Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), serves as the region's criminal
crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground
banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms
traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for African embassy bombers
were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani
scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other
proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military
equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials
say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through
Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by
an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard.
Dhows--rickety wooden boats that have plowed the Arabian Sea for
centuries.
Washington has a half-dozen extradition requests that they (UAE)
refuse to honor. The list includes people accused of rape, murder,
and arms trafficking, and the last fugitive of the BCCI banking
scandal.[1]
-----
The UAE is not only the center of financial dealings in the Persian
Gulf, it is switching central for dope and arms dealing. The dope
comes out of Afghanistan into the UAE where tax monies are collected
and used to buy arms, which were sent back in for the Taliban.
1. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051205/5terror.b1.htm
Comment: Why would AWOL Bush want to a deal with UAE regarding US
ports? To break the longshoremen union.
Dirty Money and Global Banking Secrecy
There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former
bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European
banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money
each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. Estimates
are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal
proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts
annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the
United States.
Over the last 20 years, big bank laundering of criminal funds and
looted funds has increased geometrically. Over a decade then,
between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds have been laundered
by U.S. banks and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits. This
amount does not include illegal transfers and capital flows from
corrupt political leaders, or tax evasion by overseas businesses.
Source: Size and Scope of Money Laundering by US Banks From La
Journada [Mexico],5/19/01, by James Petras - Professor of Sociology,
Binghamton University.
----
The Republicans have opposed piercing bank secrecy because they and
their supporters use the system to hide money from taxes.
In about 60 countries, known as offshore or tax havens, people and
businesses can set-up companies and open accounts without using
their real names or identification. They often use phony banks that
funnel money to real banks by bundling money transfers
("correspondant accounts" used to send these bundled wire transfers)
and don't say who the money was coming from. The real banks in the
US routinely ask no questions when the money arrives )via wire
transfers) from these "shell" banks.
Corporations use offshore banking to move profits to jurisdictions
that tax them less or not at all. Between 1989 and 1995, nearly a
third of the large corporations operating in the U.S. with assets at
least $250 million or sales of at least $50 million, paid no U.S.
income tax.
The offshore banking system started with the Swiss, who in the
1930's opened numbered bank accounts purportedly only to hide the
money of victims of the Nazis.
Jack Blum, who co-wrote a 1998 report for the UN on the offshore
phenomenon, estimates that at least $70 billion in U.S. taxes is
evaded annually through offshore accounts.
Terrorist Mohamed Atta had an account at a Citibank branch in Dubai
(UAE), with frequent transfers of $10,000 to $15,000 and one
occasion recieved $100,000. The Al-Shamal Islamic Bank, set up by
Osama bin Laden in Khartoom, Sudan, had correspondant accounts at
Citibank, Chase Manhattan, and American Express Bank.
New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau stated that he was
tracing black-market money coming out of Viet Nam through Hong Kong
to Manufacturers Hanover in New York and then the Union Bank of
Switzerland, when he subpoenaed the bank records, the account he was
investigating was changed to an account in Dubai.
Source: Dirty Money and Global Banking Secrecy by Lucy Komisar
-----
Proceeds of drug trafficking is unknown, although interagency
estimates suggest that between $100 billion and $300 billion in U.S.
currency is laundered annually.
Traffickers also place illicit funds in the U.S. financial system by
commingling drug proceeds with funds generated at legitimate
businesses, by purchasing real estate and vehicles, and by
exploiting the gaming industry.
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs3/3300/money.htm
Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Justice Dept's
investigation of BCCI involved BCCI bank records from Panama City
relating to General Noriega which simply ``disappeared'' in transit
to Washington while under heavy guard by the Drug Enforcement
Administration. After an internal investigation, the D.E.A. said it
had no idea what happened to the documents.
(Source: Christic Institute, 1991)
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/international_banking_money_launderi
ng/bcci91.html
FBI Director Robert Mueller, was the top honcho of the Justice
Department's, Criminal Division, during the Bush Sr's administration
and was instrumental in suppressing and/or destroying evidence and
scaring off and covering up about witnesses to protect the Bush
Family connections with the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International.(Source: New York Times, July 6, 2001, in a story by
Neil A. Lewis).
--------------
The Vatican Bank
The Vatican Bank officially known as the Institute for Religious
Works (IOR). It is owned and controlled by the pope.[1] The pope
founded it in 1887 and in 1941, transformed it into a "for profit"
bank. It is the bank of the mini country, Vatican City and whose
government is called The Holy Sea. The bank functions as the Roman
Catholic Church's private bank.
In September 1943, the Nazis transferred funds from the Reichsbank
to the Vatican Bank and from the Vatican Bank to Nazi controlled
banks in Switzerland. As the Allies were approaching gold was
transferred from SS accounts.
In 1945, the Vatican Bank was a major partner in the disappearance
of $200 million form the German puppet state, Croatia. The Croatian
Nazis called Ustashe, slaughtered (genicide) 500,000 Orthodox
Christians Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. This money was used to fund the
Ustashe government -in-exile in Argentina. According to reports from
OSS (OSS was the precursor to the CIA) and reports from US Army
counterintelligence in the last days of WW II, a Croatian treasure
convoy made its way to Austria, where it was intercepted by British
officials. The money preceded to Rome unimpeded by military
authorities. In Rome, Dominic Mandic helped deposit the money into
Franciscan accounts at the Vatican Bank. [2]
The Ustashe leader Pavelic and his bodyguard were sheltered at
various monasteries and safe houses in Rome, according to US Amry
counterintelligence file on Pavelic. The Vatican ratline sent tens
of thousands of Nazis to South America, Australia, and elsewhere.
Pope John Paul II had his lawyers defending the Vatican Bank to
prevent the recovery of the Nazi gold and stopping the process to
officially determine if it exists.
During the 1950's and 1960's the Vatican Bank prospered by
laundering funds for wealthy Italian families and the Italian mafia.
The Vatican Bank owned (owns) Panamanian and Luxemburg shell
corporations and the Banco Ambrosiano of Nassau, Bahamas which had
or has mafia and/or drug trafficking cartel connections.
Source: Everything you Know is Wrong, The Disinformation Guide to
Secret and Lies by Jonathan Levy
1, Inside the Vatican by Fr. Thomas J. Reese, SJ
2. Unholy Trinity by John Loftus
Swiss banks
Swiss banks converted into international currency the gold that
Hitler stole from the occupied countries and from captured Jews,
including the gold teeth of those who had died in the gas chambers
in concentration camps. The gold entered Switzerland with no trouble
at all, while those persecuted by the Nazis were turned back at the
frontier.
http://www.newint.org/issue306/souls.htm
Saddam's secret money-laundering trail
Banca del Gottardo has a colorful history: it is the bank that moved
the bribe and kickback money paid by a Swiss construction company to
former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his cronies in exchange
for contracts to refurbish Kremlin buildings. In the 1970s, Gottardo
was the Swiss subsidiary of Banco Ambrosiano, "the Vatican bank,"
which collapsed in 1982 in a $1-billion fraud that involved money
siphoned off to offshore shell companies and accounts. Ambrosiano
had laundered drug- and arms-trafficking money for the Italian and
American mafias.
A confidential December 2001 report by Kroll, the international
investigative agency, said that two Swiss companies were the holding
companies that handled the money Saddam skimmed.
Kroll investigators discovered that one of the middlemen helping
Saddam was Marc Rich, the U.S. tax-evader pardoned by President
Clinton. Rich had been indicted by the United States in 1983 on
charges he evaded more than $48 million in taxes and illegally
bought oil from Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. He fled the
United States and settled in Switzerland. Kroll said, "We came up
with evidence that through Marc Rich's Spanish subsidiary, he was
using some Iranian cutouts -- specifically Bakhtiar, Iranians, whose
family was close to Saddam -- he was using them to negotiate
arrangements as it related to oil."
"The work was all turned over to OFAC (the Treasury Department's
Office of Foreign Assets Control)," Kroll said. That means the
Clinton administration knew about Rich's aid to Saddam.
The totals from skimmed oil revenues and contract kickbacks from the
late 1970s through the oil-for-food 90s have been estimated by U.S.
officials to reach $30 or $40 billion.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040602-103911-3005r.htm
-----------
Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal
All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L's can be tied to
joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime
figures (Glassman, 1990: 16-21; Farnham, 1990: 90-108; Weinberg,
1990: 33; Pizzo, et al., 1989: 466-471). If the savings and loan
scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has
often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that
corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the
reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of
organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all
uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity
from law enforcement and prosecution.
Criminologists have discovered the existence of organizations whose
activities focus on the smuggling of illegal commodities into and
out of countries (cocaine out of Colombia and into the United States
and guns and arms out of the United States and into the Middle East,
for example); other organizations, sometimes employing some of the
same people, are organized to provide services such as gambling,
prostitution, illegal dumping of toxic wastes, arson, usury, and
occasionally murder. These organizations typically cut across ethnic
and cultural lines, are run like businesses, and consist of networks
of people including police, politicians, and ordinary citizens
investing in illegal enterprises for a high return on their money.
Gary W. Potter Eastern Kentucky University padpotte@acs.eku.edu
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/S&L_Scandal_CIA.html
The Bank of New York (BoNY)
"According to a study by Canadian and Russian economic institutes,
capital flight from Russia totaled about $130 billion from 1992 to
1998." [NY Times 9/12/99]
As reported in Agence-France Presse (AFP), Reuters and USA Today, a
key $4.8 billion IMF loan last summer immediately caused a flurry of
bond speculation as more than 700 key Russian officials used the
money to liquidate their positions in the ruble which collapsed as
soon as they got their (IMF) money out of the country. Interpol
leaders from Europe have been quoted as saying that the IMF money
just passed through Russia on it's way back to the U.S., leaving
Russia with all of the debt.
The Iran-Contra era, Swiss-Israeli financier Bruce Rappaport who
reportedly held a large interest in BoNY, turned up in the mix of
Ollie North's secret financial dealings. BoNY is clearly no ingenue
in the world of dirty money.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/economy/bony.html
for more info:
The Strange Saga of BCCI:
http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm
http://www.free-conversant.com/realtruth/255
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
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NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this
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