Guardian: Attorney-general knew of BAE and the £1bn. Then concealed it

[133724]

Goldsmith hid secret money transfers from international anti-corruption organisation

British investigators were ordered by the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith to conceal from international anti-bribery watchdogs the existence of payments totalling more than £1bn to a Saudi prince, the Guardian can disclose.

The money was paid into bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar for his role in setting up BAE Systems with Britain's biggest ever arms deal. Details of the transfers to accounts in the US were discovered by officers from the Serious Fraud Office during its long-running investigation into BAE. But its inquiry was halted suddenly last December.

...

Sources close to the US justice department, whose members help to police the international anti-corruption treaty to which Britain is a signatory, confirmed that UK officials had not disclosed to the group that huge payments had gone to the prince in connection with the al-Yamamah arms deal.

In those confidential briefings at the OECD headquarters in Paris earlier this year, the UK said "national security" reasons were behind the decision to halt the SFO investigation into the case.

...

Standing beside George Bush, a close family friend of former US ambassador Prince Bandar, Mr Blair said it would have "wrecked" the relationship with Saudi Arabia if he had allowed investigations to go on. "This investigation, if it had gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations and investigation being made of the Saudi royal family," he said.

"My job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don't believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2098232,00.html

All this through a Bush managed bank...

[Octafish]

1. Riggs Bank, at the time, was under the chairmanship of Prescott Bush

Your post should have 50 KRs, 133724. It exposes the whole warmongering cabal to the light of day.

Some light from way back in 2004:

Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

By Joseph Kay
24 Aug 2004 wsws.org

The Justice Department announced on Friday that it is launching a criminal investigation into Riggs Bank. In recent months, the Washington-based bank has become engulfed in a scandal related to charges of money-laundering, corruption and terrorist financing.

Riggs, which touts itself as “the most important bank in the most important city in the world,” has been known for decades as the bank of the Washington elite, including politicians, foreign ambassadors and the wealthy. It has held presidential accounts stretching back to the time of the Civil War, and is a prominent fixture in the political and social establishment of the nation’s capital.

Or rather, it was a prominent fixture. In July, PNL Financial Services agreed to buy Riggs for $779 million. The sale will become final by early next year.

The bank’s prominent embassy and international operations will be shut down in an attempt to bury a scandal that has the potential of becoming much larger. That an institution like Riggs could so quickly disintegrate is an indication of the extent of the corruption that has overtaken American finance and government.

There are three separate activities for which Riggs has come under investigation: (1) its relationship with the Saudi royal family and the potential financing of two of the September 11 hijackers through an account owned by the wife of the Saudi ambassador; (2) its relationship with the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea; and (3) its banking business with the former military dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet.

The Saudi accounts

The public revelations concerning the bank’s relationship with Saudi Arabia came mainly through the publication of a Newsweek article on December 2, 2002 (“The Saudi Money Trail”). The news magazine reported that in January 2000, two of the hijackers who were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon—Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar—received monetary aid and other assistance from Omar al-Bayoumi.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/rigg-a24_prn.shtml

That means money could laundered, hidden and, uh, used for other things.
Like fixing elections.

[seemslikeadream]

2. other things.

The dictator of the month club? Pinochet

[Octafish]

8. Despots, Deposits & Directors

With all on their election-fixing plates, you don't happen to think the Department of Justice ever got around to getting to this, do you?

Despots, Deposits & Directors

Paul Braverman
The American Lawyer
10-22-2004


In January 2003, Steven Pfeiffer was elected chairman of Fulbright & Jaworski. Pfeiffer, a partner in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, became the first person outside Houston to hold the position. The firm's press release also noted his position on the board of Riggs National Corp., the parent company of Riggs Bank.

A few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from Pfeiffer's office, U.S. Senate investigators were already looking hard at Riggs because of reports that money deposited in the bank had been used by the 9/11 terrorists. The probe would soon include charges that the bank had evaded an international freeze when it sent millions to client Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.

Last summer, the Senate issued a report on the Riggs/Pinochet connection, which noted the role Pfeiffer played in the payments. One eager reader was Baltasar Garzon, Spain's crusading magistrate-judge, who has pursued Pinochet for years. In September, Garzon issued a criminal complaint against Pfeiffer and others for money laundering. Garzon asked the U.S. Department of Justice to freeze Pfeiffer's assets until he posts a bond and answers questions about the payments. (By mid-October Justice had not responded to the request.) In addition, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., has opened a criminal inquiry into the Riggs matter, and Pfeiffer has been named in a shareholder derivative suit.

The relationship between Pinochet and the soon-to-be-defunct Riggs dates to the 1970s, when Riggs made "vast sums" by financing Pinochet's arms deals, says Peter Kornbluh, author of "The Pinochet File." The Senate report, by its subcommittee on investigations, details how Riggs' leadership "accepted millions of dollars in deposits from him with no serious inquiry into the source of his wealth ... set up offshore shell corporations ... altered the names of his personal account to disguise his ownership ... concealed the existence of the Pinochet accounts" from federal regulators. The report lays out a chronology:

• In 1998 Garzon indicted Pinochet for genocide and torture, and froze his bank accounts throughout the world. At the time, Pinochet had as much as $8 million on deposit at Riggs.

• In May 2001, acting on that order, a Bermuda bank froze its Pinochet accounts. That same day, Riggs withdrew $500,000 of Pinochet's money, and sent him 10 cashier's checks for $50,000 each by overnight delivery.

• A few days later a Riggs executive asked Pfeiffer, an international finance specialist, to look into the bank's obligations regarding the Pinochet accounts. Andres Rigo, a senior adviser with Fulbright, wrote a memo that discussed Pinochet's legal troubles throughout the world.

• Pfeiffer forwarded Rigo's memo to the bank's general counsel with a letter describing it as an overview of "attempts to freeze and/or seize General Pinochet's assets," as well as efforts by Garzon to locate Pinochet's assets in the United States. Pfeiffer told Senate investigators that he didn't tell the other directors, and didn't raise any concerns with bank officials because he assumed that due diligence had been performed when the accounts were opened. But the bank had already been cited by the OCC because high-risk accounts "were not being appropriately identified, documented, and monitored."

• Several months later, Riggs again sent Pinochet 10 cashier's checks for $50,000 each, and again in April 2002.

• In March 2002 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Treasury Department agency charged with enforcing money laundering and bank secrecy laws, learned about the Pinochet accounts. It began to investigate and pressured Riggs to close the accounts. In June the bank again queried Pfeiffer: If we close the accounts, can we send the money to Pinochet, or does it have to be turned over to a court?

CONTINUED...

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1098217036489

Every day, it gets worse. For Them.



You? You get better.

[133724]

7. What can I say... You can lead a Democrat to water but you can't make him drink...

It takes years to change a culture..

let alone a culture of denial....

[Octafish]

9. The Bush-Riggs Connection

Gee. I thought WE were the good guys.

The Bush-Riggs Connection

The decision last week by federal regulators to fine Riggs Bank $25 million for a "willful, systemic" violation of anti-money-laundering laws is raising new questions about whether the Bush administration's ties to powerful moneyed interests is unduly influencing U.S. foreign and national security policy. Riggs Bank is headed by longtime Bush family friend Joe Allbritton, employs President Bush's uncle Jonathan as a top executive, and other executives have been financial donors to the Bush campaign. The bank is at the center of a controversy, according to the Wall Street Journal, for failing to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian and Equatorial Guinean embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) "said members of the bank's board of directors should be held to account for failing to exercise their watchdog role over Riggs's operations" and said refusal to follow money laundering laws "allows terrorists to funnel their blood money through the system."

CONNECTION – JONATHAN BUSH AND RIGGS: Jonathan Bush, President Bush's uncle, was appointed CEO of Riggs Bank's investment arm in May of 2000, just months after his nephew secured the nomination for the presidency. At the time of the appointment, Jonathan Bush had already become a major financial backer of his nephew, rising to "Bush Pioneer" status by raising more than $100,000 for his nephew in 2000. The move solidified the relationship between Jonathan Bush and Riggs, which was originally initiated in 1997 when, according to American Banker newsletter, Riggs paid Bush $5.5 million for his smaller investment firm. That transaction, according to the NYT, "deepened links to the Bushes." While Riggs denies any connection between Bush and the accounts being investigated in the money laundering probe, Riggs President Timothy Lex told the Washington Times in 1997 that "there's a blurring of distinctions between banks, mutual-fund families, broker dealers and everything else across the board."

CONNECTION - ALLBRITTON-BUSH LINK: Allbritton, who said during the federal probe that he was stepping down from Riggs's board, also was close to the Bush family. As the NYT reported, he (along with Riggs client Saudi Prince Bandar) was a financial backer of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, with National Journal noting he contributed between $100,000 - $250,000 to the project. And there also appears to be a personal bond with the current President Bush: As the 2/15/01 WP noted, "When President Bush climbed out of his limousine on Inauguration Day at the corner of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, he spotted Allbritton, waved and said, 'Hey Joe, how are you doing?'" That might have something to do with the fact that, according to the 11/7/2000 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Allbritton-owned TV station KATV in Little Rock broke 39 years of precedent and publicly endorsed Bush in the 2000 presidential election. The station, which is the biggest in the state, proceeded to air its endorsement 10 times throughout Arkansas, and refused to give equal time to Democrats "who asked for the time to present an alternative to the station's endorsement."

ACTION – LOOSENING BANKING REGS THAT COULD AFFECT RIGGS: According to Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's "Age of Sacred Terror," upon taking office the Bush administration tried to halt efforts to tighten international banking laws – some of which may have affected Riggs. As he notes, the new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush administration opposed Clinton administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center."

ACTION - HIDING INFORMATION THAT COULD BE DAMAGING TO RIGGS: Newsweek reported that checks to "two Saudi students in the United States who provided assistance to two of the September 11 hijackers" may have come "from an account at Washington's Riggs Bank in the name of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan." This, and other details, were reportedly part of the bipartisan House-Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the Saudi money flow after 9/11. Yet, instead of allowing the committee's final report to be published in full, "Bush administration officials, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, have adamantly refused to declassify the evidence" surrounding the transactions.

ACTION – RESUMING RELATIONS WITH SORDID RIGGS CLIENT: Riggs's fines were also in relation to its business with Equatorial Guinea – the oil-rich West African country headed by brutal dictator Gen. Teodoro Obiang. As the LA Times notes, though the country's offshore oil fields "generate hundreds of millions of dollars, there are few signs of the petroleum boom" there, and the Guinean ambassador admits "the country's oil funds are held in an account at Riggs Bank" controlled by the dictator. But while the IMF and other international institutions have refused to do business with the regime until it accounts for its country's financial resources, the Bush administration "initiated a political thaw with the Obiang regime" in late 2001, "authorizing the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Equatorial Guinea, which had been closed six years earlier, in large part due to the country's horrific human rights record." The move came even though "there's been little, if any, improvement" on human rights.

CONTINUED...

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/06/b99415.html#3

PS: What Dorothy Parker said about "Horticulture."

[Octafish]

10. BIG MISTAKE: Should've written: ''JONATHAN Bush.''

Truly sorry about the mistake and any confusion it might have caused. Habit...

Here's the skinny:

Web Site Cites Bush-Riggs Link

By Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 2004; Page E02

A political Web site written by a Democratic operative drew attention yesterday to the fact that President Bush's uncle, Jonathan J. Bush, is a top executive at Riggs Bank, which this week agreed to pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering.

Jonathan Bush, who is a major fundraiser for his nephew, was appointed in 2000 to run Riggs Investment Management Co. His association with Riggs began when he headed J. Bush & Co., a New Haven, Conn., company he created in 1970 and built to offer advice on money management.

Riggs bought J. Bush & Co. in 1997 to help create a one-stop financial outlet offering a range of services, from insurance to securities trading and investment advice. News reports at the time said investment bankers estimated the purchase price, which was not disclosed, as $5.5 million.

The headline posted yesterday on the Web site, www.davidsirota.com, reads, "Bush's Uncle Is Executive At Bank Fined for Laundering Saudi Money."

Regulators have not charged the bank with money laundering, but they have charged that Riggs failed to comply with laws that require banks to report to law enforcement officials any suspicious transactions. Regulators have also said the bank didn't take the required steps to prevent money laundering.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28396-2004May14.html

More connections:

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2851&name=Jonathan-J-Bush

Still, Prescott Jr's done a lot of, um, business in China:

President's uncle shares Bush family ties to China

[BornagainDUer]

3. Such a game. Prosecuting corruption takes a back seat to

"foreign relations". :eyes:

It is a standard MO for the fascists.

K&R

[Rex]

4. So let us see, both the UK and the US AGs are committing fraud

in broad daylight, money is getting laundered by who knows who nowadays, the BFEE reers it's 9 headed face and we get a non-answer from both parties.

Is it enough yet?

[133724]

5. 9 headed face

Sounds like The Beast of Revelation...

But then I think it is.....

Like a giant octopussy with it's tentacles reaching into every part of the world...

[banana republican]

6. KICK FOR THE IDIOTS AT DU