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The House of Representatives yesterday easily passed legislation to ease some of the banking regulations adopted after the financial crisis, with 29 Democrats shrugging off President Obama’s veto threat to join united House Republicans, the New York Times reported today. The bill, which passed 271 to 154, follows two other measures approved in the last month that made changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, but this one would be the broadest effort to shift course. It would delay by two years a Dodd-Frank mandate that financial firms sell off bundled debt, known as collateralized loan obligations; exempt some private equity firms from registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission; loosen regulations on derivatives; and allow some small, publicly traded companies to omit historical financial data from their financial filings. Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called those changes “modest clarifications of the Dodd-Frank Act,” noting that almost all of the provisions had previously passed the House with bipartisan majorities over the last two years, if not by unanimous agreement. Democrats, led by Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said they intended to draw the line against legislation that further erodes Dodd-Frank.

MF Global Holdings Ltd. settled a U.S. government lawsuit, agreeing to pay $1.2 billion in restitution and a $100 million fine for customer losses tied to the company’s 2011 collapse, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued MF Global and company officials including former Chief Executive Officer Jon Corzine last year for failing to properly supervise employees as the firm spiraled toward bankruptcy. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan signed an order earlier this week approving the pact. Customers have already received most of what they are owed, according to the CFTC, the main regulator of MF Global’s failed brokerage unit, MF Global Inc. The agency claimed that MF Global Holdings is responsible for the brokerage’s failure to notify the agency of deficiencies in customer accounts, false statements and improper investments.

Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS AG banker who won a $104 million whistle-blower award after serving time in U.S. prison for tax conspiracy, now wants to move back to Europe before his term of probation is set to end, Bloomberg News reported today. Birkenfeld asked a judge to end his probation with less than a year left or modify its terms so he can leave the U.S., according to a filing in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Birkenfeld pleaded guilty in 2008 and was sentenced to 40 months in prison after divulging to U.S. authorities how UBS helped thousands of American clients avoid taxes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Elias was leafing through a pile of JPMorgan Chase & Co. documents in 2012 when he found a memo in which one JPMorgan employee warned her bosses they were putting bad loans into securities being created before the financial crisis hit, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis today. The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., soon started sending subpoenas to JPMorgan officials tied to the memo. Three months later, top Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., told investigative teams across the country to hunt for similar ammunition in tens of millions of documents from other banks, especially Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. Elias’s discovery has delivered a whopping payoff so far: $36.65 billion, representing the cost of the government’s three separate settlements with the banks since late 2013, including the $16.65 billion deal with Bank of America in August that is the largest ever between the U.S. and a single company.

Fourteen officials, pharmacists and technicians tied to the Massachusetts company involved in a meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people were indicted on charges including racketeering and second-degree murder, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The New England Compounding Center’s tainted drugs, including a steroid administered by spinal injection to treat pain, infected 751 people in 20 states, U.S. officials have said. The 2012 outbreak was caused by sloppy clean-room practices, including routine failure to properly sterilize drugs, according to the indictment unsealed today in Boston. Barry Cadden, NECC’s former president and lead pharmacist, and Glenn Chin, a supervising pharmacist who was arrested at a Boston airport in September, are accused of second-degree murder over the deaths of dozens of people in states including Indiana, Maryland and Florida. The company, formerly New England Compounding Pharmacy Inc., suspended operations and filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2012 as a result of lawsuits by victims and families. The company and its insurers in August won court approval of a settlement of almost $100 million.

A former Freedom Industries Inc. president was charged for the second time this month in connection with a West Virginia chemical spill that contaminated water for 300,000 residents, this time in an indictment accusing him and three company officials with polluting the Elk River near Charleston, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Federal prosecutors also announced separate charges today against two other people, a plant manager and environmental consultant, for violating the federal Clean Water Act. The leak from one of Freedom’s tanks sent about 7,500 gallons (28,400 liters) of a cleaning agent used in coal-mining operations into the river, contaminating drinking water in the state’s largest city and sending more than 100 residents to the hospital. Earlier this month, Gary Southern, Freedom’s former president, was accused by the government of lying in the company’s bankruptcy filing, which was triggered by lawsuits following the spill.

A former Countrywide Financial executive who became a whistle-blower is collecting more than $57 million for providing evidence that helped federal prosecutors force Bank of America to pay a record $16.65 billion penalty in connection with its role in churning out shoddy mortgage and related securities before the financial crisis, the New York Times Dealbook blog reported yesterday. Edward O’Donnell reached an agreement last week with the government that enables him to collect part of the settlement that Bank of America agreed to pay in August in a deal with federal prosecutors and a number of state attorneys general, according to a court filing. The payment to O’Donnell arises from a federal lawsuit he filed under the False Claims Act earlier this year and which Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, joined and used as the basis for pressing Bank of America to reach a deal.

The top executive charged in a chemical spill that left 300,000 people without drinking water lied about his role with the company to protect his personal wealth of nearly $8 million from lawsuits, according to an FBI affidavit, the Associated Press reported yesterday. In bankruptcy court hearings and meetings, former Freedom Industries President Gary Southern repeatedly said that he had little to do with the company before it was sold a few weeks prior to the January chemical spill. But an FBI affidavit said that Southern had overseen day-to-day operations at the chemical storage company, hired employees and executed contracts for several years, according to a complaint unsealed on Monday. Southern negotiated the sale of Freedom Industries to Chemstream Holdings Inc. just weeks before the spill, and discussed how much money would be set aside to deal with necessary repairs at the site, the complaint said. Investigators discovered holes in tanks, shoddy last-resort containment walls and other deficiencies. Southern, who has previously denied wrongdoing, faces charges of bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud and lying under oath. If convicted of all the charges, he faces up to 30 years in prison.

The U.S. Trustee Program (USTP) announced yesterday that the independent auditor appointed under a nationwide settlement between the USTP and Citigroup Inc. (Citi) to protect the personal information of nearly 150,000 consumers in 85 jurisdictions has filed his final report, bringing the settlement to a successful conclusion. Under the settlement, Citi agreed to redact proofs of claim filed in bankruptcy cases nationwide in which the personal information of consumer debtors and third parties, including Social Security numbers and birthdates, had not been properly redacted by Citi as required by the bankruptcy rules. Also under the settlement, Citi agreed to notify all affected consumers and offer them one year of free credit monitoring and to change its internal practices and procedures so the redaction error does not recur. The settlement called for the appointment of a privacy expert to serve as independent auditor to review and certify the accuracy of the remediation process.

Three former leaders of defunct law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf accused of falsifying the company's financial results cannot go to trial in January because an insurance company has refused to pay their latest legal bills, their lawyers told a judge on Friday, Reuters reported yesterday. Justice Robert Stolz of New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed to postpone the case for a month, setting a February 23 trial date, while legal wrangling takes place to get the insurer to pay up. Former Dewey chairman Steven Davis, ex-executive director Stephen DiCarmine and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders face grand larceny, scheming to defraud and other criminal charges. They are accused of overstating revenue and decreasing expenses to keep the firm's true financial condition from banks and other creditors. Two carriers have paid a total of $35 million in claims under Dewey's directors and officers insurance, the lawyers said, but the third has refused to make good on its $15 million of coverage.