A small private bank controlled by a "reclusive" Brazilian billionaire "shows up more than two dozen times in U.S. prosecutors’ corruption charges" against FIFA, according to Hamilton, Katz & Brush of BLOOMBERG. It is "hardly the bank’s first brush with scandal."
Delta National Bank & Trust Co. "has had at least three previous run-ins with authorities on two continents over the past 15 years," including when Brazilian lawmakers probed its role as the banker for a "scandal-tinged" head of national football. In '03, Delta "pleaded guilty in the U.S. to failing to report transactions linked to a Colombian drug cartel."
Even so, Delta, with U.S. assets of $467M, "continued operations" from its offices in Manhattan, Miami and Geneva. Some of that business, U.S. prosecutors alleged last week, "included processing millions of dollars in bribe payments" from a São Paulo-based sports marketing business to football officials affiliated with FIFA. Delta was not "named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing in a 47-count indictment released by the Justice Department." The latest scrutiny of Delta "comes after more than a decade of red flags about its business," according to a review of lawsuits, regulatory filings and reports documenting government investigations. Former U.S. Senate investigator Jack Blum, who is an expert on money laundering, said, "There’s not much of a track record of closing banks down for bad behavior, is there?" He added that Delta is "just another bank in this big sea of trouble in the banking business" (BLOOMBERG, 6/2).
