Money laundering

Money laundering
Interest of	• Bank of Credit and Commerce International • Neil Barnett • Castle Bank & Trust • Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units • El Dorado Task force • Financial Crimes Enforcement Network • Anthony Kimery • Rob McCusker • Netherlands/Deep state • Sandy Nunn • Sinaloa cartel

Money laundering, the conversion of 'dirty' money into 'clean' money, is a highly profitabe business. The deep state dominates this business worldwide. Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has claimed that the main areas of Gladio B money laundering are Cyprus, Malta and Dubai.

Official narrative

Money laundering is closely associated with the illegal drug trade, which creates huge cash profits. The official narrative of money laundering suggests that banks oppose money laundering, and seek to prevent it. This overlooks their obvious commercial interest in encouraging profitable transactions. Big media has little to say about cases such as that of Willem Matser which hint at establishment involvement in money laundering.

Dedicated institutions

The two most public examples of institutions set up to facilitate deep state money laundering are the Nugan hand Bank and the BCCI. These highlight the fact that the deep state can set up financial institutions to facilitate disbursal of off the books funds, such as drugs-for-guns profits. This naturally gives it leverage when operating with the more established, longer term financial institutions, which some^[Who?] have suggested are just as dependent on profits from the drugs trade.

Failure to investigate

The deep state needs the support of big banks to assist in laundering money from its illegal drug trade. All the largest banks have extensive involvement with drug money, but prosecution is not anticipated. As the New York Times put it in 2012: "Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system."

As Rolling Stone notes: "the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement."

Art

It has been argued that expensive art is used to move high sums of money. In 2020 the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for the U.S. Senate released a 147-page report titled “The Art Industry and U.S. Policies That Undermine Sanctions” it focuses on the connection between high-end art and potential money laundering schemes. These high value sales may not only be used to launder money, but could also be used to pay for illicit services.

Africa

"Diplomatic Shipments" of cash

A view of the dead body whose shipping along with 67 tonnes of banknotes in an apparently CIA-owned plane landed in Harare in February 2016

In February 2016, Western Global Airlines N545JN made an emergency landing at the Zimbabwean capital Harare. Authorities became suspicious after noticing that blood dripping from the plane. The Zimbabwe Herald reported that "the ground crew refueling the plane alerted local authorities." The crew, reported as "includ[ing] two Americans, a South African and a Pakistani" claimed that this was because the plane had struck a bird, but it turned out to be coming from the severed arm of a dead man. The plane was carrying 67 tonnes of South African cash. The plane, which it was claimed had been carrying a "diplomatic shipment" was impounded but later released, together with the crew.

Asia

Iraq

“Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.

The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.

By one account, the New York Fed shipped about $40 billion in cash between 2003 and 2008. In just the first two years, the shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons. But soon after the money arrived in the chaos of war-torn Baghdad, the paper trail documenting who controlled it all began to go cold.”
Eamon Javers (25 Oct 2011) 

"Finding out what happened to all the money involved has become one of the biggest financial mysteries of all time."

Russia

Andrei Kozlov, deputy chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, suggested on September 8, 2006, that "Those who have been found out laundering criminal money should probably be barred from staying in the banking profession for life. Such people disgrace the banking system." He was assassinated within the week.

Europe

Jan Willem Matser

Full article: Willem Matser

In February 2003, Willem Matser, a "key adviser to Nato's Secretary General" (George Robertson), was arrested after a seizure of a forged money transfer order at Schipol Airport, and charged with money laundering, fraud and forgery. He pleaded not guilty, but was convicted (together with a cocaine trafficker, Pietro Fedino and serial fraudster Willem van Voorthuizen) of fraud with forged securities and attempts to defraud companies and members of the public of money with the forged documents but acquitted of money laundering, after the relevant money could not be located. He was sentenced to time served ( slightly less than 1 year) plus 3 years' probation.

UK

Sue Hawley observes that “Despite the UK’s rhetoric about wanting a “world leading reputation for integrity” as a financial center, it has never prosecuted a single company or bank for money laundering.”

US

Sibel Edmonds has suggested that Dennis Hastert received a lot of money in small donations (<$200) so that he did not have to disclose their origin. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000, higher than anyone else with the exception of Clay Shaw.

September 11, 2001

Full article: 9-11/Insider Trading

September 11, 2001 was a highly important day in the the history of money laundering in the US, as Mark Gorton notes. Not only were normal financial rules suspended by the SEC after the attacks, but billions of dollars moved in a relatively small number of transactions. Moreover "WTC building 6 housed the U.S. Customs agency and the El Dorado Task force, an interagency group founded in 1992 which coordinated all major money laundering investigations in the U.S."

Real Estate investments

In 2014 in New York Magazine, Andrew Rice reported that "The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide."

Gambling

When carried out in collaboration with a casino owner, gambling is one method of money laundering. Dan Hopsicker has suggested that Stephen Paddock, presented by the media as a compulsive gambler, may in fact have been engaged in money laundering.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
Azerbaijani laundromat	Complex money laundering operation run by Azerbaijan uncovered in 2017.
Danske Bank/Money laundering scandal
John Deuss	"One of the most successful international wheeler-dealers of recent decades" who lived "a charmed life on the edge" with help from the UK and US deep states
Bola Tinubu	US intelligence asset?
Western Global Airlines N545JN	67 tons of cash and a body found on a CIA plane. Not known to have been reported by corporate media in Europe or North America.
Gerrit Zalm	Dutch politician. Shell. Attended the Bilderberg in 2014, personally prosecuted for money laundering at ABN AMRO Bank.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
George Carlin	“Drug dealers aren’t afraid to die. They’re already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they’re not afraid to die. The death penalty doesn’t mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like… the bankers who launder the drug money! The bankers. Who launder. The drug money! Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers.”	George Carlin
John Deuss	“An international warrant had been issued for Mr Deuss's arrest after a bank he owns on Curaçao, in the Dutch Antilles, was closed last month during an Anglo-Dutch investigation into carousel fraud. British Customs officials had discovered that every individual arrested and charged with the fraud in the UK in the previous two years had an account at the First Curaçao International Bank (FCIB). Since raiding its headquarters and freezing its assets, investigators have discovered that about 2,500 British citizens suspected of carousel fraud hold accounts there.”	John Deuss	16 October 2006
Supranational deep state/History	“The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed.. the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money laundering machine.”	Joseph Trento	2005

 

Convicted of Money laundering

Person	Born	Nationality	Summary	Description
Evelin Banev	8 October 1964	Bulgaria Turkey Ukraine	Drug trafficker	Bulgarian "cocaine kingpin".

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