Archive for the 'Offshore' Category
Follow the money — through U.S. banks
Sacramento Bee, Sept 23, 2001)
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world’s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers’ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it helps worldwide networks of terrorists.
Terrorists need a way to finance operations in dozens of countries around the globe, to pay for houses, salaries, transport, weapons and explosives.
How U.S. Bank Laws Fund Terrorists
Pacific News Service, Sept 21, 2001
For years the banking laws of the United States and its allies have protected money laundering, which makes money for banks and the wealthy, and has even helped Washington fund “freedom fighters.” But the system also provides funds and cover for terrorists; the system must be dismantled with new laws.
The global money-laundering system used by terrorists has also served the U.S. government and banks for years, creating wealth and occasionally supporting U.S. political interests abroad. Changing U.S. bank secrecy laws to pierce that laundering system is as essential to stopping terrorism as military force and diplomatic moves.
Bank Secrecy Gives Terror Safe Haven
MSNBC.com, Sept 19, 2001
Global money laundering made easy by loose rules on secret accounts
Terrorists work the levers of global banking laws to move money that finance their efforts from phony banks to real ones, like Britain’s Barclays Bank, which Osama bin Laden allegedly used.
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world’s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers’ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it aids and abets worldwide networks of terrorists.
Mobster on Thin Ice
Featurewell.com, Aug 6, 2002
For Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, 53, called Taivanchik (the Taiwanese) because of his Asian features, the plot to get an Olympic gold medal for Russia’s top figure-skaters was small-time.
The Russian mafia don who was arrested July 31 for fixing skating contests at the Salt Lake City summer Olympics reminds one of Al Capone, who was put away for tax evasion, because the government couldn’t get enough evidence against him for murder, extortion and criminal racketeering.
Après l’air pollué, l’argent pollué
Publié par The Nation, 18 juin 2001
En février 2001, après la réunion des pays les plus industrialisés, plus connus sous le nom du G7, lorsque Paul O’Neill, secrétaire d’Etat au Trésor (ministre des finances américain), a déclaré qu’une initiative européenne visant à enrayer le blanchissage de l’argent “ ne consiste pas à dicter aux pays quel est le niveau convenable de la taxation ”, il était clair que c’en était fait. Pendant 18 mois environ, les Etats Unis avaient indiqué qu’ils pensaient sérieusement se joindre aux Européens dans leurs modestes efforts pour s’occuper de l’argent illicite blanchi de part le monde.
After Dirty Air, Dirty Money
The Nation, June 18, 2001
When Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said after the February meeting of the top industrialized countries, known as the G-7, that a European initiative to clamp down on money laundering “is not about dictating to any country what should be the appropriate level of tax rates,” it was clear that the game was over.
For about eighteen months the United States had signaled that it was serious about joining the Europeans in modest efforts to deal with the tide of illicit money that washes around the world. Now, the Bush Administration was saying that it was backing off the US commitment to reform the offshore banking system. Instead, the “tough on crime” Republicans would stand shoulder to shoulder with the shady characters in Nauru, Aruba, Liechtenstein and elsewhere who offer state-of-the-art financial services for crooks.
Rich Benefit From Offshore Tax Havens
The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2001
Money: The wealthy hide a bundle of their dollars in banks that can keep a secret.
The Bush tax cut for the top 1 percent of richest Americans is worth $69 billion, nearly 38 percent of the total. People who protested that are virtually ignoring another Republican policy that “saves” the rich the same amount. Experts estimate that $70 billion in taxes are lost annually because many wealthy Americans hide money in tax havens, but Republicans in Congress and the White House are blocking efforts to stop this tax evasion.
Steps to tackle international fraud adopted at OECD summit
Earth Times News Service, May 18, 2001
In the first salvo of an international effort to disable the system of shell companies used widely by criminals, corrupt officials, and tax cheats, the OECD Council of Ministers on May 10th adopted a report on what countries should do to pierce shell company secrecy. Called “Misuse of Corporate Vehicles for Illicit Purposes,” it is part of a campaign by the world’s financial powers against the illicit offshore bank and corporate secrecy system. It was written by OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance made up of experts from member countries’ finance and securities ministries.
OECD commits to curb bribery among public officials
Earth Times News Service, May 14, 2001
PARIS — OECD Secretary General Donald Johnston says he is pleased about the OECD commitment to try to stop companies from its own member states from bribing public officials in other countries. But, he added, that effort needs to be extended to cover bribery of corporate officials as well.
The Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions entered into force in February 1999. It commits 34 signatory countries, including all the world’s biggest economies, to adopt common rules to punish companies and individuals who engage in bribery.
Rubin in UN Finance Panel – a Case of Fox Guarding the Henhouse?
Pacific News Service, Dec 20, 2000
Criminals — drug dealers or dictators — with embarrassing amounts of cash on hand, or corporations trying to avoid taxation, often use false fronts in poor countries to “launder” the funds. Major U.S. banks are heavily involved in this unsavory business, so banker Robert Rubin Robert Rubinmay face some interesting questions from the other members of a UN panel intended to help debtor nations.
There is more than a little irony in the appointment of Robert Rubin, a chairman of Citibank, to a United Nations panel which is supposed to propose methods for helping poor countries.
UN Tackles Money Laundering
eCountries.com, Dec 15, 2000
The net around money launderers may be getting a bit tighter, with a new treaty signed in Palermo under the auspices of the UN. It’s a step in the right direction, but a lot remains to be done to effectively combat what has become a global plague.
For more than a decade, the international community has been wrestling with the issue of what to do about the worldwide bank secrecy system that allows drug traffickers, fraudulent business operators and tax cheats to flourish.
While Washington Denies Any Problem, Swiss Probe “Missing” $4.8 Billion Loan To Russia
Pacific News Service, Oct 16, 2000.
Washington denies any problem, as does the International Monetary Fund. But Russians who should know are sure that a $4.8 billion loan never reached its destination. They have been joined recently by Swiss prosecutors who are equally skeptical. PNS contributor Lucy Komisar is a freelance journalist who, sponsored by PNS, spent three months in Russia on a U.S. National Research Council grant to investigate the impact of offshore bank and corporate secrecy.
What really happened to the $4.8 billion?
Money Trail
The Moscow Times, Oct 3, 2000
When news broke in August 1999 that somewhere from $7 billion to $15 billion had been spirited out of Russia through the Bank of New York, in what looked to U.S. investigators to be money laundering, American bankers professed shock. A month after those revelations, Bank of New York CEO Thomas Renyi told the U.S. House Banking Committee “how dismayed I have been by the suggestions in the press that the Bank of New York has been involved in, or been used as a vehicle for, money laundering or other illicit activities.”
Anti-money laundering measures targets lawyers and accountants
Earth Times News Service, May 7, 2000
Two far-reaching and potentially controversial anti-money laundering measures would require professionals such as lawyers and accountants to file the same sort of suspicious transaction reports that banks do and would extend “know your customer” rules to include the owners of companies. The Council of Europe has already proposed the first. US authorities have not acted on either.
How Enron used the offshore system to hide millions
San Diego Union, Jan 23, 2000
How did top executives of Enron do it? How did they cause the world’s biggest bankruptcy while making off with millions of dollars?
They used the same financial tools as Osama bin Laden.
To attack the Osama bin Laden financial network, the Bush administration knew right where to look – in “offshore” secrecy havens, including the Bahamas, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Dubai and Panama.
Russian Cons and New York Banks
The Village Voice, Dec 7, 1999
After it was revealed in August that $7 billion to $15 billion had been siphoned out of Russia through the Bank of New York, the nation’s influentials were shocked, shocked. America’s most sophisticated financiers were vulnerable to tawdry Russian fraudsters? The press gasped at the scale, congressional committees mobilized, and the Clinton administration trumpeted an anti-money-laundering strategy.
But the scandal was no surprise to federal immigration agent Thomas D. O’Connell. Nor was it the first time a New York bank had been soiled by money believed stolen by Russian con men. Though it has not been reported until now, the Bank of New York and other New York banks—including Chemical, Chase Manhattan, and Citibank— were and most likely still are conduits for the proceeds of a still-to-be-tallied series of crimes, with at least a thousand shell company bank accounts laundering dirty cash.
Fool Me Twice
The Progressive, Dec 1999
The Russian banking scandal should have been no surprise to Western financial experts. The Bank of New York laundered some $7 billion in Russian money through the offshore system.
The sudden attention by U.S. government officials and the mainstream media to the $7 billion or more of Russian money laundered through the Bank of New York might make you think this is the first time that multimillions have been stolen from Russia-or elsewhere-and washed through the international offshore system. In fact, it’s not even the first time for the Bank of New York.
Cleaning up the murky waters of offshore banking
Global Finance, Nov 1999
The US government is making its boldest move yet to combat international money laundering via offshore bank secrecy havens. Officials who once insisted “capital should flow to wherever the market says to flow” now want to make it more costly for American banks to lend to entities in “bad jurisdictions.”
The American crackdown depends on the passing of new law that require banks to set aside reserves for the loans they have made to high-risk jurisdictions. The strategy, announced in September, is undergoing a 90-day US interagency review. It targets offshore centers that hide the beneficial owners of companies and bank accountants and refuse to cooperate with international law enforcers on the trail of illicit funds.
Law officials fear that electronic cash may increase money laundering
Earth Times News Service, Oct 31, 1999
The dangers of international money laundering are massively magnified by electronic transfers and the new electronic cash. “The really big challenge that’s coming, that’s arrived, is electronic cash,” said Thomas Roche, Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “That’s going to present really daunting challenges. There’s always been an audit trail in credit cards and checks.
Swiss Banks Must Be Held Accountable
The Bergen Record, Feb 26, 1998
THE SWISS, IT TURNS OUT, who long polished their image as upstanding burghers, were bankers and money-launders of the Nazis, confidence men who took depositors’ money, hid the records, and refused to pay back rightful owners. Incredibly, they are outraged that world opinion considers them unsavory and insists they return the booty, valued by the World Jewish Congress at $3 billion. Equally incredible, the Swiss continue to stonewall justice in the face of demands for restitution by governments, organizations, and individuals.
Some Poetic Justice for Swiss Bankers
Los Angeles Times, Feb 22, 1998
The Swiss, it turns out, who long polished their image as upstanding burghers, were bankers and money-launders of the Nazis, confidence men who took depositors’ money, hid the records and refused to pay back rightful owners. Incredibly, they are outraged that world opinion considers them unsavory and insists they return the booty, valued by the World Jewish Congress at $3 billion. Equally incredible, the Swiss continue to stonewall justice in the face of demands for restitution by governments, organizations and individuals.
Unfortunately, since there is no international criminal court, the Swiss bankers and their associates cannot be brought to trial for their actions. Since national governments are generally loathe to lean on, much less punish, allies (how else to explain why the United States and other Western nations let the Swiss get away with keeping much of the pilfered gold), citizens and local officials must force some measure of justice.
Acknowledging past U.S. failures to press the Swiss to return stolen funds, Under Secretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat is brokering discussions between Swiss banks and American lawyers regarding a class action lawsuit filed in New York federal court in 1996. The suit seeks $20 billion in damages from the banks for cheating Holocaust victims and their heirs. There are more than 350,000 Holocaust survivors, 100,000 of them living in the United States.
Does the G-8 care that criminals are hijacking Russia?
Earth Times News Service, June 22, 1997
Will people one day talk about the looting of Russia the way they recently talked about the looting of Zaire?
Western leaders meet this weekend (June 20-22) in Denver at the G-8 Summit on economic policy. They have the chance to take the drastic action needed to combat the criminalization of the Russian economy which threatens not only Russia but their own countries as well.
The G-8, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, probably won’t do anything to deal with this problem, but it won’t be for lack of knowing about it.
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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