*
*
US BANKS are criminal enterprises. No laws apply to them, as
they buy the politicians to make the laws when needed.
NO PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY IS MORE BOUGHT THAN BARACK
OBAMA!
Both WELLS FARGO and BANK of AMERICA are generous donors to
the MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA. Both banks illegally open banks accounts
for illegals using the phony MEXICAN CONSULATE I.D.s, which are handed out like
grocery store coupons by the 50 Mexican consulates pursuing the Mexican agenda
of EXPANDED MEXICAN OCCUPATION, POWER, and WELFARE FOR MEXICANS.
WHEN YOU DO BUSINESS WITH WELLS FARGO or BANK of AMERICA,
you are contributing to two of this nation’s biggest criminal banksters!
THESE BANKS HANDED OUT MORTGAGES TO ILLEGALS USING STOLEN
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS THAT THEY KNEW WOULD GO BELLY UP AND THE AMERICAN TAX
PAYERS WOULD HAVE TO PAY THE BANKSTERS FOR THEIR CRIMES IN THE FORM OF MUCHO BAILOUTS.
*
US
banks involved in money laundering operation for Mexican mafia
By
Rafael Azul
20 May 2011
20 May 2011
The brutal war between the Mexican
Government and the drug cartels (as well as the war between these cartels
themselves) continues to claim an ever-increasing number of lives of civilian
victims. Guatemala has been rocked by the discovery of the beheaded bodies of
27 peasants killed in northern Guatemala, allegedly by the feared Zetas cartel
on May 14. Meanwhile, another 218 bodies have been found in several mass graves
in Durango.
Even as these killings escalate,
evidence continues to pile up of the complicity of US and international banks
in the financing and arming the international drug syndicates, particularly,
the Sinaloa Cartel.
In March 2010, Wachovia Bank, revealed
it had ‘laundered’ US$ 378.4 billion dollars for the Sinaloa Cartel, through a
network of exchange houses, or casas de cambio, between 2004 and 2007.
Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo Bank,
avoided prosecution by paying US$160 million; a very small sum considering the
laundered amount corresponds to one-third of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product
for one year.
A recent article in the British Sunday Observer
based on recently uncovered documents traces a sinister chain that connects
Wachovia and other financial institutions, to the Pacifico (aka Sinaloa) drug
cartel. The leader of that cartel, “Chapo” Guzmán, who was rated by Forbes
magazine as one of the 68 “most powerful people in the world.”
The Sinaloa Cartel is by far the
largest of the drug syndicates that operate in Mexico. According to Fortune
Magazine, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for 25 percent of drug exports into
the United States. The cartel is truly a transnational firm, with operations in
over 40 countries. In addition to the Americas, its operations extend across
the Pacific to Australia and Japan, and across the Atlantic to Eastern Europe,
Italy, Portugal, Spain Germany and several African nations. In addition to
cocaine and marijuana, the Pacífico Group is also involved in the production
and sale of synthetic drugs.
Despite the magnitude of the bank’s
money-laundering crime, the US District Court in Miami negotiated a “deferred
prosecution” agreement with Wachovia in March 2010. Under the terms of the
agreement, all charges would be dropped in a year if the bank, which is now
part of California’s Wells Fargo Bank, paid a fine and agreed to pay $110
million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, and $50 million for failing to
monitor funds used for the shipping for 22 tons of cocaine. No official of the
bank was ever prosecuted.
The Observer quoted Jeffrey
Sloman, who works for the US federal prosecutor. “Wachovia’s blatant disregard
for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche
to finance their operations,” said Sloman. Yet the total fine was less than 2
percent of the bank’s $12.3 billion profit for 2009. The slap-on-the-wrist
judgment was well received by Wall Street. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock
traded at $30.86—up one percent on the week of the court settlement.
The case against Wachovia is just one
example (the ‘tip of the iceberg’ according to the Observer) of an
extraordinary relationship between transnational financial institutions and the
international criminal organizations, such as the Pacífico.
As early as August 2006, an employee at
Wachovia’s London offices, Martin Woods, began making senior management aware
of possible money laundering at its Mexican operations. In the end, Sinaloa’s
weight counted for more with Wachovia’s management, and Woods, a former police
detective with decades of experience in money laundering cases, was eventually
forced to resign.
Among the transactions that aroused
Woods’ suspicions were sequentially numbered travelers checks for very large
amounts of euros, with dubious signatures. The transactions were linked to
Mexican casas. Not only did Wachovia management ignore Woods’ memos
(suspicious activity reports, or SARs) it ordered Woods to abandon his
investigation and began a campaign of harassment against the whistleblower, who
finally left the bank in 2009.
While the Wachovia operation is the
largest money laundering operation on record, it is by no means the only one.
Another transnational financial institution, HSBC, came under investigation in
August 2010. Meanwhile, Citibank’s role in helping former President Carlos
Salinas loot the Mexican treasury in the 1980s has been well documented.
Modern money laundering involves
sophisticated operations, well beyond the backroom dealings of the past. Money
is often transferred among dozens of “shell”, or empty corporations, a process
that has been compared to the Russian Babushka dolls, with multiple layers.
According to Woods, these transactions no longer take place through tax havens
such as the Cayman Islands or Panamá. They are centered in the financial
capitals of London and New York—the City and Wall Street. Furthermore, an
increasingly larger chunk of the profits generated in Walls Street and London
derive from the recycling of drug money.
In Woods’ own words: “These are the
proceeds of murder and misery in Mexico, and of drugs sold around the world.
All the law enforcement people wanted to see this come to trial. But no one
goes to jail. What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing—it
doesn't make the job of law enforcement easier and it encourages the cartels
and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars. Where's
the risk? There is none.”
Woods continued: “Is it in the interest
of the American people to encourage both the drug cartels and the banks in this
way? Is it in the interest of the Mexican people? It’s simple: if you don’t see
the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 30,000 people
killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point.”
Woods added that after the settlement
of the the Wachovia case, “no one in the regulatory community has sat down with
me and asked, ‘What happened?’ or ‘What can we do to avoid this happening to
other banks?’”
“They are not interested,” he said.
“They are the same people who attack the whistleblowers and this is a position
the [British] Financial Services Authority at least has adopted on legal
advice: it has been advised that the confidentiality of banking and bankers
takes primacy over the public information disclosure act. That is how the
priorities work: secrecy first, public interest second.”
He charged that the practices at
Wachovia were “symptomatic of the failure of the entire regulatory system to
apply the kind of proper governance and adequate risk management which would
have prevented not just the laundering of blood money, but the global crisis.”
The US Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency is allegedly still examining the Wachovia settlement to determine
whether any officials are to be charged with a crime. In reality, this agency,
charged with regulating the banks, is itself controlled by Wall Street and no
serious indictments are expected.
The vast sums involved in the
laundering of drug money helped provide liquidity for financial institutions
during the 2008 financial crisis. According to Antonio María Costa, who heads
the United Nations office on drugs and crime, the flow of crime syndicate money
represented the only “liquid investment capital” available to banks at the
height of the crisis. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated
from the drugs trade,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued
that way.”
The ever more intimate connection
between the criminal mafias and global financial institutions began in the late
1970s and early 1980s. Acosta attributes the relationship between the criminal
bosses and the financial oligarchy of New York and London to the globalization
of criminal enterprises, coupled with the liquidity needs of the centers of
finance that required a steady stream of cash to fuel their global speculative
activity. This symbiotic relationship further developed with the series of
financial crises that afflicted the world economy beginning in the 1990s.
The
US connection
The Wachovia-Pacífico link was first
uncovered in April 2006, when Mexican troops captured a DC9 aircraft
transporting cocaine into the United States. The capture of the airplane
yielded evidence that the purchase of the cargo jet had been part of a money
laundering operation.
Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, a high
ranking member of the Pacífico organization was subsequently linked to the
purchase of the planes and eventually extradited last year to Chicago, where he
is to be tried in US courts.
Zambada, the son of Ismael Zambada
García, a top official in the Pacífico ring, bases his defense on the claim
that he was a US agent inside the cartel during a five-year period that began
on January 1, 2004 and ended on or about March 19, 2009. Specifically, Zambada
says that he worked for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, for the FBI and
for the Department of Homeland Security. The purchase of another airplane lends
credibility to Zambada’s defense.
Zambada helped purchase another
airplane through Wachovia accounts, a Gulfstream II executive jet that crashed
on September 24, 2007 carrying four tons of cocaine.
European investigators identified that
plane’s tail numbers as one of the planes involved in the US Central
Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition program for secretly transporting
US captives in the so called war on terror to be tortured and killed in secret
prisons around the globe.
The Gulfstream’s bill of sale listed
its owner as Greg Smith, a pilot who had been employed by the FBI, DEA and
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) Further investigation revealed that
the plane had been purchased through a syndicate of Colombian drug-traffickers
that included a CIA asset named Nelson Urrego; this according to another
undercover CIA operative, Baruch Vega, who was also involved in the deal.
As part of his duties, in addition to
the purchase of aircraft through Wachovia accounts, Zambada allegedly
trafficked weapons across the border from the United States into México.
The US Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and
Explosives, recently revealed that it had channeled some 2000 semi-automatic
military-style rifles and pistols to the Mexican drug cartels, an operation
called “Fast and Furious”. The ATF claims the arm sales were part of a sting
operation that was designed unmask and capture cartel officials. In addition to
the ATF weapons, the Sinaloa cartel is in possession of grenades that were
originally sold by the United States to the Salvadoran Army.
If it turns out that Zambada was indeed
a US government agent, it would appear that the Obama administration is
favoring this Pacífico/Sinaloa organization over its competing criminal rivals.
A 2009 US diplomatic cable released by
WikiLeaks and published in March by the Mexico City daily La Jornada
reports that the Mexican army and Ciudad Juarez politicians also favored the
Sinaloa Cartel over its rivals.
Taken together, the money laundering,
the ATF arm sales, and the airplane purchases point to a sinister web of
corruption and criminality connecting the banking establishment and the Obama
administration to the financing and protection of a gigantic globalized
criminal syndicate.
The revelations underscore the
fraudulent character of the so-called “war on drugs”, which is utilized by
Washington as a means of asserting US hegemony and military power in Mexico as
well as in Central and South America.
*
*
Aiding and Abetting? Massive ID theft reported:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110224/ap_on_re_us/us_document_fraud
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110224/ap_on_re_us/us_document_fraud
*
US: Ring sold
fake IDs to immigrants in 11 states
By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press Thu Feb 24,
3:22 pm ET
RICHMOND,
Va. – Twenty-two people have been charged with producing more than 15,000 false
documents for illegal immigrants in 11 states and protecting their lucrative
turf through kidnappings, beatings and the slaying of a rival, officials said
Thursday.
The
ring operated in 19 cities and generated more than $1 million over less than
two years selling Social Security cards, driver's licenses and work documents
at prices ranging from $150 to $200, according to an indictment. The proceeds
were wired to the ring's base in Mexico, the indictment said.
The
defendants, who are being held in Virginia, are accused of 12 counts, including
racketeering, murder, assault, firearms possession, kidnapping, money
laundering, and possessing and producing false documents. Most are illegal
immigrants from Mexico.
"This
is a chilling document," U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride said at a news
conference.
The
director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the ring was among
the top three document fraud cases the agency has ever investigated.
"This
was not a mom-and-pop organization but rather organized crime on a grand
scale," ICE Director John Morton said.
The
indictment said the defendants produced high-quality identification cards in 19
cities from New England to Arkansas where there were few other forgery
operations.
When
they found competition, investigators said, they dealt with it violently.
Two
of the defendants are accused of fatally beating a rival in Little Rock, Ark.,
in July 2010. Two other defendants beat a competitor in Richmond, placing the
barrel of a loaded firearm in the victim's mouth and warning him to seek a
career change, the indictment said.
The
violence also extended to workers within the ring who violated the strict rules
of the businesslike operation, such as filing biweekly sales reports, the
government said. Offenders were beaten and threatened with violence, the
government said.
"This
case was all about intimidation and violence, all about maintaining control and
discipline within the organization and running rivals off through aggressive
and violent means," Morton said.
Craig
W. Sampson, an attorney representing one of the defendants, said his client had
not entered a plea. He said the case will be a test for the federal court in
Richmond, which has only a handful of interpreters for the nearly two-dozen
Spanish-speaking defendants.
Investigators
initially uncovered the forgery ring in Norfolk, Va., and tracked down cells in
three other Virginia locations. They then traced the ring to Arkansas, Connecticut,
Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri
and Tennessee.
Asked
if U.S. authorities were working with their Mexican counterparts to prosecute
the ring's management, MacBride said "the investigation continues and we're
going to follow this case wherever it leads us."
A
total of 28 people were initially indicted and arrested late last year in the
document ring. Some have entered pleas.
The
superseding indictment released Thursday added new charges.
No comments:
Post a Comment