Report: Chinese Companies Helped North Korea Launder Money Through U.S. Banks
North Korea moved nearly $175 million through prominent U.S. banks in recent years in a money-laundering scheme that used shell companies and help from Chinese companies, according to confidential bank documents reviewed by NBC News in a report published Sunday.
For several years, the international community has imposed sanctions on North Korea to deprive the nation of financial resources that could contribute to its rogue nuclear program. Some of the sanctions specifically target money transfers to block Pyongyang’s access to the global financial system. Despite the sanctions, North Korea has managed to move funds across international borders in recent years, according to the report.
“The suspected laundering by North Korea-linked organizations amounted to more than $174.8 million over several years, with transactions cleared through U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase and the Bank of New York Mellon,” the report claimed.
According to the documents, “Wire transfers from North Korean-linked companies with opaque ownership sometimes came in bursts, only days or hours apart, and the amounts … transferred were in round figures with no clear commercial reasons for the transactions.” The suspicious details of the wire transfers are considered red flags of attempts to move illicit funds.
A suspicious activity report filed by the Bank of New York Mellon shows that Ma Xiaohong, the chief of Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Corp. in Dandong, a Chinese city on the North Korean border, allegedly funneled resources to North Korea.
“Ma and Dandong Hongxiang routed money to North Korea through China, Singapore, Cambodia, the U.S. and elsewhere, using an array of shell companies to move tens of millions of dollars through U.S. banks in New York,” according to the documents.
“One transaction in 2009 featured a Singapore shipping concern called United Green Pte. Ltd., whose directors included Leonard Lai,” a man sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2015, along with his Singaporean company, Senat Shipping Ltd., “for their links to a North Korean shipping company that was alleged to have tried to move weapons from Cuba to North Korea,” according to the report. The 2015 sanctions remain in place.
In 2015, New York Mellon reported handling “suspicious transfers of $85.6 million.” The document seen by NBC “details $20.1 million of those transactions.” In 2016 and 2019, U.S. authorities indicted Ma and other Dandong Hongxiang executives on charges of money laundering and helping North Korea evade international sanctions. So far, “no one has been extradited, and charges remain pending,” according to the report.
The leaked bank documents seen by NBC were obtained by BuzzFeed as part of a collaborative project with over 400 other journalistic agencies around the world.
“The project examined a cache of secret suspicious activity reports filed by banks with the [U.S.] Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, as well as other investigative documents,” the report claimed. The documents span a time period from 2008 to 2017, during which both the Obama and Trump administrations worked to tighten financial sanctions against North Korea in an effort to pressure the nation to denuclearize.
BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE AS PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA
HAD ALREADY SUCKED OFF MORE BANKSTER BRIBES THAN ANY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. WHAT
DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW THAT THE REST OF US DID NOT?
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
“Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes
possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine
democracy, and destabilize nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of
these people in crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the
tragedy of people dying all over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former
suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.’”
BLOG EDITOR: JP MORGAN IS BARACK OBAMA’S FAVE
CRIMINAL BANKSTER. THEY HAVE BEEN VERY GENEROU$ TO OBOMB AND HIS BIDENBOY.
“The other banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase
(whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once known as Obama's "favorite banker"),
New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of
America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.”
HSBC HAS LONG HAD A HISTORY AS THE CHOICE
BANKSTER FOR THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. OBAMA’S BANKSTER REGIME MADE SURE THAT
NO ONE WENT TO PRISON AT HSBC. DURING HIS 8 YEARS BANKSTER-OWNED ERIC HOLDER, A
SOCIOPATH LAWYER, MADE SURE THAT NO BANKSTER PERIOD SAW PRISON TIME. NOT
THEY’RE BACK AT IT. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!?
The report goes on to explain that “even after they were
prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase,
HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued
to move money for suspected criminals.”
In 2012, the
Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank,
HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and
Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel
in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying
their body parts.
“Attorney
General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful
scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
“Judicial Watch’s records request
is designed to expose how California state legislators are wasting tax dollars
to take care of another corrupt politician – Eric Holder – under the guise of
resisting the rule of law on immigration and other matters,” stated
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “His
record at the Clinton and Obama Justice Departments demonstrates a willingness
to bend the law in order to protect his political patrons.”
And it all got much, much worse after 2008,
when the schemes collapsed and, as Lemann points out, Barack Obama did not
aggressively rein in Wall Street as Roosevelt had done, instead restoring the
status quo ante even when it meant ignoring a staggering white-collar crime
spree. RYAN COOPER
“The Obama/Biden was the most corrupt, criminal
administration any of us has ever seen, yet the
media cheered or covered up all the abuse of
power, obstruction of Justice and other
crimes. “ JACK HELLNER
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the
pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
“This was not
because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the
contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013
that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
Report documents criminality and corruption at
heart of global banking system
22 September 2020
An explosive report
published Sunday by BuzzFeed News documents the role that
major US and international banks knowingly play in laundering and circulating
trillions of dollars in dirty money from terrorist organizations, drug cartels
and assorted international financial criminals.
The report is an unanswerable indictment not only of the
banks, but also of Western governments and regulatory agencies, which are fully
aware of the banks’ illegal but highly lucrative activities and tacitly sanction
them.
BuzzFeed writes that its
investigation demonstrates “an underlying truth of the modern era: The networks
through which dirty money traverses the world have become vital arteries of the
global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so
unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate
economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it so.”
The report continues: “Profits from deadly drug wars,
fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in
a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial
institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.
“Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes
possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine
democracy, and destabilize nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of
these people in crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the
tragedy of people dying all over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former
suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.’”
The report goes on to explain that “even after they were
prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase,
HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued
to move money for suspected criminals.”
The extensive report is based on more than 21,000
“suspicious activity reports” (SARs) filed by some of the world’s biggest banks
with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or
FinCEN, between 1999 and 2017. FinCEN makes its database of SARs available to
more than 450 law enforcement and regulatory agencies across the United States.
What BuzzFeed calls
the “FinCEN Files” were leaked to the news outlet more than a year ago. It has
since been combing through them, in collaboration with the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coauthored the report.
BuzzFeed News notes that it
also shared the SARs with more than 100 other news organizations in 88
countries. The report, titled “Dirty Money Pours into the World’s Most Powerful
Banks,” includes only a small and redacted sample of the news outlet’s hoard of
suspicious activity reports.
The US government maintains a policy of total secrecy in
relation to the SARs, refusing to release them even in response to Freedom of
Information requests. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department issued a
statement declaring that the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime. In an
obvious attempt at intimidation and threat of prosecution, the statement added
that the matter was being referred to the Department of Justice and the
Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.
The initial response of the American
corporate media has been to bury or entirely ignore the BuzzFeed revelations.
Monday’s print edition of the New York Times carried a
report on page eight of its business section. The print editions of the Washington
Post and the Wall Street Journal made no mention
of the exposé.
The report is based on more than 22,000 pages of documents
concerning over 10,000 subjects and involving more than 170 countries and
territories. Nearly 90 banks and other financial institutions are included in
the institutions that submitted the SARs.
Deutsche Bank recorded the highest total value of
transactions listed in the FinCEN Files: $1.3 trillion, based on 982 suspicious
activity reports.
BLOG EDITOR: THE CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION OF WELLS
FARGO HAS LONG OWNED THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN AND NOW KAMALA HARRIS. AS ATTORNEY
GENERAL OF CA, HARRIS MADE SURE NO WELLS FARGO EXECS WENT TO PRISON DESPITE THE
MASSIVE ECONOMIC DEVASTATION THIS BANK CAUSED. WELLS FARGO HAS CONTINUE TO BE A
CRIME TIDAL WAVE EVER SINCE. AFTER ALL, IT’S EASY AND CHEAP TO BUY A
POLITICIAN.
The other banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase
(whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once known as Obama's "favorite banker"),
New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of
America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.
One report, filed by JPMorgan in August, 2014, lists over
$355 billion in suspicious activity relating to more than 100,000 wire
transfers “sent, received or transferred” over the course of a decade by MKS, a
Swiss-based company that trades in precious metals.
At least 25 of the people named as subjects
in the SARs have appeared on Forbes ’ list of billionaires
in 2018, 2019 or 2020.
The findings featured in the BuzzFeed report include:
● Standard Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni
Exchange, a Dubai-based business that was later accused of laundering cash on
behalf of the Taliban.
● HSBC’s Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme,
to move more than $15 million even as the business was being barred from
operating in three states. Authorities say the scheme stole some $80 million from
investors, mainly Latino and Asian immigrants. The firm’s owner used the funds
to buy two golf courses, a mansion, a 39.8-carat diamond and mining rights in
Sierra Leone.
● Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American
Express and other financial firms processed millions of dollars in transactions
for Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even
after Interpol issued an order for his arrest. Khrapunov fled to Switzerland
and was later convicted in absentia on charges including bribe-taking and
defrauding the city.
A separate piece by NBC News presents evidence that
JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon and other banks helped move more than $150
million for companies tied to the North Korean regime.
In other words, the biggest US and international banks have
made countless millions in profits serving as money-launderers for
organizations labeled "terrorist" such as the Taliban and governments
of so-called “rogue states” such as North Korea—with the knowledge and tacit
approval of the governments of the US and other major powers—even as these same
governments were waging or threatening war against the targeted organizations
and overseas regimes.
The BuzzFeed report
describes the cynical rationale behind the formality of banks filing SARs,
which, for the most part, are never even read by the staff of FinCEN. Over the
past decade, the number of SARs filed by major banks has sharply increased,
indicating a growth of money laundering and other illegal activities on behalf
of criminal clients. Over the same period, the staff of FinCEN has shrunk by 10
percent.
Banks are legally required to file a SAR with FinCEN if
they suspect a transaction might be linked to illegal activity. Large banks
file tens of thousands of such reports every year. In 2017, 19 large banks
filed a total of 640,000 suspicious activity reports, according to a study by
the Bank Policy Institute, a lobbying group.
But as the BuzzFeed report
explains: “So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal
activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal
prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass
to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.”
In its article on the
FinCEN Files report, the New York Times noted that JPMorgan
wired money to banks in Switzerland, Lebanon and Nigeria on behalf of a
convicted money launderer, reported the transactions to British and American
authorities, and continued doing business with the client. The Nigerian government
is now suing the bank in British court.
This collusion between gangster bankers and capitalist
government regulators is a continuation of longstanding policy. In 2012, the Obama
administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC,
after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian
drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico,
which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying their body
parts.
That was in keeping with the policy of the US government of
shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities, including
those that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in
what at that time was the deepest slump since the Great Depression. To this
day, not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let
alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that led to the destruction of millions
of jobs and the decimation of working class living standards in the US and
around the world.
Here, in a nutshell, is the modern-day aristocratic
principle that prevails behind the threadbare trappings of “democracy.” The
financial robber barons of today are a law unto themselves. They can steal,
plunder, even murder at will, without fear of being called to account. They
devote a portion of their fabulous wealth to bribing politicians, regulators,
judges and police—from the heights of power in Washington down to the local
police precinct—to make sure their wealth is protected and they remain immune
from criminal prosecution.
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