Author’s note: Get caught with a pot seed in your car ashtray in Texas and you’re lookin’ at jail time, but get caught laundering coke money and no problem. The real criminals, sociopaths and pyschopaths are more likely to found in high places than trying to clean toilets in a motel room, or smoking weed in a trailor. All the feds have to is follow the money in order to find them…
Excerpt:
A report in the August 2010 issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine sheds light on the role that U.S. banks have played in helping to finance the violent drug trade that has plagued the U.S. – Mexico border for years, resulting in over 22,000 dead on both sides of the border since 2006. Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens.
Last December, a statement by Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, was largely dismissed by U.S. corporate media. He said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352 billion of illegal drug profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
A document obtained by Bloomberg seems to confirm Costa’s statement. It is an agreement between Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo & Co., and U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors in which Wachovia officials admit the bank had not done enough to watch for money-laundering schemes among some $378 billion it transferred between its branches and Mexican currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. Wachovia has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers – including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
According to Bloomberg, US banks, including Wachovia, Wells Fargo & Co., HSBC and Bank of America are playing a crucial role in the running of the Mexican drug trade, allowing their facilities to be used to launder money.
Bloomberg also reports that a former Wachovia executive in charge of anti-money laundering operations “quit the bank in disgust” after managers ignored his reports that drug money was being laundered through its facilities. He said, “if you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed, you’re missing the point.”
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said federal prosecutor Jeffrey Sloman according to Bloomberg. Wachovia agreed to pay $160 million to settle the court case in exchange for charges being dropped, a move Sloman described as “historic.” Historic, perhaps, but that is chump change for a bank that posted $7.79 billion in profits in 2006 – while engaging in these blatant violations of federal law.
If any American is caught with even a small amount of drugs in their possession in these border states, they are looking at a stiff prison sentence. Yet the people who finance the drug trade get off with a slap on the wrist while making huge profits from it. Perhaps instead of incarcerating Americans, tracking the “illegals” and talking about building worthless fences on the border, federal investigators should follow the money. It may lead to the real criminals.
Read more, get links here: Madison Independent Examiner – U.S. banks laundering Mexican cartels’ drug money