Legion of Angels News Archive

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Friday that his office intends to file charges against Citigroup for the alleged fraudulent marketing and sale of troubled auction-rate securities to everyday investors.

Cuomo outlined his intentions in a letter to Citigroup’s general counsel dated Friday, saying that charges were imminent.

In the letter, the New York Attorney General’s office alleged that the nation’s largest bank “has repeatedly and persistently committed fraud by material misrepresentations and omissions” in the underwriting, distribution and sale of auction rate securities, touting them as safe, cash-equivalent investments.

Cuomo’s office claimed that the sale of these securities had “a severe detrimental impact” on tens of thousands of Citigroup customers.

The AG also claimed that Citigroup “destroyed recordings of telephone conversations” related to the marketing and sale of auction-rate securities.

In a statement, Citigroup said it was working with market participants and regulators to find an industry-wide solution to auction rate security issues, adding it was cooperating with regulators in all aspects of the investigation.

“Citi has acted in good faith and in the best interests of our clients both before and since auctions began to fail, and there is simply no basis for claims to the contrary,” the company said.

Citigroup added that it is the company’s “practice to recycle tapes” and that “the recycling of the tape in question was inadvertent.”

Cuomo’s letter comes just a week after he brought a multi-billion dollar civil lawsuit against the Swiss banking giant UBS (UBS) for its role in selling auction-rate securities to its customers at a time when the market for these securities was under severe strain.

Auction-rate securities are long-term bonds that hospitals, cities and corporations sell at weekly or monthly auctions, which many investors, until now, had treated like cash investments. The market for these investments is worth about $330 billion.

The auction-rate security market began to fail in February as the credit crisis took a turn for the worse, effectively locking up the market for these securities.

Earlier Friday, Citigroup revealed in a quarterly filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission had initiated a formal probe into whether it violated various federal securities laws in connection with the sale of auction-rate securities.

The company also said it was responding to subpoenas from state agencies in Texas, New York and Massachusetts over the sales.

Other securities firms have been targeted by state regulators in the ever-widening auction rate security scandal.

In June, Massachusetts state securities regulators filed a civil suit against UBS. Earlier this week, Massachusetts charged Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) with fraud for promoting auction-rate securities.

And a little over two weeks ago, Missouri state securities regulators inspected the offices of Wachovia Securities in St. Louis seeking documents related to the sales of auction-rate securities. Wachovia Securities is a subsidiary of Wachovia (WB, Fortune 500), the nation’s fourth-largest bank.

Cuomo’s office said it was seeking a settlement with Citigroup in which the bank buys back the securities from investors at face value, reimburse investors for any damages they have suffered and pay a penalty for misconduct during the investigation.

Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) shares finished 1% higher in Friday trading.

Source — CNN

For 41 hours, he stood on the sidewalk.

He was just 17 years old, a freshman at Boston University, and he didn’t know what else to do. A jury in New York had just acquitted the four police officers whose 41 bullets had killed an unarmed Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo.

So Joshua DuBois wrote “NO MORE” on a placard, planted himself on an expanse of pavement along Commonwealth Avenue, in front of a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., and stood there - 41 hours for 41 shots.

“I was completely disconnected from social activism, or the world around me - I was almost devoid of a social consciousness before then,” DuBois said. “But I was struck by the injustice. So I stood in the middle of Marsh Plaza with a sign and tried to talk to whoever came by.”

That vigil - which the politic DuBois now says he thinks of as a listening session and not a protest - marked the beginning of a journey for DuBois that has now taken him, at the age of 25, to the post of religious affairs director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

DuBois, who says he found his religious and political voice while a student in Boston, heads what has become the most intensive outreach effort by a Democratic candidate to people of faith in a nation where the most frequent worshipers also tend to be Republican. He oversees a staff of four, as well as six interns, who have organized about 200 town hall meetings about faith and now are launching a series of smaller house parties to discuss values and the campaign.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of folks who have never voted for a Democrat before really give Senator Obama a hard look,” DuBois said. “We don’t expect to outright win the evangelical vote - for some his positions are a nonstarter, and we respect that - but there are a whole bunch of others who may disagree with him on some tough issues, but agree on others and say, ‘I’m going to vote for him.’ ”

Dubois has had a hand in numerous efforts to reach out to the faith community - he pulled together Obama’s recent meeting with conservative evangelical leaders, for example. His shop also oversees a faith portion of the Obama website where staff members blog about faith-related developments, and provides resources for a large number of faith-oriented campaign groups such as Utah Catholics for Obama. And, DuBois said, his group also counsels church officials on how to comply with tax regulations limiting their political activities.

“We’re very upfront - we’re a campaign, and we want you to vote for Senator Obama - but we’re not going to try to co-opt religion, we’re not going to try to use religion to divide folks, we’re not going to steal church directories to call people to vote,” he said.

DuBois was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, and spent his first few years in Cambridge, but was raised in Nashville, which he considers his hometown, and then in Xenia, Ohio, where he attended high school. His stepfather is an itinerant minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He chose BU, he said, because “I wanted to see the world - to go to a bigger city - and BU stuck out as a cosmopolitan campus in the middle of a downtown area.”

During his vigil on the plaza, among those who stopped by to talk was Eugene Schneeberg, a fellow student at BU, who invited DuBois to church. “Initially, I was not interested in reintegrating myself in a Christian community, because I figured I knew it all, growing up in the church,” DuBois said. “But what I didn’t really know was how to have a personal relationship with Jesus.”

DuBois wound up joining Schneeberg’s congregation, Calvary Praise & Worship Center, a tiny evangelical congregation in Cambridge affiliated with the United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God, a small, predominantly African-American denomination. DuBois, although just a teenager, started preaching when the pastor was away and was named an associate pastor. He and Schneeberg also led Bible study at a halfway house, and some days they would walk along Massachusetts Avenue, offering pizza and conversation to homeless folks along the way.

“He was just 18 or 19, but his wisdom belied his age,” said the Rev. Warren F. Collins, pastor of the church.

DuBois graduated cum laude from BU in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. From BU, he went to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and National Affairs, where he earned a master’s degree in public affairs in 2005. He then enrolled in the part-time program at Georgetown University Law School, but he left for the campaign.

At the same time, he was quickly garnering experience in politics, as an aide to Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, and then as a fellow in the office of Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York.

He first encountered Obama on television - DuBois was at a restaurant in Washington when he saw Obama’s keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston - and he was struck in particular by one Obama line, “We worship an awesome God in the Blue States.”

“I had been struggling with whether I should go into ministry or politics, and I felt that God was leading me to find a way to do both, but I didn’t know any politician that got that intersection right,” DuBois said. “That phrase jarred me.”

DuBois decided he wanted to work for Obama, then a candidate for the US Senate. He wrote to Obama’s campaign manager and got a form rejection. After Obama arrived in Washington, DuBois twice drove to his office but failed to get a job interview. After a third appeal, Obama hired him as a Senate aide. Part of his job was addressing faith issues.

Adam Taylor, the senior political director at Sojourners, an evangelical antipoverty organization, said DuBois became “part of a loose network of progressive-minded Christians” who have been meeting in Washington for the past few years.

Taylor said that although DuBois grew up in the black church, whose adherents have traditionally voted for Democrats, he has proved deft at reaching out to “parts of the electorate that were almost written off by Democrats for decades, particularly white evangelicals and white Catholics.”

DuBois’s counterpart in the Hillary Clinton campaign, Burns Strider, said DuBois has done well communicating with religious voters for the Obama campaign.

“He’s a young guy, but folks should not be fooled by that,” Strider said. “After the Kerry-Bush race, when a handful of us were taking up the cause of expanding the faith conversation in the Democratic Party, Joshua was one of those with us. He has a lot of knowledge and toughness, is really focused on his job, and does it quite well.”

Source — The Boston Globe

Chris Duhon verbally agreed to a deal with the New York Knicks on Friday, the point guard and his agent told The Sporting News.

“I am just excited, I am ready to get to work for the Knicks,” said Duhon, the former Duke player who averaged 6.9 points and 4.5 assists in four seasons for Chicago. “It’s a big stage, playing in New York. It’s something every player in the NBA wants.”

Duhon’s agent, Kevin Bradbury, told The Sporting News that he couldn’t comment on terms of the deal, but the magazine cited an unidentified source in its Web site report as saying Duhon will get a two-year deal starting at the full mid-level exception. The mid-level exception will be announced July 9, when contracts can officially be signed.

“Chris could have shopped himself around more, but in the end, he wanted a fit where he felt comfortable and he knew what kind of opportunity he would be getting,” Bradbury said. “He wasn’t worried about trying to find more money on the market or anything like that. He wanted the right situation, and this just felt like the right situation.”

Source — Fox Sports

What’s a Guy to do when Madonna is making headlines for her trips to the lawyer’s office rather than the recording studio?

Hop the next flight, of course.

A source tells E! News that Guy Ritchie touched down in New York Monday so he can spend as much time with his wife and their brood as possible before she heads out on her next world tour.

“He has been planning for a long time to spend all of July in New York,” the source said. “It’s not a last-ditch effort to save the marriage.”

Whether that’s because the marriage is already over and there’s nothing to save remains to be seen. But for now—and for awhile now—those close to the couple, including Ritchie’s mum, are quick to deny that there’s trouble at home.

The filmmaker was spotted tonight heading into the family’s Upper West Side apartment, where he’s aiming to stay.

“There are no plans to get a divorce,” our insider said. “She is working all the time, but they are still completely in love.” Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour kicks off Aug. 23 in Cardiff, Wales.

For Ritchie, the source added, the biggest issue in their marriage has been all the media attention.

(Oops…)

As for the couple’s ringless fingers, the Ritchie source said that the Brit hasn’t been in the habit of wearing his wedding band for ages, while Madonna’s rep said that the singer has rarely slipped hers on over the last six years, either.

The duo tied the knot Dec. 22, 2000, and are parents to Lourdes, Madonna’s daughter from a previous relationship; biological son Rocco; and adopted son David.

Source — E! News

ALBANY, N.Y. - A midlevel New York appeals court has ordered the remaining claims dismissed against former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso’s $187.5 million compensation package.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court said Tuesday the state attorney general’s authority to pursue the claims lapsed when the NYSE changed from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. Last week, the Court of Appeals - New York’s top court - had dismissed the four other claims against Grasso’s 2003 compensation.

A spokesman for state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says his office is studying Tuesday’s decision.

Source — Forbes