Reply #7: Northern Laundromats for Southern Fat Cats [View All]

[Octafish]

Check out the Caymans, Panama, Switzerland. Of course, the names Union Bank of Switzerland and BCCI crop up, as well. But THE place to look is very, very close to home.

Northern Laundromats for Southern Fat Cats

By Miren Gutiérrez*Inter Press Service
August 20, 2004

EXCERPT...

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) collapse in 1991 is regarded as the biggest bank fraud in history, involving billions of dollars in dirty money. The bank had its head office in Luxembourg and was run from London, but its 1.2 billion dollar liquidation involved court proceedings around the world. In 2001, the House of Lords allowed the case against the bank to proceed. Hearings began this year in London. Banker Agha Hasan Abedi founded BCCI in 1972 with an intricate structure of multiplying layers designed to evade control by authorities in the more than 70 countries in which it operated.

The bank ownership and management has been charged with crimes including money laundering, bribery of PEPs, supporting terrorism, and arms and drugs trafficking. Legitimate depositors lost millions of dollars when the bank was closed down after it was discovered that BCCI, which at its height was shown to hold assets of 20 billion dollars, had disguised huge losses and was insolvent.

The liquidators who have recovered 75 percent of the lost assets blame the Bank of England for doing nothing despite knowing BCCI was poorly managed. The problems at the bank dated at least as far back as 1985 when Price Waterhouse investigated BCCI losses. In 1988 a branch of the BCCI in Tampa in Florida in the United States was closed after being accused of money-laundering. BCCI records and the testimony of former BCCI officials document its systematic securing of central bank deposits of developing countries, its favours to PEPs, and its reliance on them for pulling strings. "While they are undoubtedly neck-deep in money laundering, it is nevertheless a common misconception that most money is laundered in offshore financial centres and developing countries, an impression that is cultivated by governments of major countries seeking to put the blame somewhere other than on their own doorsteps," says David Marchant, editor of Offshore Alert, an investigative publication based in Miami.

More money is laundered in New York and London than anywhere else in the world, says Marchant in a written interview. "Also, much of the money that is laundered in poorer countries is done by banks which are branches, subsidiaries or affiliates of banks in major countries such as the U.S. and the UK." A BBC report published March 2002 says "London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt and of course Switzerland have their own thriving offshore businesses. And many crooks prefer dealing with the big places, where the sheer volume of money changing hands covers their tracks."

The island territories often point out that "the 1.6 billion dollars found to have been looted from Nigeria by the family of the late dictator Sani Abacha was found, not in the Caribbean or the Pacific, but in reputable banks in the UK and Switzerland," the report says. "And as for Raul Salinas, brother to the ex-president of Mexico (Carlos Salinas), his looted cash ended up in the world's then largest banking group, Citibank." In 1999 a U.S. Senate investigative committee concluded in the Raul Salinas case that although there was no evidence that Citibank knowingly helped him conceal the true source of up to 100 million dollars of suspicious funds, the bank failed to implement procedures that would have avoided the dirty money.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/launder/general/2004/0820fatcat.htm