"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves,
in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
– Political economist Frederic Bastiat, The Law [1850]

“I used to think of Wall Street as a financial center. I now think of it as a crime scene.”
– Filmmaker Danny Schecter, Plunder (2009)

BANKS ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department. 
It does NOT look for tax fraud, or drug trafficking because then you'd find the real criminals.
Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is a Brussels based banking consortium, which is the nerve center of the global banking industry.
The majority of international interbank messages use the SWIFT network. As of September 2010, SWIFT linked more than 9,000 financial institutions in 209 countries and territories, who were exchanging an average of over 15 million messages per day (compared to an average of 2.4 million daily messages in 1995).[4] SWIFT transports financial messages in a highly secure way but does not hold accounts for its members and does not perform any form of clearing or settlement. SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer; rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other.

It is a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. How the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift. That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.The data does not allow the government to track routine financial activity, like A.T.M. withdrawals, confined to this country, or to see bank balances, Treasury officials said. And the information is not provided in real time — Swift generally turns it over several weeks later.

Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services.

Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

U.S. Treasury officials said Swift was EXEMPT FROM AMERICAN LAWS restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/03/16/us-cheats-on-swift-agreement-with-oral-requests/

2016 Bangladesh Bank hackers compromised SWIFT software, warning issued hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered.  The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist. The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.  Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing. The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said.

BANKS ROLE IN TERRORISM

Q: How do terrorists get financed? A: HSBC ALSO  BSI + BCCI 

The BCCI-CIA Connection: Just How Far Did It Go?
NEWSWEEK magazine issue dated Dec 7, 1992
BCCI was involved in some of the most sensitive intelligence operations of the Reagan-Bush years, including the secret sales of arms to Iran. When questions were raised about the CIA's ties to BCCI after the shutdown of the bank, however, spokesmen for the agency insisted that its hands were clean. "Any allegations of unlawful use of BCCI by the agency are without foundation," the CIA said in a statement.
Congressional investigators and others familiar with BCCI have their own theories about the CIA's conduct. There are strong suspicions that the agency wanted to protect an important intelligence asset.

As Norman Bailey, a former National Security Council official, said the CIA was not interested in "blowing the BCCI cover." There is another alarming possibility: some investigators believe a portion of money stolen from BCCI's depositors financed covert operations sponsored by the U.S. government. If BCCI's frauds were exposed, this source of funds would dry up. There are even indications that CIA officials were involved in the founding of BCCI.

One former officer of the bank recalls a conversation he had in the early 1980s with a close associate of Abedi's, a Pakistani who had worked for United Bank and then joined BCCI when it was established. The Pakistani said that Abedi had worked with the CIA during his United Bank days and that the CIA had encouraged him in his project to launch BCCI, since the agency realized that an international bank could provide valuable cover for intelligence operations. The Pakistani mentioned one U.S. intelligence official by name: Richard Helms, the director of the CIA until early 1973. Helms later became a legal client of Clark Clifford's and a business partner of two BCCI insiders. "What I have been told," says this source, "is that it wasn't a Pakistani bank at all. The guys behind the bank weren't Pakistani at all. The whole thing was a front."
Helms has described reports of his involvement in the BCCI takeover of First American as absolute nonsense. Yet regardless of what Helms says, no one can deny that virtually every major character in the takeover was connected in one way or another to U.S. intelligence:
George Olmsted, head of the OSS's China section during the war, controlled Financial General Bankshares (later First American Bankshares) until 1977.

BCCI: The Bank of the CIA
Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Quaterly Spring 1993
Jack Colhoun was Washington correspondent for the (New York) Guardian news weekly from 1980 to 1992. He has a Ph.D. in history and specializes in post-World War II U.S. foreign policy. His soon-to-be-published book The George Bush File (Los Angeles: ACCESS, 1993) includes reprints of several of his articles cited below.
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal opens a window with a spectacular view of a subject usually shrouded in secrecy: How the CIA uses banks to finance clandestine operations.
The view is spectacular because BCCI, which earned the moniker the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals International,” worked closely with former Director of Central Intelligence William Casey and the Reagan administration's off-the-shelf arms Enterprise. BCCI financed some of the Enterprise's arms-for- hostages deals with Iran. Arms merchants linked to the October Surprise banked with BCCI. The CIA funneled funds through the bank to underwrite the Agency's secret wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
But BCCI's ties to the shadowy world of intelligence go deeper. Clark Clifford and Richard Helms--retired, but still connected senior members of the U.S. intelligence community--helped pave the way for BCCI's secret acquisition of the Washington, D.C.- based banking network, Financial General Bankshares. Sheikh Kamal Adham, the founder of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, also played a key role on behalf of BCCI in the takeover of Financial General, which was renamed First American Bankshares.
Casey met “every few months” with Agha Hassan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of BCCI, in Washington, D.C. and Islamabad, Pakistan, over a three-year period in the 1980s. Casey and Abedi talked about Iran-Contra arms deals, the Agency-funded war in Afghanistan, and the ever volatile situation in the Persian Gulf. Abedi even made arrangements for Casey's travels in Pakistan.1
1. For the Casey-Abedi meetings, see Peter Truell and Larry Gutwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, The World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 133; and NBC News, Sunday Today, February 23, 1992.

2016 The opium farmers with the police on their side Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan (1994-2015)

11/18/14  Iran uses China bank to transfer funds to Quds-linked companies

There is no trace of Shenzhen Lanhao Days Electronic Technology Co Ltd at its listed address in the beige and pink-tiled "Fragrant Villa" apartment complex in this southern Chinese city. The building's managers say they’ve never heard of it. But a Western intelligence report reviewed by Reuters says Shenzhen Lanhao is one of several companies in China that receives money from Iran through a Chinese bank. Such transfers help to finance international operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' elite Quds Force, the report said.  The Quds provides arms, aid and training for pro-Iranian militant groups in the Middle East, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Shi'ite Muslim militias in Iraq. They have also armed and trained government forces in Syria's civil war in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, U.S. and European officials say.

9/22/14 RBS does business with Hamas
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/22/uk-royal-bank-scot-natwest-hamas-idUKKCN0HH29I20140922

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court judge erred in dismissing the two lawsuits against the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS.L) unit over its dealings with Interpal, a London-based charity linked to Hamas.  Writing for a three-judge appeals court panel, Circuit Judge Pierre Leval said the U.S. Antiterrorism Act required a showing only that NatWest knew or was deliberately indifferent to whether Interpal provided material support to Hamas, "irrespective of whether Interpal's support aided terrorist activities of the terrorist organisation."  The decision covers victims of attacks from 2002 to 2005, and could make it easier to pursue U.S. civil claims that banks turned a blind eye to client activity linked to terrorism.

9/22/14 Brooklyn Jury Concludes Arab Bank Liable for Terror Attack Deaths
The case is Linde v. Arab Bank Plc, 04-cv-02799, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

Arab Bank Plc established in Jerusalem in 1930 — which has 600 branches worldwide and in Palestine — served as paymaster to the terrorists and should be held accountable for Hamas-backed suicide bombings that killed several Americans in the early 2000's. They provided services to terror operatives and charities controlled by Hamas and to have helped the Saudi Committee for the Support of Intifada Al Quds distribute benefits of more than $5,000 to families of suicide bombers and other so-called martyrs. Arab Bank Plc, is owned partly by the Jordan’s government, had made public statements that it “considered Israel to be the enemy” and distributed a calendar featuring “destroyed villages of Palestine.” This is the first time a bank has been tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which lets victims of foreign terror attacks sue for compensation.  Victims of the bombings and their families say the bank funded the attacks. prosecutors claimed payments were funneled through the bank to the families of Hamas suicide bombers.

Brendan Pierson New York Law Journal July 18, 2011
Victims of terrorist attacks against Israel by Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad can proceed with a lawsuit accusing Bank of China Ltd. of knowingly allowing money transfers that funded the terror groups, a state judge in Manhattan has ruled.

China Bank In Keren Elmaliach v. Bank of China Ltd.

New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara R. Kapnick ruled that while banks generally have no duty to protect non-customers from intentional wrongs committed by its customers, the plaintiffs had alleged facts suggesting that the state-owned Chinese bank was specifically told that it was funding terrorism and took no action. Kapnick also refused to dismiss the case on forum non conveniens grounds. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of about 50 people either injured or related to those who were killed in rocket attacks carried out in Israel from 2005 through 2007 by Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. Both groups have been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the United States.
Bank of China began providing services to the groups in 2003, administering accounts registered to Said al-Shurafa, a senior operative in both groups. Between 2003 and 2007, the bank executed "dozens" of wire transfers amounting to millions of dollars for the groups, according to Kapnick's opinion. The transfers were executed through Bank of China's branch offices in the United States.
The plaintiffs allege the bank knew the money it was transferring was being used to fund terrorism since at least April 2005, when Israeli counterterrorism officers met with China's security and central bank authorities and demanded the transfers be stopped. Although China's central bank told Bank of China of the demand, the bank continued allowing the transfers, according to the suit.
Plaintiffs also allege Bank of China should have known the transferred funds were being used for illegal activity because of various "red flags," such as money being withdrawn as soon as it was deposited and wire transfers made in amounts slightly less than round figures. Plaintiffs are seeking damages under Israel's Civil Wrongs Ordinance. Bank of China moved to dismiss the case, both on the grounds that it never had knowledge the wire transfers were funding terrorism and that continuing with the action in New York was inconvenient to the parties. Kapnick distinguished this case from Licci v. American Express Bank Ltd., 704 F.Supp.2d 403, which was dismissed in 2010. The plaintiffs in that case, she said, never alleged the bank had explicit notice of the terrorism. "In contrast, the plaintiffs herein allege that BOC was specifically advised by Chinese officials that Shurafa's accounts were being used to fund terrorism, but nevertheless continued to facilitate the wire transfers." She also noted that in a separate case in the Southern District of New York, Wultz v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 755 F.Supp.2d 1 (2010), which also names Bank of China as a defendant, the federal judge had found that the alleged contacts between Israeli and Chinese officials were enough to support an inference that the bank had notice that the wire transfers were funding terrorism. The judge handed a small victory to Bank of China, writing "that the alleged red flags which arose in connection with Shurafa's account activity prior to April 2005 would, at best, impute constructive knowledge to BOC, and thus could not alone suffice as a basis for liability." However, Kapnick said she would not dismiss claims arising before April 2005 yet, saying that "a final determination shall await discovery on the general question of BOC's relationship with Shurafa and knowledge of his activities with Hamas from the time the accounts were opened in 2003." She also rejected the bank's forum non conveniens argument, noting it was conducting discovery in New York in Wultz. "The bank's failure to seek a forum non conveniens dismissal in that forum significantly undercuts any claim of hardship," she said. "To the contrary, dismissing this action in favor of a Chinese forum would only increase the hardship on both parties by requiring that discovery on the same issues proceed in two different countries."

Robert J. Tolchin, of counsel to Jaroslawicz & Jaros, who represents the plaintiffs, said Kapnick's decision was "right on the mark."

Walter P. Loughlin of K&L Gates represents Bank of China. "My client and I are reviewing the court's opinion. No decision to appeal or not to appeal has yet been made," he said Thursday.

Shanghai and the West: First Contact James Spigelman  Scholarly Papers Abstract:     

kkThis paper explores the first contact between China and the West in Shanghai in the 1830’s. Contact began with a covert mission for the East India Company on The Lord Amherst in 1832. The mission delivered a petition requesting the right to trade in Shanghai, contrary to the rule that all such trade had to occur through Guangzhou (Canton). Shanghai was already a great trading port and mercantile city. The geography and social structure of the city at the time is set out in detail. This first contact was followed up immediately by the British opium smugglers, based in Guangzhou, led by William Jardine. Those activities were supported by a Protestant missionary, Karl Gutzlaff, on the Jardine Matheson & Co opium clipper The Sylph.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 44

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Drugs and Money: Why Harvard Protects the Drug Trade
WHY THE HARVARD CORPORATION PROTECTS THE DRUG TRADE. Part 1   Part 2 Part 3 © 2000

Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs in 2001 And The Results Are Staggering

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