Archive for the 'Drugs' Category
Follow Aristide’s Money Offshore: How Haiti was looted with the help of tax haven shell companies & secret bank accounts and U.S. citizens & corporations
Haiti Democracy Project, Nov 10, 2005
Add former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the long list of corrupt and repressive officials who have used Western banks and companies and offshore tax havens to plunder their countries and launder the stolen money.
Aristide and his associates looted government coffers, wrote checks to front companies for nonexistent purchases, padded invoices to get kickbacks from vendors, secretly owned companies that cheated Haiti of taxes, and laundered the money they stole through shell companies and secret bank accounts set up in the United States and the offshore tax havens of Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands.
Nearly $20 million has been documented as stolen between 2001, when Aristide took office as president for the second time, and 2004, when he fled or was forced out of the country according to varying accounts.
Offshore Banking: The Secret Threat To America
Hound-Dogs, March 2004
(Same title but not same article as in Dissent 2003)
This is a story about a massive money-laundering operation run by the world’s biggest banks. It hides behind the “eyes-glazing over” technicalities of the international financial system. But it could be one of the biggest illicit money-moving operations anyone has ever seen. And it’s allowed to exist by the financial regulators who answer to Western governments.
In these days of global markets, individuals and companies may be buying stocks, bonds or derivatives from a seller who is Clearstreamhalfway across the world. Clearstream, based in Luxembourg, is one of two international clearinghouses that keep track of the “paperwork” for the transactions.
Drug Smugglers’ Dutch Treat
Wall Street Journal, May 29, 1997
Three weeks ago, a conference was held in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, on money laundering. Among those in attendance were two members of the Mansur family, which has gained international prominence for — you guessed it — alleged money laundering. Two other family members have been indicted by the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, but still enjoy life at home on Aruba, another Dutch dependency, and travel to Europe, beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
The sponsors of the gathering included the Association of International Bankers of the Netherlands Antilles and the Association of the Compliance Officers of the Netherlands Antilles. The bankers and compliance officers of the Netherlands Antilles are, to say the least, not noted for rigorous action against money laundering — nor are their Dutch counterparts.
BCCI and the Bushes
Lucy Komisar writes about the criminal offshore bank BCCI and the way it connected the Bushes, the Saudis, Saddam and Osama bin Laden 
in her chapter, “BCCI’s Double Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad,” in ”A Game As Old As Empire.”
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