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Justice Dept. Sues Ferguson, Missouri, To Force Police Reforms

Justice Dept. Sues Ferguson, Missouri, To Force Police Reforms

By Sue Britt and Julia Edwards

FERGUSON, Mo./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department sued Ferguson, Missouri, on Wednesday to force the city to change its police department and court system after the federal government found both to be biased against minorities.

The St. Louis suburb, a symbol of problems with policing and race in the United States, earlier on Wednesday said it wanted to change an agreement it had negotiated with the federal government due to the costs involved.

“The residents of Ferguson have waited nearly a year for their city to adopt an agreement that would protect their rights and keep them safe,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a news conference.

She said the agreement that was decided upon had been painstakingly negotiated and Ferguson officials knew that rejecting it would invite litigation.

Ferguson officials had no immediate comment on the civil rights lawsuit, said spokesman Jeff Small.

The Justice Department initiated a civil rights investigation into Ferguson’s policing after an unarmed black teenager was killed by a white police officer in 2014.

It was one of several killings of black men, mostly by white officers, that started a nationwide debate about the use of excessive force by police, especially against minorities.

It resulted in a Justice Department report that was extremely critical of Ferguson’s police and court systems.

Mayor James Knowles told a news conference that reforms had to be affordable and attainable. “It serves no one’s purpose for us to fail,” he said.

Ferguson’s city council voted on Tuesday to accept the reform agreement, called a consent decree, as long as the city did not have to increase police officers’ pay and police staffing levels. It also said it wanted more time to comply with the other terms.

Knowles said that only in the last two weeks had the city been able to analyze the costs of implementing the decree.

He and city council members said Ferguson had already made some reforms, including community policing and a civilian review board to oversee police.

Civil rights advocates warned that litigation with the Justice Department could cost more than implementing the agreement.

“This decision only creates the potential for the type of litigation that creates more financial challenges that will be a burden on poor people,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, a national civil rights organization.

 

(Reporting by Sue Britt and Julia Edwards; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman and Mary Wisniewski; Writing by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Lisa Shumaker)

Photo: Amarion Allen, 11-years-old, stands in front of a police line shortly before shots were fired in a police-officer involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri August 9, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

U.S. To Slap Record $8.9 Bn Fine On BNP Paribas

U.S. To Slap Record $8.9 Bn Fine On BNP Paribas

New York (AFP) — French bank BNP Paribas has agreed to pay U.S. authorities a $8.9 billion fine to avoid being tried in court for dealing with U.S.-blacklisted countries, sources close to the matter told AFP.

The deal ends months of haggling which saw French President Francois Hollande pressing his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama to intervene and lighten the punishment.

Agreement on the record fine, approved by the bank’s board of directors at a special weekend meeting in Paris, is due to be announced Monday after markets close at the New York Stock Exchange around 4:00 p.m.

The U.S. Justice Department and New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky will make separate announcements, another source said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

BNP declined requests for a public comment.

At least $2 billion of the fine will go to Lawsky, who is temporarily suspending parts of BNP’s dollar-handling business in the United States — key to any major bank’s U.S. operations — for all of 2015.

Sources said the suspension would take place progressively since BNP has operations underway.

BNP, France’s largest bank, has until December 31 to find a bank that agrees to make dollar payments on its behalf.

The deal forces BNP to plead guilty to the bank’s deals from 2002 to 2009 with countries that Washington has blacklisted like Cuba, Iran, and Sudan.

The investigation probed more than $100 billion of transactions, finding that $30 billion of that amount were concealed in order to skirt the sanctions.

– Too tough on BNP? –

BNP has a strong enough capital base to handle the penalty, but the size of the fine and the temporary suspension of parts of its dollar-handling business — key to any major bank’s U.S. operations — will mean a significant hit on its earnings.

BNP chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafe reportedly wrote to employees on Friday conceding the bank will be “punished severely,” but stressing that “this difficulty … will not impact our roadmap.”

U.S. authorities have already forced BNP to dismiss three senior officials allegedly linked to the sanctions violations, including its chief operating officer.

Lower bank officials could also be fired as part of the settlement.

Sources say the settlement could include a year-long suspension of the bank’s dollar clearing for oil and gas trading activities in Switzerland, Singapore, and France, and suspension of dollar clearing on behalf of other banks and some clients.

That would likely be a blow to the bank’s bottom line. In 2013 BNP reported total profits of 4.83 billion euros ($6.59 billion) on revenues of 38.8 billion euros. It has already set aside $1.1 billion to cover losses from the case.

BNP has been largely quiet about the allegations and potential penalties during months of negotiations.

Critics have accused Washington of being especially tough with foreign banks, and BNP in particular, while treating U.S. banking transgressions more lightly.

In punishing U.S. banks for financial crisis-related violations, negotiated fines have run into the billions but none has had to plead guilty, an act which could lead to the loss of a banking license.

In 2012 Dutch bank ING paid a relatively paltry $619 million financial crisis, and Britain’s Standard Chartered $670 million. HSBC, which was also accused of complicity in money laundering, paid $1.9 billion.

None were forced to plead guilty or halt certain banking operations.

But US authorities have become much tougher on banks that are less cooperative in investigations.

– ‘Negative consequences’ –

In May, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to helping Americans evade taxes and was fined $2.6 billion, over three times the $780 million fine US authorities imposed on fellow Swiss bank UBS for the same charges in 2009.

Analysts say the size of the BNP fine relates to the size of the business it did with Sudan and Iran, several times larger than that handled by ING and Standard Chartered.

The BNP controversy has been a thorn in U.S.-France relations. French officials warned in early June that it could cause problems for the huge transatlantic trade treaty under negotiation between the European Union and the United States.

“Evidently… this risks having negative consequences,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius ominously warned.

Hollande also raised the issue with Obama during a dinner in Paris.

Fabius said that Hollande had told Obama the case is “very important for Europe and for France,” saying if BNP is weakened it would “create a very negative interference in Europe and its economy.”

But even before the dinner, Obama had signaled he would stay out of a legal issue.

“The rule of law is not determined by political expediency,” he said.

AFP Photo / Loic Venance

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FBI Agents Focus On 9/11 Hearing In Session At Guantanamo

FBI Agents Focus On 9/11 Hearing In Session At Guantanamo

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military judge convened an unusual two-day hearing Monday to gather facts on whether a series of episodes of FBI agents questioning defense lawyers’ staff raised ethical issues that could imperil progress in the historic trial of five men accused of conspiring in the September 11, 2001 terrorism attacks.

For the hearing, the Justice Department dispatched a four-member legal team led by assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Compoamor Sanchez, who argued in court filings that the FBI activity created no conflict of interest because the agents weren’t investigating defense attorneys, only questioned their support staff.

But the judge, Army Colonel James L. Pohl, was not persuaded by the civilian lawyers’ argument — portions of it filed in secret.

On June 4, he ordered this week’s hearing. Pohl declared himself “concerned the submissions of the Special Counsel have not adequately addressed a number of issues raised by the Defense as to the individuals contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the scope of any investigation concerning these cases.”

Defense lawyers said in a series of interviews Sunday night that they had uncovered four separate episodes of FBI questioning their staff members, in two possibly now closed investigations.

FBI agents questioned the staff members secretly with agents in at least one episode seeking a nondisclosure agreement about their probes — prompting defense lawyers to argue that the government was spying on their work. The investigations, as they see it, could be creating a chilling effect, and conflict of interest over whether they could adequately and zealously defend the five men awaiting death-penalty trials in the attacks that killed 2,976 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

Those questioned included a linguist on the team of the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in January 2013; two former federal law enforcement officers working as civilian investigators on the teams of alleged deputy Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi in November, and the classification specialist on the bin al-Shibh team in April.

The last man tipped defense attorneys off to FBI activities in April, for the first time uncovering the existence of shadowy investigations whose actual targets have not yet been disclosed — prompting defense attorneys to tell the judge Monday morning that there’s suspicion and uncertainty in the 9/11 defense teams.

“I am trimming my sails. I am pulling my punches,” Mohammed’s attorney, David Nevin told the judge Monday. He added that, in the absence of certainty of who’s being investigated, he had canceled a fact-finding trip to the Middle East.

The case’s chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, assigned Compoamor Sanchez and the other three Justice Department lawyers to the ethics issue to steer clear of it. He told reporters Sunday that while “delay is frustrating” these were necessary deliberate steps on the path to trial.

AFP Photo/Chantal Valery

U.S.: International Raid Targets Data-Stealing Computer Virus

U.S.: International Raid Targets Data-Stealing Computer Virus

Washington (AFP) – An international dragnet has dismantled a global computer hacker network which used a sophisticated computer virus to steal millions of dollars from companies and consumers, the U.S. Justice Department announced Monday.

Gameover Zeus, which first appeared in September 2011, stole bank information and other confidential details from victims.

According to FBI investigators, the virus infected between 500,000 and a million computers in 12 countries, creating a network of “bots” the hackers could “infiltrate, spy on, and even control, from anywhere they wished.”

“Gameover Zeus is the most sophisticated botnet the FBI and our allies have ever attempted to disrupt,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Anderson.

The FBI blamed the Gameover Zeus botnet for the theft of more than $100 million, obtained by using the stolen bank data and then “emptying the victims’ bank accounts and diverting the money to themselves.”

The bust also targeted another computer virus, dubbed “Cryptolocker,” which appeared in September 2013.

The virus encrypted the computers of its victims and demanded a ransom — often in excess of $700 — in exchange for the password to unlock it. Investigators say the cyber criminals amassed more than $27 million in just the first two months.

Russian Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, 30, an alleged administrator of the network, was charged in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with 14 counts including conspiracy, computer hacking, bank fraud and money laundering in the Gameover Zeus and Cryptoblocker schemes.

Bogachev, sometimes called “Slavik” or “Pollingsoon,” was also charged in Omaha, Nebraska with “conspiracy to commit bank fraud” in relation to an earlier incarnation of Gameover Zeus.

“Evgeniy Bogachev and the members of his criminal network devised and implemented the kind of cyber crimes that you might not believe if you saw them in a science fiction movie,” said Leslie Caldwell, deputy attorney general.

U.S. investigators worked with counterparts in Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, and Britain, as well as the European Cybercrime Center, according to a statement.

They were also aided by private companies, including Dell, Microsoft, Afilias, Deloitte and Symantec.

Victims are urged to contact a site created by the Department of Homeland Security: https://www.us-cert.gov/gameoverzeus

AFP Photo