WORLD NEWS FLASH
UNITED STATES
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is ordering Wells Fargo Bank to pay more than $2 billion in redress to consumers and a $1.7 billion civil penalty for legal violations across several of its largest product lines. The bank’s illegal conduct led to billions of dollars in financial harm to its customers and, for thousands of customers, the loss of their vehicles and homes.
Consumers were illegally assessed fees and interest charges on auto and mortgage loans, had their cars wrongly repossessed, and had payments to auto and mortgage loans misapplied by the bank. Wells Fargo also charged consumers unlawful surprise overdraft fees and applied other incorrect charges to checking and savings accounts.
Under the terms of the order, Wells Fargo will pay redress to the over 16 million affected consumer accounts, and pay a $1.7 billion fine, which will go to the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund, where it will be used to provide relief to victims of consumer financial law violations.
“Wells Fargo’s rinse-repeat cycle of violating the law has harmed millions of American families,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “The CFPB is ordering Wells Fargo to refund billions of dollars to consumers across the country. This is an important initial step for accountability and long-term reform of this repeat offender.”
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is one of the nation’s largest banks serving households across the country. It offers a variety of consumer financial services, including mortgages, auto loans, savings and checking accounts, and online banking services.
According to the Dec. 20 enforcement action, Wells Fargo harmed millions of consumers over a period of several years, with violations across many of the bank’s largest product lines. The CFPB’s specific findings include that Wells Fargo:
- Unlawfully repossessed vehicles and bungled borrower accounts: Wells Fargo had systematic failures in its servicing of automobile loans that resulted in $1.3 billion in harm across more than 11 million accounts. The bank incorrectly applied borrowers’ payments, improperly charged fees and interest, and wrongfully repossessed borrowers’ vehicles. In addition, the bank failed to ensure that borrowers received a refund for certain fees on add-on products when a loan ended early.
- Improperly denied mortgage modifications: During at least a seven-year period, the bank improperly denied thousands of mortgage loan modifications, which in some cases led to Wells Fargo customers losing their homes to wrongful foreclosures. The bank was aware of the problem for years before it ultimately addressed the issue.
- Illegally charged surprise overdraft fees: For years, Wells Fargo unfairly charged surprise overdraft fees – fees charged even though consumers had enough money in their account to cover the transaction at the time the bank authorized it – on debit card transactions and ATM withdrawals. As early as 2015, the CFPB, as well as other federal regulators, including the Federal Reserve, began cautioning financial institutions against this practice, known as authorized positive fees.
- Unlawfully froze consumer accounts and mispresented fee waivers: The bank froze more than 1 million consumer accounts based on a faulty automated filter’s determination that there may have been a fraudulent deposit, even when it could have taken other actions that would have not harmed customers. Customers affected by these account freezes were unable to access any of their money in accounts at the bank for an average of at least two weeks. The bank also made deceptive claims as to the availability of waivers for a monthly service fee.
Wells Fargo is a repeat offender that has been the subject of multiple enforcement actions by the CFPB and other regulators for violations across its lines of business, including faulty student loan servicing, mortgage kickbacks, fake accounts, and harmful auto loan practices.
AFGHANISTAN
TALIBAN’S WAR ON WOMEN CONTINUES
If you thought that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan might have softened since getting power back last year, think again.
UN Special Representative in Afghanistan and United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) chief Roza Otunbayeva recently detailed some of the conditions that Afghans are dealing with since the Taliban reclaimed power.
“What struck me most was the misery of so many Afghans who live in great poverty and uncertainty. Many told me during my visits around the country that they are simply surviving,” she said.
While the Taliban are essentially in control, they are unable to satisfactorily address terrorist groups operating there, she reported. Recently, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate of the extremist terrorist group known as Daesh, carried out attacks against the Russian and Pakistani embassies, and a hotel hosting many Chinese nationals.
The Taliban now face little domestic opposition, and have rejected the need for intra-Afghan dialogue, though the UN continues to push for wider consultation as well as representation.
The de facto authorities have continued to implement harsh social policies, including a slew of decrees that have been harmful to women, restricting them in both the social and political spheres.
“The prevention of secondary education will mean that in two years there will be no girls entering into university. This decision is extremely unpopular among Afghans and even within the Taliban leadership,” said Ms. Otunbayeva.
Last month, Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhunzada ordered judges to implement capital and corporal punishment where applicable under Sharia law.
While sentences have been carried out since the takeover, the first public execution took place earlier on Dec. 7, attended by senior officials.
The envoy said she had stressed to the de facto authorities that the death penalty is incompatible with international human rights law.
UNAMA recently convened stakeholder meetings in 12 provinces. More than 500 people took part, including 189 women and over 80 Taliban representatives.
People expressed concern over issues such as the ban on girls’ education, lack of health facilities, mental health, poverty, economic insecurity and discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Afghans are also frustrated with the international community’s approach, she added. They want projects that are more-long term, involve cash-for-work rather than handouts, and which are more participatory, consultative and development-oriented.
“Under current conditions, however, donors are increasingly unwilling to look beyond the provision of humanitarian assistance,” she said.
“As long as girls remain excluded from school and the de facto authorities continue to disregard other stated concerns of the international community, we remain at something of an impasse.”
“It is clear that there are severe differences of positions on a range of issues between UNAMA and the de facto authorities,” she added.
MIDDLE EAST
IRAN CLOSER TO NUCLEAR CAPABILITY
No progress has been made on the implementation of a high profile 2015 Security Council resolution (2231), aimed at ensuring that Iran’s nuclear facilities be used only for peaceful purposes, in return for the lifting of sanctions, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, told the Security Council on Dec. 19.
Rosemary DiCarlo said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has reported that Iran intends to install new centrifuges at one of its fuel enrichment plants, and plans to produce more uranium enriched up to 60 percent, at another.
The agency, she continued, estimates that the country now has a total enriched uranium stockpile of more than eighteen times the allowable amount under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that was developed in the wake of Resolution 2231, including “worrying quantities of uranium” enriched to up to 60 percent.
The IAEA’s ability to effectively monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities and ensure that they are being used for exclusively peaceful purposes – a core element of the JCPOA – is now compromised, said Ms. Di Carlo, by Iran’s decision to remove the agency’s surveillance and monitoring equipment.
“Against this backdrop, we once again call on Iran to reverse the steps it has taken since July 2019 that are not consistent with its nuclear-related commitments under the Plan”, declared Ms. Di Carlo, who also called on the United States to lift or waive its sanctions as outlined in the deal, and to extend the waivers regarding the trade in oil with Iran.
Ms. Di Carlo then turned to provisions in the Plan related to ballistic missiles and, in particular, two flight tests of space launch vehicles conducted by Iran in June and November of this year, and a new ballistic missile unveiled by Iran in September.
Information received by the UN about this hardware, reflected “divergent views” amongst certain Member States – France, Germany, Iran, Israel, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States – as to whether those launches and other activities are inconsistent with resolution 2231.
Ms. Di Carlo announced that the UN has inspected cruise missile parts, seized by the British Royal Navy in international waters south of Iran, which they assessed to be of Iranian origin, which resembles parts seen in the debris of cruise missiles used by the Houthis against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates between 2019 and 2022, and those seized by the United States in 2019.
In a recent video, U.S. President Joe Biden weas heard saying that a nuclear deal with Iran was “dead.”
LATIN AMERICA
DOZENS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKERS BUSTED
An INTERPOL operation targeting human trafficking and migrant smuggling across Latin America and the Caribbean has seen victims rescued, migrants detected, and suspected perpetrators arrested in 32 countries.
The fourth in INTERPOL’s ‘Turquesa’ series of operations, the five-day (Nov. 28 – Dec. 2) operation saw Latin American investigators use INTERPOL capabilities to work with police forces on all continents to generate investigative leads and disrupt the global crime groups behind people trafficking and migrant smuggling.
Frontline officers conducted controls at trafficking and smuggling hotspots identified ahead of operations, with particular emphasis on transit points such as airports, bus terminals and border crossings.
Although results are still coming in, preliminary reporting points to the arrest of 268 individuals suspected of involvement in migrant smuggling, human trafficking, or associated crime such as document fraud and sexual offences.
A total of 9,015 irregular migrants were detected, and 128 women and two men rescued from human trafficking. Most of the trafficked victims were from Colombia and Venezuela.
Multiple cases involved the interception in Central America of migrant men, women and children from all parts of the world on their way to North America, including the detection in Mexico of 2,400 migrants from the Americas (Venezuela, Cuba), Africa (Angola, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Ethiopia) and Asia (Bangladesh and Nepal).
Mirroring this global smuggling link, Nicaragua police detected more than 2,000 migrants traveling from Asia (Afghanistan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, and Nepal), Africa (Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo) as well as the Americas (Haiti and Ecuador) towards the US and Canada.
Honduras authorities arrested a 30-year-old woman for the organized sexual exploitation of three minors and Guatemala police arrested a similarly aged woman on suspicion of both human trafficking and migrant smuggling.
El Salvador authorities arrested a number of women suspected of trafficking their own children, including a disabled girl, who were destined for sexual exploitation.
Chilean police controls on the border with Bolivia and Peru saw 300 migrants from Venezuela and Bolivia, including minors, detected whilst Brazilian authorities arrested four suspects attempting to smuggle 21 migrants from Cuba and South Africa between French Guyana and Brazil.
Illustrating the growing trafficking link between Latin America and Europe, Bolivia arrested a Red Notice subject wanted by Spain for sexual abuse, and in Paraguay a woman who was the subject of a Red Notice for human trafficking and sexual exploitation, was arrested attempting to traffic her niece to Spain for sexual exploitation.
