go ahead! rob me blind!

In the worlds of banking and thievery, it's a little hard to tell the players even with a scorecard:

-- Investment bank Citigroup has agreed to pay a $730 million settlement to bond holders who claimed they were misled by the bank's misrepresentation of its financial exposure in subprime and other high-risk investments. The $730 million comes in the wake of a similar $590 million settlement made earlier. The bank said it was making the settlement not as a way of admitting any guilt, but as a means of getting out from under the burdens of litigation. A judge has yet to sign off on the latest agreement. Significantly, I can find no reporting on this story that even guesstimates how much Citigroup made while exercising this deception.

-- Cyprus is in chaos as the government decides how much of Cypriot bank-savers' accounts will be skimmed as a means of helping the country return to something like fiscal stability. Account-skimming is a part of the price Cyprus has to pay if it wants a 10-billion-euro bailout loan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Instead of being utterly trustworthy, I guess banks are only as trustworthy as their owners and overlords decide they are ... it's my money except when you say so.

-- Russian detectives are dropping an investigation of the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, 37, a lawyer and financial whistle-blower who had alleged the Interior Ministry officials were embezzling money. Magnitsky died with grievous wounds on his body, but an investigation has concluded there was nothing untoward in his death.

The Investigative Committee, the Russian equivalent of the FBI in the US, said Magnitsky had been legally arrested and legally detained and that he had not been tortured.

Despite the fact that Magnitsky is dead, he is scheduled to go on trial shortly for fraud.