JPM – Madoff Laundromat "Cleans" Empty Suits

If a cop were to a issue a challenge (perhaps even a threat), and an organization calls the cop's bluff and beats him like a drum in the process, what does that say about the cop, the organization, and the activity in question? To what do I allude?

Well, let's say for example, a criminal uses a laundromat for the purpose of facilitating his “business” but the laundromat is not held to proper account. Did the “business activity” ever really occur there? Did the cops ever fully and properly investigate and enforce their duty to uphold the law?

Not that Americans are not already fully aware of the charades being played out in the world of financial regulation and oversight but the latest iteration really takes the cake. To what do I refer?

Let's connect the dots in regard to the money laundering widely recognized as facilitated by JP Morgan for the benefit of Bernie Madoff's longstanding scam.

On January 4th, Bloomberg reported and I highlighted the fact that JP Morgan Faces Sanctions for Withholding Madoff Documents,

The U.S. Treasury Department's inspector general has threatened to punish JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) for failing to turn over documents to regulators investigating the bank's ties to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

Inspector General Eric Thorson gave the largest U.S. bank a Jan. 11 deadline to cooperate with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency probe or risk sanctions for impeding the agency's oversight.

U.S. Treasury? Office of the Comptroller of the Currency? I mean, we are calling out the cavalry here.

What day is it? Tuesday January 15th so that deadline of the 11th has come and gone.

Did JPM play ball and provide the documents in regard to its laundering activities that aided and abetted the Madoff scam? Well, we certainly do not find any meaningful reporting or questioning of bank officials or the cavalry by our major financial periodicals. But we do see buried under the cover of a WSJ story addressing failures within JPM's risk management – - – or lack thereof – - – the following,

One set of cease-and-desist orders from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve instructs the largest U.S. bank by assets to remedy the breakdowns that allowed a small group of London-based traders to rack up more than $6 billion in losses last year.

This story is a virtual non-event if not an outright cover for JPM's laundering activities with Madoff. What about that?

The money-laundering actions from the Fed and OCC don't specify an incident that prompted them. The OCC said it discovered an “inadequate system of internal controls,” saying “the bank didn't develop adequate due diligence on customers, particularly in the commercial and business banking unit” and failed to file all necessary reports of suspicious activity.

None of the orders issued Monday require any fines or monetary penalties, but regulators left the door open to future action.

So on January 4th or thereabouts the OCC issues what might largely be defined as a challenge if not a threat to JPM to be answered by the bank by the 11th.

The 11th comes and goes. Then on the 14th, we see these actions — if we can call them that — taken by the Fed and the OCC.

What a joke.

Can you imagine being an executive of the Treasury, Fed, or OCC now trying to go back into JPM or any other large bank? How might that executive be viewed upon exiting the bank? Empty suits, perhaps? Once the members of the cavalry exit the bank, I can only imagine the JPM bankers engaging in a practice defined to me by my children as “ROFLMAO.”

Crime pays and once again, “justice neglected is justice denied.”

Do the financial cavalry think the American public is not wise to these charades?

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

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I have no business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.