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WASHINGTON (March 5, 2002) -- A dangerous killer who targets kids is on the loose, and he's got a new disguise. That's the premise of an animated ''e-movie'' that spoofs Philip Morris' proposed corporate name change to The Altria Group. The tobacco giant's shareholders will vote on the name change at their annual meeting April 25. Billed as ''the movie Philip Morris doesn't want you to see,'' the short animation was released today by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

UBS, the Swiss bank, is being investigated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission for failing to carry out adequate due diligence before working on share offerings for several Chinese companies. The bank says that it is at risk of being suspended from doing business in the city.

The U.S. government is investigating Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge firm and market maker that manages some $25 billion in client money, for allegedly giving smaller investors a bad deal. The Department of Justice wants to know if the firm is taking advantage of the complexity of high-speed trading.

Did a few individual traders in London conspire to rig global interest rates in order to enrich themselves or were they just pawns in an ongoing conspiracy by major banks designed to routinely skim billions from the international financial system?

Investment Technology Group (ITG), a U.S. stock broker, paid a $20.3 million fine for running a secret operation named Project Omega to take advantage of "dark pools" trading orders made by its clients. Experts say that Barclays and Credit Suisse may also soon pay fines for dark pools trading scams.

Six major international banks - Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Union Bank of Switerland (UBS) - have agreed to pay $5.6 billion in fines for rigging global foreign exchange markets. Four of the six have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior, an unprecedented admission.

Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay out a record $2.5 billion fine to settle U.K. and U.S. government investigations into allegations of fixing global interest rates, just months after six other banks paid out $4.3 billion on similar charges. Activists say that the banks should have faced criminal charges.

A cache of secret documents has thrust HSBC, the world's second largest bank, into the limelight for helping international clients dodge taxes. A series of articles published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is finally pushing reluctant governments to act almost eight years after the original leaks.

A whistleblower has stepped forward to provide evidence that executives at JP Morgan, a major Wall Street bank, were aware that the bank was selling bad mortgages - but she says that the U.S. government has failed to do anything with the evidence that she has provided to them.

Argentina and Belgium have separately accused HSBC bank's Geneva branch of setting up a network of offshore accounts to help their citizens avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. The charges are apparently based on a trove of documents provided by Hervé Falciani, a former HSBC employee turned whistleblower.

Right till the end of January, Dita Sari was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta to Salt Lake City to bask today in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by Reebok. The occasion is the 13th annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board that includes Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.

Multinational banks are preparing to pay out billions of dollars in fines to settle charges of foreign exchange manipulation. Some 19 investigations in ten different legal jurisdictions are now winding their way to completion and analysts says the final tally may hit $41 billion.

Carmen Segarra, a former senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has revealed how government regulators failed to adequately police Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank. (The Federal Reserve is the central banking system of the U.S. chartered by Congress to supervise private banks)

Bank of America has agreed to pay the government $9.65 billion to settle charges of misleading investors over mortgage lending in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. The bank will also pay out an additional $7 billion to help borrowers and communities affected by the loans.

Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge fund manager, has claimed victory in a lawsuit to force Argentina to fork out almost 17 times more than he paid to buy bonds issued by the country.

David Tepper, the founder of New Jersey-based Appaloosa Management, was the world's highest earning hedge fund manager for the second year in a row, according to the Rich List published earlier this month. Tepper earned $3.5 billion in 2012, a major increase on his $2.2 billion take home income in 2012.

Dahabshiil, a Somali money transfer company, has won a temporary reprieve from Barclays, the last major bank to allow remittances to Somalia. The agreement comes just as a new report estimates that African expatriates lose $1.8 billion a year in transfer fees to companies like Moneygram and Western Union.

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