers leaks made Malta stick out as a world leader in EU passport selling to those on a black list OFAC or other.
  3. There is Mafia in Italy, but Mafia doesn’t run the government (anymore).  What Muscat has done is created his own Maltese Mafia.
It seems like Malta has really lost their soul.  You know there’s a catch with America as the land of milk and honey.  It is possible to come to America with nothing and become a billionaire.  But there’s a catch – you must give up your soul.  Has Malta tried to Americanize themselves? 
Finally, Malta is now the number one jurisdiction in terms of Crypto volume (but not OTC, where Russia leads)[13].  This is really the reason for this in-depth analysis of the place.  If Malta is going to blow up, and we’ve outlined reasons well in this article – is this really a place you want to keep your Crypto?  As we’ve learned from past experiences, when dominoes fall – you don’t want to be one in the line (even if your exchange is the best one). 
Malta as a jurisdiction has become shaky.  If Pilatus can launder money using a bank which was approved by MFSA, how easy will it be to launder Crypto through exchanges when MFSA has a clear lack of understanding for financial markets, and when Crypto is by its nature completely opaque.
If Malta cannot provide protections from criminals like Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, then what remains for Crypto exchanges which are not only mostly unregulated – they are mostly opaque and anonymous.
The conclusion is that we expect massive capital outflows from Malta.  Some of that capital will flow to home – but others will look for alternative jurisdictions, like Bahamas. 
__________________________________________________________________________________
Crediblock is a Bahamas Blockchain and FinTech consultancy that can assist in your Bahamas Blockchain enterprise setup such as Crypto Exchange, Hedge Fund, Insurance Company, Brokerage, or Bank[i].

Important Reference Articles to read on this topic

 

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Bloc10 Launches Total Cryptos University

Bloc10 @ Atlanta, GA 10/27/2018 — Bloc10 today has launched Total Cryptos University offering multiple courses about Crypto Currency, Blockchain Technology, and Day Trading Crypto.  “We launched this program because there is a huge education factor in Crypto.” says Joseph Gelet, Chief Strategy Officer of Bloc10.  “Like with anything new, there is a lot to learn. Not everyone spent their last 10 years on Wall St. or in Finance School.  So we launched an online university.”
Courses come complete with actual products that can be used like trading signals, alerts, algorithmic trading systems ‘robots’ – books, software, and more.  The plan is to offer members new strategies each week and each month.  “We want to provide our members with the most value to maximize their trading potential.  So we are going to launch new products every week.” he says.
The course uses the practical ‘hands on’ learning approach which means that students are provided products to use and trade with, rather than a ‘textbook method’ used in Universities.  Practically, there aren’t Universities offering Blockchain or Crypto classes yet – but that will certainly change in the future.  For now, we have Total Cryptos University.  
Some snapshots of what you’ll learn inside the course:

Predator Arbitrage trading dashboard

Predator arbitrage dashboard

Traditional Macro Economic Analysis

Arbitrage vs. Traditional Trading

Learn more @ www.totalcryptosuniversity.com

Friday, October 26, 2018

"Cartel" Traders Found Not Guilty Of Rigging Currency Market

The US legal system has a message for those who not only feel like manipulating the currency market, but have picked a delightfully appropriate name for their FX rigging operation: just do it.
Moments ago, the three former British currency traders who formed the core of the infamous currency rigging "Cartel", were found not guilty of using an online chatroom to fix prices in the $5.1 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.
Chris Ashton, Rohan Ramchandani and Richard Usher
According to Bloomberg, a New York federal jury rejected the government’s claim that Richard Usher, Rohan Ramchandani and Christopher Ashton, better known as "The Cartel," rigged the market from 2007 to 2013 by coordinating trades and manipulating prices on the spot exchange rate for euros and U.S. dollars.
They wept in relief as the verdict was handed down in Manhattan federal court Friday after the jury deliberated for less than a day.
Usher, a former JPMorgan foreign-exchange trader, Ramchandani, former trader at Citigroup, and Ashton, the ex-head of spot FX trading at Barclays, were charged in January 2017. The case followed an investigation into conduct that was exposed by Bloomberg in 2013.
The three men faced as long as 10 years in prison had they been convicted, but since their conviction would make any future FX rigging that much more problematic, or simply because the government was incompetent and was unable to prove a slam dunk case, they are now free.
The acquittal is that much more bizarre because previously four banks, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays all pleaded guilty to manipulating currency markets in 2015 and agreed to pay $2.5 billion in fines. At the time, UBS - which ratted everyone else out - received immunity from antitrust charges for being the first institution to report misconduct in the FX market, although it pleaded guilty to a related fraud and paid a $203 million penalty. Overall, more than a dozen financial institutions have paid about $11.8 billion in fines and penalties globally, with another $2.3 billion spent to compensate customers and investors.
As Bloomberg notes, The three men, who were based in London, waived extradition to New York to fight the single charge of conspiracy to restrain trade. None of the defendants took the stand to testify.
So how did they walk free when their own employers admitted to currency manipulation?
Matt Gardiner, a former currency trader at Barclays and UBS Group AG who helped organize the group, testified for the government in exchange for an agreement that he won’t be prosecuted. Gardiner said the group agreed on trading strategies and would congratulate each other when their bets paid off. He also testified that he had no idea the group was doing anything illegal until he began negotiating with U.S. prosecutors. In closing arguments, lawyers for the defendants urged jurors to reject his testimony.
Jurors heard testimony that the men spent almost all of their work days in the chatroom, where they exchanged market color, inside jokes and personal information.
Prosecutors showed transcripts of some of the chats, recorded phone calls and trading records which showed coordination among the group. The defense said the chats reflected innocent banter and that the traders sought to profit off one another. We profiled some of these exchanges previously in "Accused "FX Cartel" Members Joined Forces After Trying To "End" Each Other."
Speaking before the acquittal, Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a former foreign-exchange analyst for the New York Fed, said that the verdict would "send a general signal to the market that the FX code is not going to be seen as having any teeth,” referring to the FX Global Code, a set of guidelines aimed at raising standards after the rigging scandal. "They’ll go back to same old, same old,” of the acquittal in an interview before the verdict. “It’s business as usual, everybody does it."
Especially the Fed, her former employer.
Javier Paz, founder of research and advisory firm Forex Datasource told Bloomberg before the verdict that the investigation has signaled to traders that “illegal actions carry a high risk of betrayal.” Whether the case will have a longer term impact remains to be seen.
“There’s definitely more awareness by clients of what could go wrong in trades, there is much more employer oversight, and, as we saw on this case, there’s government oversight and appetite to prosecute wrongdoers,” Paz said.
However, Pax was "under no illusion that banks and bankers will stop misbehaving long term. The kinds of lessons being experienced today have a way of being forgotten in a few years."
They certainly won't stop misbehaving if after years of documented manipulation, a jury of their peers finds them innocent.
Game On!

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Two Deutsche Bank Traders Found Guilty Of Rigging Libor

As regulators' campaign to kill off Libor continues unabated, helping to squeeze the 3 month dollar Libor rate to its highest level since the financial crisis, federal prosecutors in New York have won convictions on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy against two former Deutsche Bank traders for rigging the benchmark rate that underpins the value of nearly $400 trillion in financial instruments denominated in a range of currencies.
Matthew Connolly, who supervised the bank's money-market derivatives desk in New York, and Gavin Black, who traded derivatives in London, were convicted on the basis of testimony from three junior traders (two of whom pleaded guilty, and a third signed an agreement to avoid prosecution in exchange for his testimony), who said Connolly and Black directed them to aid in the altering of the bank's Libor submissions to benefit the desk's trading positions. The illicit behavior for which the two men were convicted took place between 2004 and 2011, according to Bloomberg.
The convictions represent a major win for federal prosecutors, but they can't celebrate just yet; last summer, convictions won by the DOJ against two London-based Rabobank traders were reversed on appeal, dealing an embarrassing blow to prosecutors in New York and the DOJ. All told, global regulators have secured $9 billion in fines from a collection of some of the world's largest investment banks, including DB and Barclays.
But for the duration of the trial, it appeared that Connolly and Black would also beat the rap, as the judge treated the fumbling prosecutors with open hostility, particularly after one of the government's key witnesses was called out by the defense in open court for lying about his bonus in a federal plea agreement.
The defense had some success in portraying the three witnesses as liars who molded their stories to avoid prosecution.
The three former traders told jurors that, at the urging of the defendants, they altered the rate or pressured others to submit false data to benefit trading positions held by Connolly and Black. Parietti said Connolly ordered him to disclose positions to the submitters in London because Connolly believed his team was being undermined by others at the bank who were rigging the rate in their favor.
The defense argued that there were no clear guidelines on how banks should submit their rates for the calculation of Libor until at least 2008, and that they weren’t expressly forbidden from taking derivative trading positions into account when making the submission until 2013.
During cross-examination, attorneys for Connolly and Black attempted to portray the government’s witnesses as liars who initially defended their practices to investigators and changed their stories only in exchange for a deal with prosecutors.
All told, at least 10 former Deutsche Bank traders have been charged with rigging interest-rate benchmarks, including Libor and Euribor, in the US and UK. Christian Bittar, a former DB prop trader who was effectively directed by the bank to influence rates (and who was pushed out after DB clawed back some of his bonus and turned him into a convenient scapegoat), was sentenced to five years and four months alongside Barclays trader Philippe Moryoussef, who received 8 years but was sentenced in absentia because he chose to stay in France. 
The challenge for the prosecution will now shift to ensuring that these convictions stick. But while prosecutors will no doubt hold up the scalps of Simon and Connolly as a warning to others who might dare to impinge upon the sacred integrity of markets, the fact remains that not a single senior executive was charged in the scandal (though it contributed to the downfall of former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond). In fact, regulators even stepped up to protect DB CEO Anshu Jain despite his bank's flagrantly illegal activity, after Bafin, the German securities regulator, declared in 2015 that Jain had no knowledge of the illicit trading despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Japanese researchers seek to unmask Draghi's poker face to predict policy changes

TOKYO (Reuters) - If European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi appears slightly more downbeat at his regular news conference than before, it could foreshadow a possible move by to the bank to trim its monetary policy stimulus.
FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi holds a news conference at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 7, 2018. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
That’s the conclusion of two Japanese researchers who’ve used artificial intelligence software to analyze split-second changes in Draghi’s facial expressions at his post-policy meeting press conferences.
The findings follow a similar analysis by the same researchers of Draghi’s Japanese counterpart, Haruhiko Kuroda, last year, which claimed to have identified a correlation between patterns in his facial expressions and subsequent policy changes.
Yoshiyuki Suimon and Daichi Isami, the paper’s authors, think that subtle changes in Draghi’s facial expressions could reflect a sense of frustration Draghi might have been feeling before making policy adjustments.
Their study covered Draghi’s news conference from June 2016 to December 2017 and found signs of “sadness” preceding two recent major policy changes — when the central bank announced a dovish tapering in December 2016 and another quantitative easing cutback in October last year.
FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi attends the 27th European Banking Congress at the Old Opera house in Frankfurt, Germany November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
However, Suimon noted changes in Draghi’s emotion scores were smaller than Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda’s, pointing to the European central banker’s greater degree of inscrutability.
“This suggests that Draghi is maintaining more control on his expressions, whether he is doing so consciously or not,” said Suimon, who is the lead author of the study.
In both the Kuroda and Draghi studies, screenshots of the policymakers’ faces were captured every half-second from video footage.
Suimon and Isami analyzed those images with a program developed by Microsoft called “Emotion API” that uses a visual recognition algorithm to break down human emotions into eight categories: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, contempt, disgust and neutral.
(For a graphic on Draghi's facial expressions click reut.rs/2HPNq0F)
Reuters Graphic
They also examined the facial expression of ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio, who sits next to Draghi at his news conferences. Constancio showed more joy even when Draghi’s joy score dropped.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Kiyoshi Izumi, professor of the University of Tokyo, who specializes in financial data mining and artificial market simulation, said studying simultaneous facial expressions from a team of policymakers, such as Draghi and Constancio, provided stronger sample sizes.
“Some people — President Draghi, in this case – are better at poker facing than Governor Kuroda. So it’s interesting and worth analyzing the news conference as a whole,” Izumi said.
Suimon and Isami presented their latest findings to a meeting of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) on Tuesday. The pair studied together at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Frontier Sciences and did the research in their personal capacity.
Suimon said they have looked into Kuroda’s recent news conferences, and have not found any facial data to suggest an imminent major policy change. The BOJ kept settings unchanged at its last policy meeting.
In October, Kuroda laughed at the notion that artificial intelligence could analyze his face to predict changes in monetary policy, noting such studies would only prompt those being scrutinized to manage their facial expressions more carefully.