OF COURSE BANKS LAUNDER MONEY!

HERE ARE AT LEAST 20+ VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE
OF GOVERNMENT HEARINGS AND NEWS REPORTS ON THE TOPIC.

“Corruption is made possible by the actions of global facilitators.”

PANAMA PAPERS - ALSO SEE CHAPTER 7 HOW THE RICH PROTECT THEIR MONEY

Detecting Money Laundering  |  FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE 

The Global Banking System

 

SWIFT Chief Technology Officer Craig Young from Verizon Communications in New Jersey. Young spent over 20 years at Verizon, rising to his most recent position as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer in 2013. Bronmans, who joined SWIFT in 1985, takes up his new role as Chief Operations Officer on February 1. Most recently SWIFT's Chief Risk Officer, he has previously served as SWIFT's Head of Human Resources, Head of Lean Programme, Director of Technology Operations, and in a variety of management positions in the IT and Operations area. As Director of Technology Operations, Bronmans was responsible for the availability of all SWIFT services to the financial community, the initial establishment and build of SWIFT's operating centre in Switzerland, and the establishment of SWIFT's Hong Kong Control Centre.
 http://www.swift.com/ or follow  @swiftcommunity and LinkedIn: SWIFT  
SWIFT Press Office Tel: +32 2 655 3377
pressoffice@swift.com

GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM INFILTRATED BY CHINESE STATE HACKERS
The Global Banking System is run with SWIFT

A group of cybercriminals has breached and mapped the global banking system, and in a series of attacks has so far stolen $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh THAT THE NY FED SENT TO THEM EVEN THOUGH THERE WERE SIGNS THAT SHOWED IT WAS A FAKE MESSAGE. Experts believe the attacks were done using fraudulent messages on a money transfer network connected to the banking system.  Investigations into the ongoing attacks are still underway, and related attacks on other banks are still being uncovered. Some experts are pinning the attack on hackers from North Korea, since the tools they used share similarities to the November 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Chinese state hackers identified the initial vulnerability, and used it to infiltrate and infect the global financial system. The Chinese regime runs a large network of hackers under the General Staff Department, Third Department, of its military. These hackers carry out orders from the Chinese regime, and also often run additional operations or sell data on the side for personal financial gain. Epoch Times exposed this system in a previous investigative series. “The Chinese have already gained permanent access to the target financial networks and exfiltrated all the data they wanted for the contract for their sponsor,” the insider said. “Now they have this vulnerability, they can continue to monetize, so now they’re selling it to criminal networks.” Chinese General Says ‘Contain the United States’ by Attacking Its Finances

Legal experts question the effectiveness of federal laws meant to curb money laundering and transnational crime, and shines a light on a system that is time-consuming and expensive for taxpayers.  

"The whole regime is a waste of money," said lawyer Christine Duhaime, an internationally accredited expert on money laundering who has testified before parliamentary committees. "It seems to be completely ineffective." FinTRAC’s guidelines on what banks should consider suspicious include multiple deposits to a client’s account by third parties, a high volume of wire transfers and frequent wire transfers to a client from individuals who do not have an account with the bank.

 

THE FINANCIAL ACTION TASK FORCE

 

The Financial Action Task Force, part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that sets international standards for money-laundering laws.

John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University in New York, said even a single illegal transaction would be enough to spark a justice department investigation. "There are 20-year sentences for money laundering in the US," he said.

TRUMP

 

2017 All of Donald Trump’s Ties to Russia and Putin, in 7 Charts - POLITICO Magazine or https://archive.is/lGeXV

Trump Jr. gave a 2012 keynote speech to Baltic International Bank in Riga, Latvia which happens to have branches in three other countries: Russia, Ukraine and the UK. Late last year, the bank where Trump Jr. spoke, was fined by Latvian banking regulators for money laundering activities from 2003 through 2015. Bank regulators caught Baltic International Bank giving detailed money laundering instructions to its clients. Latvia is also home to a substantial amount of Russian cash in its banks after the banking crises in Cyprus wiped out bank investors. Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross later became Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus after the crash. 

Trump Jr. Spoke At A Bank Caught Giving Detailed Money Laundering Advice To Clients
Latvian banks were involved in the infamous Magnitsky case and central to what the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) calls the Russian Laundromat, a system that laundered $20 billion dollars.
and here

Eric Trump: My Father has 'zero conflicts of interest'

Trump owes the Banks .....

Trump adviser Schwarzman's Blackstone just got $20 billion from Saudis to buy up US infrastructure, a deal Elaine Chao will get to bless. Elaine Chao's brother-in-law/McConnell donor, Jim Breyer (wife is Angela Chao, Bank of China director) is now on the Blackstone board. 

Watch Elaine Chao – @SenateMajLdr's wife in plum Cabinet role – catch herself saying foreign money for infrastructure

Trump's *17* cabinet picks so far have more wealth than a *third of American households combined* - see Tracing the History of Skull and Bones -  find Schwarzman
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-schwarzmans-life-2015-10

 

Restrictions

on the use of cash

Restrictions on the use of cash are just some of the many laws that pervert the actions of a market economy.
Rather than serving consumers, businesses are forced to serve the government first and consumers last.The assumption on the part of government today is that possession of large amounts of cash is indicative of involvement in illegal activity. In the last thirty years since money laundering was declared a federal crime, businesses have had to walk a fine line between serving customers and serving the government. Because of that risk of confiscation, businesses want to have less and less to do with cash, as even their legitimately-earned cash is subject to seizure by the government. Financial institutions, which includes coin dealers, jewelers, and casinos, are required to report cash transactions above $10,000 as well as any activity the government might deem “suspicious.” Cash becomes such a hassle that it is almost radioactive, and many businesses would rather not deal with the burden. Using cash to buy a house is becoming impossible and it is probably only a matter of time before purchasing a car with cash will become incredibly difficult also.
Not only must cash savings be deposited in a bank account to be part of asset calculations, it has to stay there for at least 60 days so that mortgage lenders can account for the cash through at least two bank statement cycles, a process lenders called “sourced & seasoned.” “Someone who’s planning on buying a home with a mortgage should get the money into the bank as quickly as possible,” said Joe Parsons, senior loan officer with PFS Funding in Dublin, Calif. If you do, expect your bank to file a Currency Transaction Report, or CTR, to the IRS with your personal information and the amount of the deposit.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-war-on-cash-is-advancing-2016-2
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-hiding-cash-in-your-mattress-can-hurt-your-house-hunting-prospects-2016-01-20
https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/safety/manual/section8-1.pdf

launder money through a brokerage account

 

WERE PAPER LOSSES THE POINT ALL ALONG?

Clients purchasing penny stocks because they know they will drop in price? That's the theory with a notable twist - there was value in all those paper losses

Part 6 If your goal is to launder money through a brokerage account, paper losses are worth serious money. Buying imaginary shares of a stock guaranteed to lose value is an awesome way to do that. You just need someone to set it up.  ˅ EXPAND ALL PARTS SAY YOU’RE A Swiss bank and you want to launder some money for high-net-worth clients.  Here’s one way: Start by placing large quantities of the funds into a brokerage account at the bank under the name of a shell corporation.

UBS admitted that it established secret accounts for roughly 17,000 wealthy American clients “in the name of offshore companies, allowing United States taxpayers to evade reporting requirements and trade in securities as well as other financial transactions (including … using credit or debit cards linked to the offshore company accounts).”

PANAMA PAPERS

 

How an obscure U.S.nonprofit in Washington protects tax havens for the rich

WHO DO THESE PEOPLE REALLY WORK FOR?

The staff members worked for at least nine members of Congress. They included Andrea Looney, who was a legislative assistant to Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) before he became majority leader, and Brook Simmons, who was a staffer for former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.). Another traveler was Jeffrey Janas, a legislative aide to Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), who served as chairman of the House Administration Committee before pleading guilty to charges stemming from the influence-peddling investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But in 2007, following the Abramoff scandal, Congress passed rules barring lawmakers and their staffers from accepting gifts, meals and trips from lobbyists.

Center for Freedom and Prosperity's  Daniel Mitchell and Andrew F. Quinlan  won't say who their donor's are and they successfully blocked anti-tax haven legislation.

BUT we do know the center’s foundation received $119,000 out of funds raised by a financial services company in Virginia, according to tax filings. Richard W. Rahn, a former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the think tank where Mitchell also works. Rahn served as economic adviser to George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, and he was a member of the board of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. He also served as a vice president and chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Quinlan also traveled to Panama. He met with Jürgen Mossack, one of the founders of Mossack Fonseca, a global provider of offshore accounts. In an email found in the Panama Papers, Quinlan said he “worked closely” with Mossack, discussing the OECD and tax issues.

In May 2007, during a global crackdown on offshore tax havens, an obscure nonprofit lobbying group in Northern Virginia sent a fundraising pitch to a law firm in one of the biggest tax havens in the world — Panama. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity in Alexandria, Va. l ed by  U.S. citizens Director Daniel Mitchell and Andrew F. Quinlan  an economist, the other a tax expert for a Republican congressman. Quinlan is listed in the center’s tax filings as president, Mitchell as its chairman. Two other board members are named — economist Veronique de Rugy, a co-founder of the center, and a man who died in 2014, John Blundell. Only Quinlan is listed as drawing a salary. His compensation has ranged from $122,000 to $23,000 in 2014, the last year of publicly available tax filings. Representatives of the center crisscrossed the globe and sponsored discussions in 2000 and 2001, traveling to London, Paris, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Panama, Barbados and the British Virgin Islands, where Quinlan and congressional staffers met with the chief minister to discuss the placement of the Caribbean territory on the OECD’s blacklist, according to center documents and tax filings.

In 2003 alone, Mossack Fonseca created 8,471 shell companies. In the next four years, the firm set up 49,656 more, many of them in the British Virgin Islands. In 2005, Quinlan wrote to Mossack Fonseca, asking the firm for the use of its apartment in Panama. In May 2007, Quinlan sent Mossack Fonseca the eight-page fundraising pitch, promising to meet with members of Congress and Bush policymakers,“particularly those who are new to their jobs and unfamiliar with the tax competition issue.” “Here is a copy of our most recent proposal,” Quinlan wrote in an email to Mario Vlieg, a lawyer at Mossack Fonseca. “What do you think? You are the only person I have sent it to in Panama. Let me know what you like and don’t like.”

They promised to  thwart an international effort to require more transparency from tax havens AND persuade Congress, members of the George W. Bush administration and key policymakers to protect the players of the offshore world, where hundreds of thousands of shell companies had been created, often to hide money and evade taxes. “They’ve been around for years — they are very mysterious,” said Elise Bean, former staff director and chief counsel of Levin’s Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which started investigating tax havens in 2001. “They travel all around the world, and they have had a tremendous impact.” 

In July 2001, the center caught the attention of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Investigators asked the center whether it had received money from any of the foreign governments on the OECD’s blacklist, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. The center declined to answer questions about its donors.

In its federal tax filings, the center said that it had briefed the prime ministers, presidents and finance ministers of more than a dozen Caribbean and Latin American nations, and traveled to the offshore havens of the Bahamas, Barbados, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Panama, to press its cause.  In the 2007 document emailed to Mossack Fonseca, the center said it was launching an aggressive campaign on Capitol Hill to protect the secrecy of tax havens, “specifically targeting members of the tax writing, banking, budget, appropriations and commerce committees.”

Many U.S. brokerages fail to report possible money laundering: SEC official 

but now Aug 25 2015 following a 13 year loophole the U.S. rule gives investment advisers anti-money laundering duty. The rule would apply to investment advisers that must register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There are more than 11,000 of them with $62 trillion in assets, according to 2014 figures. Registered advisers provide services such as portfolio management and pension consulting to hedge funds, private equity funds and other private funds, as well as corporations, individuals and institutions.
 

Inside the Money Laundering Scheme That Citi Overlooked for Years
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/inside-the-money-laundering-scheme-that-citi-overlooked-for-years

2015 Until you start sending people to jail, the pockets are there to satisfy the penalties.
Citigroup has been reprimanded repeatedly during the past two decades for inadequately monitoring groups that use the financial system to turn dirty funds into legal means of exchange. Citigroup is still under orders from its two main regulators, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, to fix its anti-money-laundering practices. Citigroup and its subsidiaries have been cited for multiple anti-money- laundering lapses over the past two decades and under five CEOs. Banamex USA was just one thread in a global bank that carpeted the globe. The unit never had more than $3 billion in assets, compared with Citigroup’s $1.8 trillion. Yet its compliance failures were a bellwether for lapses in risk controls in other parts of the bank, including a $400 million loan fraud and embezzlement scandal in 2014 at Banamex, Citigroup’s largest international subsidiary. Citibank helped Raúl Salinas, the brother of Mexico’s president at the time, move as much as $100 million into Swiss and U.K. accounts in the mid-1990s and disguised the funds’ source, according to a 1998 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Wachovia, in 2008, admitted it had willfully failed to maintain an anti-money-laundering program linked to transactions with Mexican currency-exchange houses. HSBC agreed in 2012 to pay $1.9 billion for similar failures, as well as for sanctions violations. Both banks were found to have allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder money through their institutions.

MONEY LAUNDERING

 

 

The Inclusion of Financial Services in EU Free Trade and Association Agreements: Effects on Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Avoidance Ex-Post Impact Assessment
Number of Pages in PDF File: 275  
Keywords: European Union, free trade agreements, good governance, money laundering, tax evasion, corruption

The @TaxJusticeNet monthly podcast

Global Anti-Money laundering Research Tool

money laundering
Service and toolkit

London’s anti-money laundering requirements: money-laundering enablers face crackdown but no solution because Mr Cameron he has yet to take what experts say would be one of the most effective measures: forcing the beneficial owners of companies that possess property to be named in the Land Registry.
Estimates suggest hundreds of billions of pounds of criminal money is laundered through UK banks and their subsidiaries each year. Fraudsters can register a UK company in 24 hours for £15 through Companies House and its online registration service. More than half a million companies were set up in the UK in the past financial year and about a third were incorporated through the online service, which does not carry out any due diligence and is not subject to anti-money laundering regulation. Banks, too have come under fire for money-laundering lapses. A review last year into smaller banks by the Financial Conduct Authority found “ significant and widespread weaknesses” in the majority of those inspected. Accountants have also been criticised. About 8 per cent of those visited by their supervisory bodies were not compliant with anti-money laundering regulations in 2013/14, according to a government report.
"You need an accountant, a fiduciary agent, a lawyer, a banker, then you have all you need to get the dirty money out. It’s usually quite simple,”. He called the set up “a money laundering toolkit”  sued by the “professional enablers” of financial crime. 
Money laundering is heavily reliant on access to the professional skills of, among others, lawyers, estate agents, accountants, and company formation agents. Estate agents, banks, lawyers and other regulated entities are obliged by law to file so-called suspicious activity reports to the NCA if they become aware of a suspicious transaction.
In the Ibori case, for example, UK-based lawyer Bhadresh Gohil, a partner at a solicitors in St James’s, London, was jailed for 10 years for helping Ibori use a client account “as a private bank account”. Former banker and Harvard graduate Ellias Preko was sentenced to four and a half years for landering money for Ibori.
properties are owned through complex offshore company structures. Offshore jurisdictions typically do not reveal the names of company directors and when they do, they are often nominees. A Financial Times analysis of Land Registry data estimates that at least £122bn worth of UK property is owned through such structures. The total value is likely to be considerably higher, but is impossible to ascertain, because more than a third of Land Registry records do not give a purchase price.

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

Max Keiser breaks down how the banking system works

Jardine &  Matheson Building Opium Drug Smugglers Shanghai, China

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC has always been associated with drugs.

 

Jardine Bank the Bund Shanghai, China

Founded in 1865, HSBC became the major commercial bank in colonial China after the conclusion of the Second Opium War. If you're rusty in your history of Britain's various wars of Imperial Rape, the Second Opium War was the one where Britain and other European powers basically slaughtered lots of Chinese people until they agreed to legalize the dope trade (much like they had done in the First Opium War, which ended in 1842).

Jardine & Matheson opium drug smuggling pirates for the East India Company

The Shanghai Foreign Trade Building, built in 1920 for one of the most famous British companies operating in China. Guess its name? It was founded in 1832 by two Scotsmen in Canton, and it soon was shipping tea to England. In 1841 it was the first buyer of land in Hong Kong, and in 1844 it came to Shanghai. By the 1850s it was running steamships to India; by the 1870s it was building a railroad inland from Shanghai to Wuhan. In 1898 it helped establish Hong Kong's Star Ferry. Its headquarters were in Shanghai from 1912 until the forced move to Hong Kong after the Communist takeover. Since then, it's operated hotels, beginning with the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong in 1963. It also holds franchises for 7-11 and Pizza Hut. It quit the shipping business in 1984 and, with the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong, has moved its headquarters to Bermuda. Figured it out yet? Answer: Jardine Matheson and Company Scottish dope-runners.

• Warren Delano, Jr.: chief of Russell and Co. in Canton; grandfather of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• Russell Sturgis: his grandson by the same name was chairman of the Barings Bank in England, financiers of the Far East opium trade.
• Skull and Bones was founded at Yale in 1832 by insiders whose primary goal was to control the monetary supply in the days before the Federal Reserve System was created.

#PanamaPapers
#JardineMatheson
china opium drug
smuggling pirates

2016 Jardin mentioned in the Panama Papers

Bermuda-registered Jardine Matheson Group 

Jardine Matheson moved on to banking, ship leasing, insurance, docks, cotton mills and mines.Jardine returned to England, where in 1841, he successfully entered parliament as a Whig MP for Ashburton. When he died one year later Matheson succeeded his erstwhile business partner as the Whig MP for the same constituency. Matheson became a baronet in 1851 and was one of the richest landowners in Britain. With his fortune, made in the East at the expense of so many, he bought the Isle of Lewis where he spent hundreds and thousands of pounds building an extravagant castle. He lived a long life before dying in the South of France aged 82. Jardine Matheson Group continues to trade today from their base in Hong Kong.

• Law firm named in Panama Papers aruged disclosure proposals were too stringent
   Matheson lobbied OECD to dilute proposed tax rules 
• Jardin Matheson Archive
• Personal Names Jardine William 1784-1843  
  Matheson James 1798-1878  
  Corporate Names Jardine, Matheson & Company 1832
  British and Chinese Corporation formed 1898  
  China Sugar Refinery Company formed 1878  
  Jardine Engineering Company formed 1923  
  Jardine Spinning and Weaving Company formed 1897  Magniac & Company

 

Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer are a joke!

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal  with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a  "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about  five weeks of income for the bank.

The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows."

This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the "legitimate" banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank's teller windows. Tony Montana's henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional "American City Bank" in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain's most storied financial institutions.

Uncovering Corruption Global Witness co-founder  Gooch exposes how a global architecture of corruption
is woven into the extraction and exploitation of natural resources. Charmian Gooch co-founder of watchdog NGO Global Witness at TEDGlobal 2013 Anti-corruption activist and co-founder of Global Witness  Gooch exposes how a global architecture of corruption is woven into the extraction and exploitation. In 1999, when Global Witness proposed the idea that company books should be transparent, they were laughed at — but hundreds of civil society groups came together to fight for transparency, and now it is fast becoming the norm and law: two-thirds of the value of oil and mining companies are now covered by transparency law. This is change happening, says Gooch.

Banks Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Jail Feb 14, 2013 Warren Bank Hearing
Warren questioned top regulators from the alphabet soup that is the nation's financial regulatory structure: the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury. http://www.warren.senate.gov/

• At 1:20, she asks the question we've all been wanting someone to ask FOREVER. Then a government lawyer stumbles over his words.
• At 2:20, she rattles off another one. Then a government lawyer stumbles over his words.
• At 2:55, she asks another lawyer the same question. Said lawyer then tries to not stumble over her words.
• At 3:25, she asks the same question again. That lawyer asks for some time.
• At 3:45, she gets our back and goes for the knockout punch.
  And then right after that you reward her good behavior by sharing this with everyone on the Internet. You know you want to.

The Financial Action Task Force, part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that sets international standards for money-laundering laws.

John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University in New York, said even a single illegal transaction would be enough to spark a justice department investigation. "There are 20-year sentences for money laundering in the US," he said.

CANADIAN BANKS

 

Canadian bank helping clients bend rules to move money out of China
Some Canadian banks allow wealthy Asian investors to skirt Chinese law by helping them bring in large amounts of money that is often used to buy real estate in Vancouver. Ninety-six per cent of those transactions were also facilitated by the banks, however, even though the vast majority of that business involved suspected money laundering, according to FinTRAC, the federal agency responsible for tracking money laundering. A recent study by Macdonald Realty said 70 per cent of clients who paid more than $3-million for Vancouver houses last year were from China. They have worked around this restriction by sending millions of dollars into Vancouver-area banks through multiple wire transactions of smaller amounts by family and friends.  Banks are legally obligated to report transactions they deem suspicious to FinTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, but do not have to stop them or shut down accounts.

2015 CIBC supports clients who break China’s cash-export law to buy Vancouver homes ~ @ianjamesyoung70 
The general position among some Canadian banks was that they “feel they are not bound by Chinese law, in terms of what their clients do”, Duhaime said. “When our clients are moving money from other jurisdictions to CIBC accounts, our obligation is to ensure it is transferred in compliance with all Canadian laws,” he said. “We carefully review any unusual transactions, including from an anti-terrorist and anti-money laundering perspective.”
Canadian banks are not obliged to follow China’s rules, and nor are they obliged to report clients whom they know to have broken them – so long as they are not breaking any Canadian rules in the process. get its clients’ money out of China, regardless of Beijing’s US$50,000 annual export limit - but within the bank’s own ethical limits (and Canadian law, of course). regarding China’s US$50,000 limit: “Working around these regulations was a challenge and a complicated process, but it was a practice CIBC supported. There is no issue about this. If, for example, a CIBC client wanted to send $150,000 from China to Canada, the money had to come from three accounts belonging to three different account holders in China and be transferred to three separate accounts belonging to three separate account holders in Canada. As long as all the appropriate accounts were set up, the money could be moved.”
According to barrister Christine Duhaime, an anti-money-laundering expert, the practice of co-ordinating multiple smaller depositors - sometimes, hundreds of them - in order to perform and conceal a larger deposit is known as “structuring”. Also useful in concealing the ultimate performer of a transaction, it’s a well-known money-laundering technique, though there is no suggestion in this case that Ms Xu was engaged in anything illegal under Canadian law. A cuter nickname for the practice is “smurfing” (those busy little depositors being the smurfs).  Duhaime said that in Canadian banking circles, the practice was “quite widespread for money moving from China to Vancouver”, at least among individuals if not companies. It is done to prevent the Chinese government becoming aware of the funds’ movement, or existence (sometimes, both).

 

Bank of China

 

[see China Curriculum for more] Bank of China tower - architects I.M.Pei and S.Kung - skyscraper - Central district, HK island, Hong Kong, China.

Limiting foreign currency transfers by individuals to $50,000 a year, wealthy Chinese, including corrupt government officials, have managed to move their money out to snap up overseas property and other assets.

"Naked Officials" Investment programs that grant Chinese passport holders citizenship or residency in exchange for substantial investment have become popular with wealthy citizens and government officials.  China has been cracking down on such "naked officials", one whose spouse and children have emigrated. In May, a senior official in Guangdong province was removed from his position in what Xinhua said one of the first to lose his position.  Since the mid-1990s, an estimated 16,000 to 18,000 Communist party officials, businessmen, CEOs and other individuals have "disappeared" from China, taking with them some 800 billion yuan ($133 billion), according to a PBOC report prepared in 2008.

7/9/14 Bank of China (BOC), one of the big four state-owned commercial banks, accused of money laundering.  

Nearly 200,000 Chinese people emigrate overseas annually, and Chinese offshore investment has increased largely in the past three years, CCTV said, citing the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  For those Chinese who intend to immigrate through investment, getting their money to the destination countries in the form of foreign currency is an ongoing problem.  Migration agents in Beijing said the BOC helps immigrants move money, despite restrictions set by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which allow an individual in China only to transfer RMB worth $50,000 into foreign currency a year.  The BOC's money-transferring scheme is called "You Huitong," which can't be found on the bank's website or in any advertising leaflets.  Staff of a Beijing branch of the BOC admitted that it is a "shadowy" business, which was halted for a short period at the beginning of this year during a SAFE inspection. "We only send money to the coastal Guangdong branch," they said.  A customer service manager at the Guangdong branch explained that they send customers' money out of the country to their branches overseas, leaving them to exchange it for foreign currency.  It is more like cross-border yuan settlement, which goes around the restrictions of SAFE, the manager said. But experts said the settlement is limited to enterprises, not individuals.  CCTV said one sub-branch of the BOC in Guangdong had sent as much as six billion yuan ($970 million) overseas so far this year.  What's more, bank staff agree to provide the service to customers who can't even prove that their money is legitimate, and work together with migration agents to disguise the origin of the money.  An Australian migration agent said in a telephone interview that half of his customers who intend to invest more than five million Australian dollars ($4.7 million) choose the BOC, while the other half choose underground banks. ecns.cn/cns-wire/2014/07-09/123249.shtml

7/11/14 BOC halts cross-border yuan business

The Bank of China is said to have suspended cross-border yuan business for individuals at sub-branches in Guangdong Province after China Central Television reported alleged money laundering committed by the nation’s biggest foreign exchange bank.  A branch employee at BOC in Guangzhou said the service has been suspended and there’s no timetable for its resumption. One of the bank’s branches in North America told Shanghai Daily the service was suspended months ago, without giving the reason.  CCTV said earlier that BOC ignored the annual cap on foreign exchange for individuals and helped Chinese emigrants to transfer as much money as they want overseas without determining the source of the money.  The current regulations allow individuals to convert yuan into a maximum of US$50,000 worth of foreign currency per year.  But an opaque trial in Guangdong allowed individuals to transfer 300,000 yuan (US$48,647) overseas without administrative approval.  The bank denied the allegation in the TV report and said the service was a legal investment program.

 

A US Senate investigative committee reported that in 2007 and 2008 HSBC Mexico sent to the United States about US$7 billion in cash.

"Bulk cash shipments could reach that volume only if they included illegal drug proceeds," the committee concluded.

RISK ASSESSMENT

 

“Corruption is made possible by the actions of global facilitators.”

Nothing bad will happen so they do it!

RISK ASSESSMENT: VERY PROFITABLE, NO JAIL TIME, SMALL FINANCIAL LOSS, LITTLE BAD PRESS.

David Bagley, HSBC Holdings (HSBA) Plc’s top compliance officer, resigned during a U.S. Senate hearing. He took the fall not The Bank's Chairman Douglas Flint.

HSBC banking group is being fined up to $2bn, for not preventing money-laundering
a highly profitable activity between 2004 and 2012 with Mexico Drug Cartel.

HSBC Plc apologized to shareholders yesterday as it disclosed a US$700 million charge to cover the cost of US penalties for lapses including its failure to enforce money-laundering controls in Mexico.

HSBC paid a fine of US$28 million to Mexican authorities for non-compliance with money laundering controls.

HSBC Mexico acknowledged in a statement that it failed to report 39 suspicious transactions and had been late in reporting 1,729 others.

Another CEO Bob Diamond presided over illegal behavior by Barclays’s staff.
If he didn’t know what they were doing, that just speaks to his inability to be an effective CEO.
Trade Minister Lord Green should break his silence over allegations of money-laundering at HSBC when he was the bank's chief executive and chairman.
David Bagley, HSBC Holdings (HSBA) Plc’s top compliance officer, resigned during a U.S. Senate hearing. Investigators working for Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan have established a decade-long pattern of behavior in which HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, provided money-laundering services to drug traffickers in Mexico and criminals around the world. The bank also broke U.S. laws restricting transactions with Iran. HSBC is also reported to be under investigation for fixing benchmark interest rates, including the London interbank offered rate, known as Libor, and its euro counterpart, Euribor. It is a prominent member of 10 Libor panels. These were not isolated occurrences.
The Bank of England and the U.K. Financial Services Authority would be foolish to ignore what has happened at HSBC. They should expect members of Parliament to take a keen interest, particularly given the Libor scandal at Barclays Plc. (BARC)
bloomberg.com\

 

UK FINANCIAL SERVICES

Forrmer Daily Telegraph editor and historian Max Hastings
said a “senior central banker” recently told him that London is now considered to be the “money-laundering capital of the world”. Many laws and regulations have never been effectively enforced by financial regulators, and banks and other financial institutions know they can get away with paying lip service to the rules. Although the FSA has had the power to prosecute this offense for some time, it has rarely, if ever, used it. These rules are routinely flouted by the financial institutions. Predictably, the regulator did not name the banks that had ignored the rules, nor gave any indication they would do so. Predictably, the FSA also failed to take any public action against any of these institutions for this egregious flouting of the rules. You only have to look at the salary levels paid to compliance officers and then compare them to the salaries paid to traders and business getters, to see the huge discrepancies in functional importance the banks place on compliance. The compliance function is awash with processes and procedures, they have manuals full of them, but all they are doing is seeking to demonstrate to any regulator that, if asked, they complied with the process. But any process that is not rigorously tested and then analyzed by a skilled and experienced person will be worthless. If we have a regulatory agency that repeatedly refuses to enforce the anti-money laundering regulations, and is sufficiently inept to accept that the level of compliance being provided by the banks and other financial institutions can be performed using a ‘tick box’ mentality, it provides a key part of the answer as to why London is now the money laundering capital of the world.

U.S NEW YORK

 

 

The New York agency alleged that Standard Chartered conspired with Iranian clients to route nearly 60,000 U.S. dollar payments through Standard Chartered's New York branch "after first stripping information from wire transfer messages used to identify sanctioned countries, individuals and entities." New York regulators called the bank a rogue institution and quoted one of its executives as saying: "You (expletive) Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians."

The order also identifies an October 2006 "panicked message" from a London group executive director who worried the transactions could lead to "very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the group."  If proven, the scheme would violate state money-laundering laws. The order also accuses the bank of falsifying business records, obstructing governmental administration, failing to report misconduct to the state quickly, evading federal sanctions and other illegal acts.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/story/2012-08-06/Iran-money-laundering/56823924/1

There is a long list of names of the Pirate Opium Drug Smuggling American and European family fortunes which were built on the "China"(opium) trade:

 

Most Obama “Economic Advisors” Raised Money for Democrats March 5, 2009

Barack Obama's newly named Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the real-world Americans being asked to help solve the nation's financial crisis, includes a union executive who took the Fifth in a federal probe, a billionaire whose failed bank pioneered the subprime mortgage market, and deep-pocket donors who gave or gathered nearly $1.2 million for the president's campaign. By Jerry Seper The Washington Times
In all, 11 of the 16 board members donated or raised money for Democrats in the last election, according to a Washington Times review of campaign finance records. They include the president and chief operating officer of the American arm of UBS Investment Bank, the Swiss-based bank now at the center of a widening tax evasion probe by the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service. In announcing the board's creation, Mr. Obama described its members as “distinguished citizens outside the government” who were qualified on the basis of achievement, experience, independence and integrity to “bring a diverse set of perspectives and voices from different parts of the country and different sectors of the economy to bear in the formulation and evaluation of economic policy.” The board is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose only political contribution last year was $2,300 to Mr. Obama. “It is distressing to see the president turning to his heavy finance hitters as consultants,” said Craig Holman, legislative director for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks political fundraising and its influence on government policy.

BANKING CONSOLIDATION

 

But Who Bought BankUnited Inc?

The buyers include: buyout investor J. Christopher Flowers, of J.C. Flowers & Co., LLC ; hedge fund operator John Paulson of Paulson Investment Company, Inc. and the financial funds Stone Point Capital George Soros' SSP Offshore LLC; Silar MCF-I LLC; and MSD Capital, which manages capital for Michael Dell and family. The coalition had applied to the Office of Thrift Supervision in hopes of converting IndyMac from a mutual savings bank to a stock-held institution. The buyers are operating as a thrift holding company controlled by IMB Management Holdings and led by Steven Mnuchin, chair of the private equity firm Dune Capital Management LP. Terry Laughlin, a former head of Merrill Lynch Bank & Trust, will serve as chief executive of IndyMac.
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is lead counsel to the consortium, handling M&A, regulatory, structuring and tax matters lead by Paul Glotzer and William Groll. Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider partners Harvey Weiner and Troy Garris also advised on mortgage banking compliance and regulatory matters.
Corporate partner Mitchell Eitel and tax partner Ronald Creamer from Sullivan & Cromwell advised Flowers on the matter. Eitel had previously advised Flowers on its canceled plan to acquire Sallie Mae as well as on its successful acquisition of Fox-Pitt Kelton.
Corporate partners Barrie Covit and Thomas Bell from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett also advised Flowers on the deal along with tax partner John Creed and executive compensation and employee benefits counsel Jamin Koslowe. MSD Capital and Stone Point Capital were represented by Peter Gordon, Maripat Alpuche, and Gary Mandel, also of Simpson Thacher.
Fried Frank corporate partners Tom Vartanian, David Ansell, and Brian Mangino advised Paulson. SSP Offshore was represented by Maurice Lefkort at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and S&C bank regulatory partner Andrew Gladin. 
"This agreement achieves the goals that were set out by the chairman and board when the FDIC was named conservator of IndyMac in July," says FDIC Deputy Director James Wigand in a statement. "Unfortunately, as expected, IndyMac's liability structure, combined with aggressive real estate lending in California, had a significant impact on losses."
The deal hit a snag early last week when Fannie Mae demanded the FDIC settle a claim it has about home loans purchased from IndyMac, requesting that it buy back close to $1 billion in failed mortgages. Of the 25 banks that have failed so far this year, IndyMac is the only one the FDIC struggled to immediately unload. The deal, announced Friday, is expected to close in late January or early February.

 

Wolfsberg Anti Money Laundering Questionnaire 2014 pdf

The Wolfsberg Group consists of the following leading international financial institutions: Banco Santander, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi  UFJ, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Société Générale and UBS which  aim to develop financial services industry standards, and related products, for Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering and  Counter Terrorist Financing policies.