This is Argyll and Bute Council’s uncompromising message Continue reading
Tag Archives: fine
Sir Fred Goodwin and Prince Andrew meet for ‘trade talks’
At least Fred the Shred can afford Continue reading
Dumb dumpers: anglers accused
Argyll hosts some of the country’s, if not the world’s, most spectacular coastline and scenery. Continue reading
Dog let loose in Campbeltown grabs owner £55 fine
An unaccompanied dog seen wandering around with no collar or lead in Shore Street and St John Street in Campbeltownon Friday (13th February) and was ‘seized’ in St John Street. (‘Seizing’ is procedural-speak but would be an action most dogs would have something brisk to say about.)
Anyway, the owner – who should have paid attention to the date before doing anything so irresponsible – was fined £55 by the area’s dog warden. The fine was imposed for allowing his dog to stray and for failing to put a collar on it displaying the owners name and address.
Stewart Turner, Argyll and Bute Council’s Head of Roads and Amenity Services and normally a very affable man worked himself into a lather to say: ‘The officers will continue to be pro-active in Mid Argyll, Kintyre and Islay to stamp out this shocking display of poor practice by some dog owners’.
Fun apart, dogs are worth a lot more than being casually left subject to this level of risk.
HBOS Pensions Trustees withdraw objection to merger as Lloyds pays huge US fine to end investigation into admitted ‘criminal conduct’
The Trustees of the HBOS employees Final Salary Pension Scheme (FSPS) have withdrawn their legal objection to the proposed merger with Lloyds TSB. This comes after representations from Lloyds on the dangers of delay – and what looks like little more than verbal reassurances on the HBOS pension scheme.
Fast on the heels of this action, comes the news that Lloyds TSB has agreed to pay a whopping fine of $350 to US authorities. The fine has been imposed for financial transfers which violated US sanctions.
The US Justice Department says that Lloyds TSB have acknowledged ‘criminal conduct’ and agreed to pay thi fine in return for an end to its investigation.
Justice Department prosecutors said that Lloyds TSB had faked records to enable clients of the bank in Iran, Libya and Sudan to do business with US institutions. For 12 years, from 1995-2007, Lloyds is said to have removed customer names, bank names and addresses from documents so that wire transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars could pass undetected through sanction filters at banks in the USA.
Lloyds TSB said that it had cooperated fully with the probe – so closely, by the look of it, that the writing on the wall led to the payment of the fine to stop further investigations.
Lloyds say: ‘We are committed to running our business with the highest levels of integrity and regulatory compliance across all of our operations, and have undertaken a range of significant steps to further enhance our compliance programmes’.
This is a great example of ‘spin’ working to turn the world upside down.
Surely a 12 year span of non-compliance, deliberately effected in the interests of clients in sanctioned countries, could not have existed below the radar of a company so ‘committed to running our business with the highest levels of integrity and regulatory compliance….’
One interesting question remains – whose money paid the fine? Was it ours?