Eric Zakarin, a 30-year brokerage industry veteran, whom Wells Fargo Advisors fired over alleged money-laundering reporting claims has filed a rare lawsuit to vacate a $1.6 million arbitration award that the broker-dealer won in October. 

The NJ broker charged in a lawsuit in the Superior Court of New Jersey that a 3-person FINRA arbitration panel violated the Federal Arbitration Act and its own document production order by allowing Wells to prevail in its claim.

Zakarin, who’s now with Independent Financial Group in Basking Ridge, NJ, was terminated by Wells in April 2015, after less than 2 years, for traveling from Switzerland to the U.S. with money from a client participating in an IRS foreign currency repatriation program without signed AML forms from the client.

According to court papers:

• Zakarin alleged in the arbitration hearings that Wells refused to produce hard-copy documents initialed by his supervisor that showed the bank’s knowledge of his trip and did not produce evidence of the money-laundering violation form allegedly filed with federal officials. 
• Arbitrators also “exceeded their authority” by awarding attorneys’ fees of more than $356,000 for work presented in 8 days of hearings.

Attempts to vacate arbitration awards, which are permitted when winning parties file for required court confirmation, are rare. The number of awards that are challenged are in the “very low single-digit percentages” because grounds for vacature are narrowly confined to proving difficult allegations such as arbitrator bias or “manifest disregard of facts.”