UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland even had their Japanese brokerage subsidiaries enter a guilty plea in the United States, something unheard-of in bank prosecutions for years.
That comment — an acknowledgment, for the first time, that Mr. Holder has not pursued big bank prosecutions out of fear of possibly harming the financial system — raises a variety of questions, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column.
There's no doubt that the public outcry over a lack of bank prosecutions had a powerful influence on the government, although we may never know how directly that led to these actions.
Prosecutions of the local businesses are driven by the prosecutors on the ground, such as U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado, who has shown little respect for marijuana guidances in the past, while bank prosecutions would be run out of Main Justice, which authored the memo and presumably would be more likely to abide by it.
That approach stands in stark contrast to his comments about bank prosecutions this past March, when he said: "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them (because) if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy".
He spared the bank from prosecution by turning in Dennis B. Levine, a rising star in the investment banking arm of Drexel Burnham Lambert.
Erdoğan used his final term as prime minister to curb the independence of the key institutions of state – the constitutional court, the parliament, the central bank, the prosecution and judiciary services.
UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, avoided prosecution in 2009 by paying $780 million and admitting to criminal charges that it helped wealthy Americans evade federal income taxes from 2000 to 2007.
UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, avoided prosecution in 2009 by paying $780 million, by admitting to criminal charges that it helped wealthy Americans evade federal income taxes from 2000 to 2007 and by handing over account data on about 265 Americans.
The rule changes broadened the protections afforded to national banks against prosecution for violations of state civil rights and predatory lending laws and other banking statutes.
