Hong Kong Charges Former JPMorgan Banker Leung With Bribery

(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong’s anti-corruption office filed bribery charges against Catherine Leung, a former managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Leung, 51, was charged with bribing the chairman of a logistics company by promising to employ his son with the bank if the firm favored JPMorgan while choosing bankers for its initial public offering, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said in a statement on Thursday. She will appear in court on Monday.

Leung is the latest to be embroiled in the fallout of a hiring strategy that JPMorgan eventually ended in 2013. The program -- which allowed senior staff to refer external candidates for junior positions at the firm -- was used to curry favor with foreign officials and clients, the U.S. Federal Reserve said in 2017.

JPMorgan settled the case in 2016 and has also strengthened its compliance procedures around hiring and conduct, the firm said in a separate statement. Leung had left JPMorgan in 2015. A call to her mobile was unanswered.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cathy Chan in Hong Kong at kchan14@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sam Mamudi at smamudi@bloomberg.net, Jeanette Rodrigues

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