The United States (US) Department of Labor (DoL) has announced that it has fined coal mine operator Rox Coal Inc (Rox Coal) US$110,000 for breach of a mandatory electrical hazard safety standard that was described by an adminstrative law judge as "quintessentially flagrant". The DoL stated that the breach resulted in an October 2007 incident where a miner "was shocked while changing the fuse on a high-voltage switch house" at Geronimo Mine in Pennsylvania.

The United States (US) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has made available a statement (9 April 2013) made by EEOC chair Jacqueline Berrien for US Equal Pay Day, in which she discusses, among other things, the legacy of the Equal Pay Act, enforcement actions by the EEOC, and areas of persistent inequality, including the nexus of gender and ethnic origin.

A United States (US) jury has found Exxon Mobil Corp (Exxon) liable to pay a sum of US$236.4 million for charges that it had been sufficiently aware of the potential of its operations to contaminate groundwater in New Hampshire during the 1970s and 1980s. Lawyer Jessica Grant reportedly said that the jury had found Exxon to have acted negligently when using the gasoline additive MTBE to combat smog during the two decades.

The United States (US) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has announced that it has fined online broker Interactive Brokers Group Inc US$225,000 for "fail[ing] to compute on a currency-by-currency basis the amount of customer funds on deposit and required to be on deposit in segregated accounts" on a daily basis between 2008 and 2011.

Reuters reports that KPMG has resigned as auditor of two California-based companies, Herbalife Ltd (Herbalife) and Skechers USA Inc, following a United States (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquiry into insider trading allegations involving former KPMG senior partner Scott London.

The Australian reports that stockbroker Thomas Conradt has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud in the United States (US) District Court in New York. Reportedly, Mr Conradt was a flatmate of Australian financial research analyst Trent Martin, who had received information in confidence from a New Zealand banker who was working on IBM's secret $US1.2 billion takeover of software company SPSS in 2009.

The United States Federal Reserve has made available a consent order (21 March 2013) against Citigroup Inc (Citigroup), which instructs the bank and subsidiaries Citibank and Banamex USA (Banamex) to improve their Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance programs. The consent order follows similar orders made in 2012 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation against Citibank and Banamex for deficiencies in their BSA/AML compliance programs.

The United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that a Texas based bio-diesel fuel company owner has been "sentenced ... to 188 months in federal prison, fined [US]$175,000 and ordered to pay more than [US]$54.9 million in restitution", after he pleaded guilty to:

Standard Chartered chairperson John Peace has apologised for remarks he made at a press conference on 5 March 2013. At the conference, Mr Peace had responded to a question regarding bonuses for Standard Chartered executives by stating that the bank "had no willful act to avoid sanctions; you know, mistakes are made - clerical errors - and we talked about last year a number of transactions which clearly were clerical errors or mistakes that were made ...". Mr Peace apologised and retracted his comments "as both legally and factually incorrect", and admitted that they contradict the bank's acceptance of responsibility as agreed in deferred prosecution agreements with New York and United States (US) federal regulators.

A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS) trader has turned himself in to federal authorities in the United States (US) and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud relating to an unauthorised US$8.3 billion futures trade in 2007. According to Reuters, Matthew Taylor's guilty plea follows a civil complaint (8 November 2012) by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).