Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Brinks just paid a $37 million fine for willful violations of the Ban Secrecy Act. As a result of Brink’s failures, hundreds of millions of dollars in bulk currency shipments were transmitted across the Mexican border. Some of these shipments were for high-risk entities, including a Mexican currency exchanger that pleaded guilty to violating the … Read more »
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network filed its appeal to a ruling issued by Texas District Judge Jeremy Kernodle in the Samantha Smith v. FinCEN case that still blocks the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Treasury Department last month in the Texas Top Cop case challenging the law, but … Read more »
The tenure of Gary Gensler as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission coincided with the rapid rise and then fall of crypto. Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda started his sure-to-be brief tenure by launching a crypto task force “dedicated to developing a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.” There will clearly be … Read more »
The Institutional Limited Partners Association released updates to its ILPA Reporting Template and a new ILPA Performance Template. The goal is to enhance standardization, transparency and comparability in reporting across geographies for private funds. ILPA hosted a webinar discussing the templates and these are my notes. ILPA is setting a January 1, 2026 date as … Read more »
A Minnesota court threw out an expert statement because it was generated by AI and included fake references. The case involved a Minnesota Stat. § 609.771 that bans people from using deepfake media to influence elections. Jeff Hancock, a misinformation specialist and a Stanford University communication professor, used fake article citations generated by AI to … Read more »
This year is Anti-Money Laundering year for registered investment advisers. FinCEN promulgated the Investment Adviser Rule. With the Bank Secrecy Act now applicable to registered investment advisers, with a compliance deadline for January 1, 2026, fund managers and advisers will need to update their anti-money laundering policies and procedures to deal with the new regulatory … Read more »
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission extended the compliance date for the February 8, 2024 amendments to Form PF. The compliance date for these amendments was originally March 12, 2025 and has now been extended to June 12, 2025. For annual filers, that means the new requirements won’t kick in … Read more »
LPL Financial LLC, a dually registered investment adviser and broker-dealer, failed to follow its own anti-money laundering policies and procedures regarding its Customer Identification Program and ongoing customer due diligence obligations. The Securities and Exchange Commission and LPL settled on the charges and the $18 million penalty. What can we learn from the case? On … Read more »
Robinhood experienced massive growth during the pandemic. It had had 5.1 million cumulative net funded accounts by the end of 2019, 12.5 million cumulative net funded accounts by the end of 2020, and 22.7 million cumulative net funded accounts by the end of 2021. Based on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s action against Robinhood, the … Read more »
Deutsche Bank Securities, the registered broker-dealer subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG, had to pay a$4 million fine for failing to file suspicious activities reports. This year is the year that registered investment advisers need to get fully on the bandwagon with the Bank Secrecy Act. FinCEN promulgated the Investment Adviser Rule to spread the Bank … Read more »