The Guardian (UK) reports on How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
"Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.
"More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.
"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.
"The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer."
Yves Smith comments too:
"I suspect you never imagined 'too big to fail' and 'too big to jail' were this intimately connected."
Stone State Advisers has a post at Zero Hedge that speaks to the issues. It's the incentives:
If you or I helped to launder $10,000 we would be in prison for years.
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ReplyDeleteElliott Spitzer tried to structure a 10,000 plus cash transaction thru a series of smaller cash transactions to his hooker and he now has his own show on CNN and contributes to HuffPo and NewDeal2.0.
No jail, seems like it never was on the table. Now you have the Buffetgate with Sokol and no charges and they send poor Martha Stewart to jail?
Go figure.... they are destroying the concept of "law and order"; as Tom has descibed it: "banana republic". These types of things are doing the real damage, this is terrible.
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