My, My, My. Seems that Zion's Bank got spanked by the feds for lack of proper anti-money laundering controls. This is a very big deal because literally billions of dollars got wired around the world over the years through Zions and a lot of it was probably dirty.

Hey, maybe that's where the cash came from to build City Creek! Remember no tithing money was used.....hehehe.

Very strange, I can't find anything about the Zion's Bank being fined in the Deseret News. It is in the SL Trib though. Funny about that.

It's the most popular story in the Money section of the Trib, but it's not reported in the DN at all that I can find. Something about City Creek condos going on sale though. Interesting news media in Utah.

Why would it be in the Trib and not in the Deseret "News?"

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/51235852-79/bank-zions-suspicious-money.html.csp

... "suspicious wire transfers of billions of dollars related to transactions that may have involved drug trafficking and other crimes" ...

Doesn't shock me in the least.

From Aug. 2010

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700060512/Zions-Direct-fined-for-failure-to-disclose-relationship-with-bidder.html

And from Oct. 2010

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50212370-79/zions-lam-woodwell-business.html.csp


And you just have to love this comment from the Pres. of Zions:

______

....James Abbott, senior vice president in charge of Zions’ investor relations, said the missteps resulted from clerical oversights that don’t add up to a pattern of willful misbehavior.

“While it’s disappointing, we work very hard to maintain a culture of compliance and are very careful,” Abbott said.

_______

And now they are caught money laundering 12.9 BILLION dollars in 138 transactions !!! That's a lot of dough in a very few transactions -- can anybody say "cartel" or "mafia"?

Vegas, baby...

Zions owns Nevada state bank witch in turn owns many of the Nevada Casinos

the lds church gets drugs from mexico to sell to help make money for the church.we send the mexicans money to them by zions bank we make millions of dollare a year doing this it really helps during these hard times

February 10th:

Utah Bank Zions Plans To Sell $200M In Stock
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110210-720167.html

Zions Bancorporation Announces Entry Into New Equity Distribution Agreements

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zions-bancorporation-announces-entry-into-new-equity-distribution-agreements-115771424.html

AND THE VERY NEXT DAY.....

February 11th:
US Fines Zions Bancorp Unit $8M On Money Laundering Rules
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110211-711576.html

I think it is a mistake to assume that Zions Bank is no longer a mormon institution. Yes, it's traded on the stock exchange, but most of the members of the Board of Directors are mormons, the lawyers that represent them are mormons, and the current Profit, Tommy Monson, still goes out to "bless" new branches.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700032512/President-Thomas-S-Monson-dedicates-Zions-Bank-Financial-Center.html

The current fines represent 138 transactions, which works out to an average of about 9 million per transaction. These are not small-time Mexican immigrants sending money home, as some doofus in the SL Tribune readers' comments section claimed. Looks like mormon mafia to me.

As far as the comment from Carol Y. goes about not stealing because the government doesn't want competition, how do you square that comment with the fact that Zions Bank took 1.4 billion in TARP money from the government, and that Zions Bank is one of the few recipients of TARP money that has not paid any of that money back to tax payers like Carol Y.?

http://bailoutsleuth.com/news/2010/07/as-tarp-begins-winding-down-big-debt-remain/

See #8 in the list on the website page at the above link.

An interesting side note. Their last 10K (annual report to the government) is required to be available to the public. It can be seen at
http://quote.morningstar.com/stock-filing/Annual-Report/2009/12/31/t.aspx?t=&ft=10-K&d=4fecc266640c83c5a9892f30a8d7ab97

The interesting thing about this report is that two sections are absent and refer to a separate, subsequent filing which is not public.

ITEM 12. SECURITY OWNERSHIP OF CERTAIN BENEFICIAL OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS
Other information required by Item 12 is incorporated by reference from the Company’s Proxy Statement to be subsequently filed.

ITEM 13. CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS, AND DIRECTOR INDEPENDENCE
Incorporated by reference from the Company’s Proxy Statement to be subsequently filed.

They have effectively gotten around the public reporting requirement to report related party transactions, insider trading and board independence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2011 02:52PM by Jim Huston.

That's not really what that means. I write these things for a living and it's extremely common to put that information in the proxy statement (which is usually filed within a month after the 10-K) because those items relate more to information in the proxy statement than they do to information in the annual report. The proxy statement is a statement given to shareholders in advance of the annual meeting.

If you want to see the related party and insider information, just pull last year's proxy - it usually doesn't change much from year to year.

Is Tommy Monson related to the church prez?

Gotta love the comments in the original Trib article.

I use Zions, but I mean I really do use them. Account has no limits and I usually have very little in there, no fees. I use them to cash checks mostly. My real bank is in Colorado. There are a number of people here in Moab that bank in Colorado because they don't want anyone here knowing what they do with their money. I wonder if that's a real concern or not, I bank in Colorado just because it's a long term account.

Zions was on the FDIC short list about a year ago of banks in big trouble. Seems like they had invested in the real estate market in Nevada, you know, Sin City, the one that lies at the other end of the freeway leading from the City of Saints.

" The church does not have a majority interest in this bank anymore-- since 1960. Maybe they would have done better if it had and not been slapped with penalties."

It was one of the businesses that became "Church Member Owned" rather than "Church Owned" in the 1960's. There was a movement at that time to place some distance between corporate holdings and the Mormon Church. It is a public corporation, but is still very much controlled by the 15 old men in bad Mr. Mac suits.

Here's a list of the main players at Zions Bank:

Officers
A. Scott Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer
Harris H. Simmons, Chairman of the Board


Board of Directors

A. Scott Anderson, President and CEO, Zions Bank

James T. Jensen, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Savage Companies (Retired)

Susan Johnson, President, Futura Industries

Charley D. Jones, President and CEO, Charshaw, Inc. dba Stinker Stores

Eric O. Leavitt, President, The Leavitt Group

Kent I. Madsen, Managing Director, Epic Ventures

Theresa A. Martinez, Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, University of Utah

Keith O. Rattie, President and CEO, Questar Corporation

Harris H. Simmons, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of Zions Bank, Zions Bancorporation

John L. Valentine, Attorney, Howard, Lewis & Petersen

I wonder if this is a failed prophecy like the OTHER mormon bank?

On the other thread about Zions Bank I think someone noted that only two of the head honchos (Officers, plus Board of Directors) were not mormons.

The LDS Church may not own Zions Bank, but church members run it, and mormon lawyers defend it, and mormon prophets laud it and bless it.

There's so much money in the transactions that raised the money-laundering flag that I wonder if desperate times related to the costs of City Creek are causing more than the usual amount of ethical boundary-breaking by the mormons in charge.

At least that's what my former FIL used to say. Even though he lived in CA, he'd keep his savings in Zion's Bank. He thinking was that since it was the bank that hel the church funds, almightygawd would never let it fail so it was safer than having your money in a swiss bank or anywhere else. Made total sense to me back in the day.

Now the blame can be placed, yet again, on the few wayward members who were involved and were not living in harmony with the church's teachings.

The same ass-covering blame The Church, Inc. has used to distance itself from every awful thing it ever committed or caused indirectly through its systematic unethical behavior.

As Ex-mormon Ron pointed out, most bankers/banks fail the test when it comes to following regulations, and they are fined whenever they get caught. They all obfuscate the records whenever they can get away with it. They push the envelope and hope they don't get caught, or that, if they do get caught, the fines are less than the profits they made by engaging in unethical behavior.

However, most of the other Dudes in Charge are NOT running to the General Authorities for advice. And most of the other Dudes in Charge are not claiming to be super special because God loves mormons more ... and therefore they have the guidance of the Holy Ghostly Dude and are more moral, more discerning.

Claims of moral, ethical, or spiritual superiority should be tested against outcomes. $8 million in fines for billions of questionable transactions says, "mormon Dudes in Charge ain't shit when it comes to superiority."

As an aside, I'll point out that other, non-mormon banks have legal counsel that employs a higher percentage of women than the legal counsel for Zions Bank. The Dudes in Charge at Zions Bank are privileged white guys for the most part, and they extend their sense of entitlement even to the legal counsel they hire. I think they need a wake-up call.

http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/html/20110211.html

Snippet:

"...FinCEN determined that Zions violated BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] requirements by failing to establish and implement an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program with respect to its foreign correspondent banking relationships with casas de cambio, banks, casas de bolsa and foreign corporate customers, and failing to file timely suspicious activity reports...."

-------------------

Info on FinCEN http://www.fincen.gov/about_fincen/wwd/

The U.S. Department of the Treasury established the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in 1990 to provide a government-wide multisource financial intelligence and analysis network. The organization's operation was broadened in 1994 to include regulatory responsibilities for administering the Bank Secrecy Act, one of the nation's most potent weapons for preventing corruption of the U.S. financial system.

The Bank Secrecy Act, enacted in 1970, authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to require certain records or reports where they have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings, or in the conduct of intelligence or counterintelligence activities, including analysis, to protect against international terrorism. The authority of the Secretary to administer Title II of the Bank Secrecy Act (codified at 31 U.S.C. 5311-5332 with implementing regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 103) has been delegated to the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Hundreds of thousands of financial institutions are subject to Bank Secrecy Act reporting and recordkeeping requirements. These include depository institutions (e.g., banks, credit unions and thrifts); brokers or dealers in securities; insurance companies that issue or underwrite certain products; money services businesses (e.g., money transmitters; issuers, redeemers and sellers of money orders and travelers' checks; check cashers and currency exchangers); casinos and card clubs; and dealers in precious metals, stones, or jewels.

The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, enacted shortly after the 9/11 attacks in America, broadened the scope of the Bank Secrecy Act to focus on terrorist financing as well as money laundering. The Act also gave the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network additional responsibilities and authorities in both important areas, and established the organization as a bureau within the Treasury Department.

I can just imagine the Profit saying: Of course, brethren, it wouldn't be moral to use tithes that were given in good faith to build a mall, which is a monument to Mammon. So we used drug money.

Thery also have not paid back TARP monies. Cult

Thanks for this!

I decided to run it on my ex-mo blog! ;o))

the lds church has to have the drug money to finish the mall and build the temples the dont use tithing money for that they have to send the money to mexico to the drug cartel