The Deutsche Bank Espionage Scandal
Usually when one thinks about finances, the first thing that comes to mind is the banking sector. Banks help a country’s growth with its investing and banking activities, but during the period between 2001 to 2009, the culmination of one of the biggest problems the world economy has ever faced took place: The Great Recession. According to Amadeo (2017), The Great Recession was the worst depression in the history of the US and was also the one of the longest, lasting 18 months (December 2007 - June 2009), during which had created a global banking crisis. Through the efforts of everyone, including the banking industry, the economy was able to bounce back. One defining factor that every bank needs to successfully survive is trust. If an investor cannot trust their bank, then how could the same person trust this institution with their money? To gain the trust of these investors, banks would need to develop tight security measures for assurance, as well as quality service. These measures are for the benefit of the client, but what happens when your most trusted bank thinks otherwise?
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The Deutsche Bank provides their services with corporate values and beliefs at its core, but during the year 2001 up to 2009, reports of espionage, or spying, on multiple shareholders were found against Deutsche Bank, though the company had classified them as ‘isolated cases’. BBC News (2009) stated that Deutsche Bank began its own inquiry of the spying allegations in May
In All the Presidents' Bankers, Nomi Prins argues that the associations between the leaders of the largest banks and the presidents of the last century influenced economic policy in the U.S. and other countries. The presidents and the bankers worked together to make the U.S. the most powerful nation in the world. However, the bankers wanted power and profit without regard to the harm they caused people in the U.S and other countries. Although Prins’ commentary is biased, her arguments are well-supported and based on extensive research. Prins’ book is well-organized chronologically by time periods in history and presidents.
Wells Fargo In September of 2016 news broke out about the Wells Fargo scandal. Wells Fargo employees secretly opened millions of illegal fake credit cards and bank accounts for unknowing customers. According to How The Wells Fargo Phony Account Scandal Sunk John Stump, “Wells employees created more than 1.5 million unauthorized deposit accounts and issued more than 500,000 unauthorized credit card applications. These accounts racked up $2.6 million in fees for the bank.”
Part two, Covert Action, of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer, presents situations in Iran, Chile, South Vietnam, and Guatemala where covert actions were used to abolish governments that the United States claimed had communist influence and intentions. These threats were misguided, but the excuse was used to justify the actions to the public. The true intention of these interventions was to protect American businesses in foreign countries. These interferences are still causing problems for all countries involved.
Your Honor, my client is pleading guilty to the charges of breaking the Espionage Act. Although Mr. Debs is extremely sorry for the disturbance he has caused but he was only exercising his first amendment right, peacefully. My client is aware, and has a clear understanding in what the Espionage Act is put in place for; the real problem is how could a law such as this exist? The espionage Act is in place to stop treason, and anti -americanism thoughts, but there is not enough war propaganda that exist to prohibit people from realizing war is not completely glorious. Any person that is anti- war does not make them anti-American.
During the 1920’s there was a sense of a booming economy leading more people to buy on credit with the economy being stable. However after the stock market crash droves of people rushed to withdraw their money. This caused many problems for the banks as they had invested money into the stock market themselves, many closed down leaving millions questioning where their money had gone. This is the main reason people viewed banks as untrustworthy and feared giving them there hard earned money. This is why President Roosevelt created programs such as the FDIC to create a trust between the people and the government.
Being a citizen of America in 1917 was a difficult role when your country is on the brink of joining the first world war. The leaders of America had to be careful and precise to accomplish victory. If they had let any little obstacle slip, it could have cost them their triumph, followed by millions more lost lives. That is why Charles Schenck should have been convicted.
The Great Depression The Great Depression 1929-39 was the deepest and longest-lasting economic crash in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States. The Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929 which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors and nearby businesses.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was strictly enforced, prohibiting interference with recruiting or enlistment into the military and ended with a punishment if the act was violated. In 1919, Charles Schenck, a general secretary of the socialist party, made pamphlets that were distributed to men who had been drafted into the armed forces. Schenck was charged with conspiracy that violated the Espionage Act of 1917. He made an argument that the Conscription Act violated the 13th Amendment of the US constitution, which was the amendment that made slavery unconstitutional.
The business world wasn’t the only thing corrupt but the railroads were too. With the railroad industry growing the companies knew they could charge huge rate and gain a large profit. Congressmen were paid off to be quite about the scandal and kept it to themselves. The railroads raised the stocks and were given to well-liked companies.
As all this came to fruition, the bank was penalized with $185 million dollars in fines and other penalties by county and federal organizations (Blake, 2016). On top of getting slapped with millions of dollars worth of fines, Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees that may have been involved in the scandal (Blake, 2016). Some of Wells Fargo’s top executives where asked to step down in court proceedings as well as in other meetings with federal agencies. There have also been several lawsuits filed against Wells Fargo by customers and former employees of the company that feel that they were wronged and bombarded with threats. Thankfully, this scandal did not affect most of Wells Fargo’s clients.
When it comes to suspicious activity reporting included in Section 352 of the USAPATRIOT Act, “suspicious may not necessarily mean the same thing to all people”. “An activity that may seem suspicious to an auditor or examiner may not raise the same red flag with a community bank executive, or even another examiner”(Proctor, 2003, p.1). This causes a serious problem in the way institutions comply with the requirements of suspicious activity reporting. With that said, suspicious activity reporting forms the cornerstone of the anti-money laundering goals set out by the USAPATRIOT
It began by hackers stealing the user name and password of a current Chase Bank employee. Chase Bank had previously updated their security to use a two-factor authentication, which requires a second password when accessing secure data. However, one of the network servers was inadvertently not updated which allowed for the hackers to gain access. This oversight of one server, left a room for the hackers gain access to over 90 of its servers containing proprietary information. ("Neglected Server Provided Entry for JPMorgan Hackers - The New York Times," n.d.)
Scandals, which inevitably have negative impacts on people, sometimes work to the benefits of many others instead. Despite of their potential destruction, I agree partly with the claim that scandals are useful at times for they focus our attention on some problems, but we shall not ignore the consequences they may result at the same time. In modern society, the popularization of mass media such as newspapers and Internet makes spreading various aspects of information much easier than ever before. Although the television and mainstream broadcast dominate the major field, still, the tabloids which include some anecdotes begin to catch more attention.
Recently Wells Fargo’s scandal of creating phony accounts has raised ethical concerns in the corporate world. Wells Fargo employees opened more than two million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts to meet sales projections. The company was charged with huge fines and earned a bad reputation that will take years to rebuild. According to the Deontological perspective on ethics least some acts are morally obligatory.
Executive Summary Lehman Brothers were an investment bank involved in transactions worth billions of dollars and one of the most powerful investment banks in the world. Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 following bad investment in the sub-prime mortgage market and used bad accounting practices called Repo 105 transactions to try and cover up the bad assets. This report sets out the use of the fraud triangle when describing the actions which led to the collapse. The pressure applied on the bank, the opportunity due to the lack of regulation to carry out the actions and the ability of the bank to rationalise their decision making.