Daily Archives: 23 December 2009

Credit Suisse to pay $536m fine over Iran sanctions

Swiss banking group Credit Suisse has agreed to pay a $536m (£329m) fine for violating US sanctions against Iran.

Settlement papers say Credit Suisse systematically hid the identity of its Iranian clients when moving millions of dollars on their behalf.

. . . .

In January, British bank Lloyds-TSB paid a fine of $350m to US authorities after prosecutors accused it of faking records so clients in Iran, Libya and Sudan could do business with US institutions.

The US government has the power to take proceedings against foreign financial institutions – even for actions involving other countries – if they do some of their business in America.

US government papers filed in the latest case said: “Credit Suisse’s internal communications showed a continuous dialogue about evading US sanctions spanning approximately a decade.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

NASA Stonewalling Stokes Fears of ‘U.S. Climategate’

Climategate may be just the tip of the global-warming iceberg according to the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says the next weather-science scandal may erupt right here in the United States.

For nearly three years CEI, a free-market, public-interest organization, has pursued a series of Freedom of Information Act Requests intended to force NASA’s climate-science division to hand over e-mails it says could reflect the same sort of pro-warming bias seen in the recent e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University.

One reason NASA’s unresponsiveness is drawing attention: For years, the CRU stonewalled a request filed through the British information-act process, before information was “hacked” and posted on the Internet in November.

“They have resisted and haven’t wanted to turn anything over,” CEI Energy and Global Warming Policy Director Myron Ebell says of NASA. “. . . So this looks like climategate all over again to us.” (Read more from newsmax.com)