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Standard & Poor’s said that President Barack Obama met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2011 just before Geithner warned the company to expect a response to its downgrade of U.S. debt, an event that justifies its request to see White House communications to help defend fraud claims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The timing of Obama’s conference with Geithner may support S&P’s claim that the Justice Department’s fraud lawsuit against it last year was retaliation, the company said yesterday in a filing in federal court. The government is seeking as much as $5 billion in civil penalties for losses to federally insured banks and credit unions who relied on S&P’s claims that its ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized-debt obligation before the collapse of the housing market were free of conflicts of interest.

The watchdog in charge of monitoring TARP recipients on Tuesday announced criminal charges against a former official of Anchor Bancorp Wisconsin Inc. for allegedly orchestrating a fraudulent real estate deal, the Wall Street Journal reported today. David Weimert was indicted in the U.S. District Court in Madison, Wis., on six counts of wire fraud relating to a real-estate development transaction he worked on as senior vice president of lending administration and as a president of an Anchor subsidiary that invested in real estate developments. The charges are the result of a probe conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). Weimert faces a maximum penalty of 30 years’ imprisonment on each count of wire fraud. According to SIGTARP, Weimert used his position at Anchor to mislead his superiors into believing a sale of the Anchor subsidiary’s share of a Texas industrial park was contingent on him purchasing a minority interest in the park. The Anchor unit agreed to the deal, giving Weimert both a minority stake in the development as well as more than $300,000 in commission fees.

The biggest U.S. banks and insurance companies would have to pay a quarterly 3.5 basis-point tax on assets exceeding $500 billion under a plan to be unveiled this week by Congress’s top Republican tax writer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The proposal by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would raise taxes for about 10 companies deemed systemically important. The tax, which would raise $86.4 billion for the U.S. government over the next decade, would likely affect JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, all of which had more than $500 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, according to the Federal Reserve. The bank tax, which isn’t likely to become law this year, is part of a comprehensive plan to be released by Camp to lower corporate and individual rates and broaden the tax base.

Credit Suisse Group AG helped American customers hide as much as $10 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service, more than double the amount previously known, according to a U.S. Senate committee, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. A report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations criticized the Zurich-based bank for failing to discipline any senior executives in the face of widespread tax evasion fostered by 1,800 Credit Suisse employees serving U.S. clients. The firm also misled investors about growth in its private banking unit, according to the report. The Justice Department has failed to use all its legal tools in its criminal probe of whether Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, helped U.S. clients evade taxes, according to the report. Lax enforcement also allowed Credit Suisse to turn over the names of only 238 U.S. account holders to prosecutors, the report said.

The House Financial Services Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee will hold a hearing today at 2 p.m. ET entitled “The Dodd-Frank Act’s Impact on Asset-Backed Securities.” To view the witness list and other materials for the hearing, please click here: http://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=37…

The hedge fund of Alphonse Fletcher Jr. has been described described by a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee as having elements of a Ponzi scheme, and four retirement systems are fighting to recover their money, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. A federal judge is scheduled to rule in March on a plan to liquidate the fund’s assets, which the trustee deemed “virtually worthless” in a report last November. The pension funds, which handle the retirement benefits for thousands of public employees in Louisiana, can only hope to get their money back through various civil lawsuits, the most recent of which was filed in the middle of January.

Eric A. Bloom, who was at the helm of Sentinel Management Group Inc.’s collapse seven years ago, began a trial yesterday in federal court for his role in what prosecutors claim was a $500 million fraud with more than 70 victims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. While prosecutors say that it was one of the largest frauds in Chicago’s history, Bloom contends the implosion was the fault of market forces beyond his control. Sentinel’s downfall was among the first of a swarm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. As a futures commission merchant, Northbrook, Ill.-based Sentinel managed short-term investments for commodity pools, hedge funds, a pension fund and other customers, prosecutors said in announcing the charges in 2012. Heading into August 2007, it had about $2 billion under management, its liquidation trustee, Frederick Grede, said in an interview. Citing credit market volatility, on Aug. 14 the firm froze client accounts preventing withdrawals. Over the next six days, Sentinel was sued by customers demanding access to their money, filed for bankruptcy and was accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of co-mingling client funds with its own.

UBS AG, trying to reprise its success in limiting fines in a probe of interest-rate rigging, is seeking immunity in the U.S. and European Union as part of the global investigation of currency markets, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. UBS saved itself billions of euros in fines in December by disclosing to the EU its role in manipulating the London Interbank offered rate. Now, the bank aims to be the first to report its own conduct in currency markets to European and American regulators, said the people, who requested anonymity because the matter isn’t public. The Zurich-based bank is making its bid for leniency as at least a dozen regulators probe allegations that traders colluded to rig benchmarks in the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market.

The official tasked with repaying customers of Peregrine Financial Group Inc. wants to have a talk with the defunct brokerage’s founder, who’s behind bars after pleading guilty to fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Bankruptcy trustee Ira Bodenstein on Thursday filed papers asking the bankruptcy court to let him question Russell Wasendorf Sr. about Peregrine’s financial affairs, which the trustee says will help him in a months-long effort to repay Peregrine’s customers and other creditors. At the center of that effort is an investigation into various transactions related to the fraud that brought down the brokerage. “Given his significant role in the massive fraud that was perpetrated on PFG’s customers and creditors, Wasendorf is believed to have personal knowledge about many issues that are relevant to the trustee’s ongoing investigation of various matters relating to the debtor’s financial affairs and potential claims against third-parties,” Bodenstein said in a court filing.

Fannie Mae will pay the Treasury Department $7.2 billion after posting an eighth straight quarterly profit, pushing total dividend payments above the $116.1 billion of aid it received after the financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The mortgage-finance company, which is operating under federal conservatorship, had net income of $6.5 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, Washington, D.C.-based Fannie Mae said on Friday in a regulatory filing. That brought earnings for 2013 to $84 billion, the highest ever for the 80-year-old firm.