By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — Federal prosecutors have charged top executives at the subprime auto lender Tricolor with conspiring to defraud lenders and investors of the now-bankrupt company.

Tricolor, which went out of business in September, specialized in offering loans and selling used cars to buyers without Social Security numbers or credit histories, often undocumented immigrants. The federal indictment claims that Tricolor founder and CEO Daniel Chu oversaw a scheme to defraud lenders to the tune of billions of dollars.

“Fraud became an integral component of Tricolor’s business strategy,” said Jay Clayton, US attorney for the Southern District of New York. “The resulting billion-dollar collapse harmed banks, investors, employees and customers.”

The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in Manhattan, said that at Chu’s direction, “multiple Tricolor executives repeatedly defrauded lenders” with schemes including “double-pledging collateral,” or pledging the same assets to multiple lenders at the same time.

The other major defendant in the case is Tricolor’s COO, David Goodgame. Two other former executives, Jerome Kollar and Ameryn Seibold, pled guilty and are cooperating with the investigation.

As Tricolor approached its collapse in August, and after Chu observed that the company was “basically history,” the indictment claims he directed Kollar to pay him $6.25 million in bonuses. He allegedly used some of this money to purchase a multimillion-dollar property in Beverly Hills, California.

Three weeks later, Tricolor placed more than 1,000 employees on unpaid leaves of absence and a month later the company filed for bankruptcy, according to the indictment.

Since then, several large banks that loaned to Tricolor have warned their own investors they were likely victims of fraud.

JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, said it would take a $170 million hit from its dealings with Tricolor. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon later said of the losses connected to Tricolor and other commercial lenders: “there clearly was, in my opinion, fraud involved in a bunch of these things.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” he added.

Another lender, Fifth Third Bank, said in a September filing that it had been working with law enforcement to investigate apparent fraud in its dealings with a commercial lender, taking a $200 million loss on those loans. A spokesperson for Fifth Third later confirmed to CNN that Tricolor was the commercial borrower.

A court-appointed trustee in Tricolor’s bankruptcy case told the court in October that there been a “pervasive fraud” of “extraordinary proportion,” according to a report by Bloomberg.

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By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — Warner Bros. Discovery has officially rejected Paramount’s hostile takeover bid, advising its shareholders to do the same.

But the battle is far from over. Let’s break down what just happened and what to expect next.

So, what just happened?

Early Wednesday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, published a letter to shareholders and an SEC filing, formally rejecting Paramount’s latest offer for the entire company, deeming the hostile takeover bid “illusory.”

The current deal to sell Warner’s studios and streaming assets to Netflix, the board said, is still better for WBD shareholders.

Why did WBD reject Paramount?

Mostly, it’s about money: The WBD board said Paramount’s deal “provides inadequate value and imposes numerous, significant risks and costs on WBD.”

But WBD also called Paramount’s offer too risky. Its board wrote that Paramount had “consistently misled” WBD’s shareholders by claiming its $30-per-share, all-cash offer was “backstopped” by Paramount CEO David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder worth an estimated $240 billion.

Meanwhile, in the background, lawmakers have raised national security concerns over Paramount’s use of financing from Middle Eastern partners.

What is Paramount saying?

The Ellisons insist they are fully backstopping the bid — guaranteeing funding if partners back out. But WBD’s letter refutes the claim: “It does not, and never has.”

Paramount last week claimed to have “air-tight financing,” and deemed any suggestion otherwise to be “absurd.”

And in its regulatory disclosures, Paramount said that sovereign wealth funds controlled by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates would hold no voting power over WBD if the transaction is completed. However, the royal families’ involvement has only sharpened scrutiny of the Paramount offer.

What does Paramount do next?

Paramount now has the opportunity to come back with a higher, more firmly backstopped offer to WBD. However, the company’s initial statement after WBD’s rejection “affirms commitment” to its “superior” $30-per-share offer.

That posturing suggests the Ellisons will push forward by convincing WBD shareholders to tender their shares into Paramount’s current offer rather than accept Netflix’s offer for the streaming and studio assets.

This could turn into a long, drawn-out battle to win over shareholders. WBD board chair Sam DiPiazza told CNBC on Wednesday morning that the shareholder vote won’t happen until the spring or “early summer.”

Does Netflix need to do anything?

In the short run, not much. Netflix has already entered into its deal with Warner Bros., and now it must wait for WBD shareholders to vote on the matter.

But if Paramount comes back with a more lucrative offer and WBD accepts that new deal, Netflix would have an opportunity to counter. It would have to decide if WBD is still worth it at a higher price.

All the while, the streaming giant will need to remain disciplined, avoiding public missteps that could give Paramount (or future regulators) any openings, and reaffirming to WBD shareholders why their offer is the better deal.

What are regulators d

Por Uriel Blanco y Gerardo Lemos, CNN en Español

La presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, dijo este miércoles que su país y los demás que integran América Latina podrían buscar un diálogo que evite “cualquier conflicto en la región”, en medio de la escalada en las tensiones entre Estados Unidos y Venezuela.

Asimismo, la mandataria comentó que, si las partes involucradas en el diálogo así lo deciden, México podría ser “punto de negociación y reunión” en estas posibles conversaciones.

“Nosotros siempre podemos estar como un punto de negociación y de reunión, si así lo consideran las partes, tendrían que proponernos, y si no pues buscar mediadores que permitan evitar cualquier conflicto en la región”, declaró Sheinbaum en su conferencia matutina.

EE.UU. lleva meses ejerciendo una campaña de presión contra Venezuela, que ha incluido el traslado de miles de tropas y portaviones al Caribe, además de ataques contra supuestos barcos narcotraficantes y reiteradas amenazas contra el presidente del país sudamericano, Nicolás Maduro.

Sin embargo, las tensiones escalaron aún en las últimas horas luego de la declaración del presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, quien ordenó el martes un “bloqueo total y completo” a los petroleros sancionados que llegan y salen de Venezuela.

Combinada con la amenaza de Trump de ataques terrestres en suelo venezolano, la medida del martes aumentó la presión sobre Venezuela al atacar su fuente vital de ingresos, que ya se encontraba bajo presión tras nuevas sanciones al sector petrolero anteriormente este año y la incautación la semana pasada de un petrolero lleno de crudo venezolano.

Por su parte, el Gobierno de Venezuela rechazó el martes el bloqueo a petroleros sancionados anunciado por Trump, y dijo que se trataba de una “amenaza grotesca”. En un comunicado oficial, Caracas aseguró que Estados Unidos estaba “violando el derecho internacional, el libre comercio y la libre navegabilidad”, y que esto era una “amenaza temeraria y grave” contra Venezuela. Mientras tanto, este miércoles, en un mensaje televisado, el ministro de Defensa de Venezuela, Vladimir Padrino López, describió las declaraciones de Trump respecto al bloqueo de petroleros como “muy prepotentes, muy arrogantes, muy supremacistas”. En ese mismo mensaje, el fiscal general de Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, manifestó “total y absoluto repudio” al anuncio del presidente de EE.UU.

Sobre la orden de Trump de bloquear petroleros sancionados que llegan y salen de Venezuela, Sheinbaum reiteró que México siempre se mantendrá neutral en problemáticas internacionales y mostró su descontento hacia las intenciones de intervención internacional.

“Por la declaración de ayer del presidente Trump y la situación en Venezuela, reiteramos la posición de México, acorde con la Constitución, de no intervención, no injerencia extranjera, autodeterminación de los pueblos y solución pacífica de las controversias. Llamamos a que en cualquier controversia internacional se utilice el diálogo y la paz, y no a la intervención”, dijo la presidenta.

Sheinbaum añadió que, “más allá de las opiniones sobre el régimen de Venezuela, sobre l

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