Little more than a year before he was criticized for breaking ranks with regulators for being the first to accuse Standard Chartered Plc of laundering Iranian money, Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s top banking official, was insisting on his own brand of justice at a charity carnival game.
In May 2011, just after he learned New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo would nominate him to head the state’s fledgling Department of Financial Services, Lawsky brought his young child to the St. Mark’s fair in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of the New York area’s wealthiest suburbs. The event attracts local luminaries such as musician Paul Simon and hedge-fund managers and their families from nearby Greenwich. Stephen Roach, then Morgan Stanley’s non-executive chairman for Asian operations, served as a volunteer cashier at the food concession.
