How to Halt the Terrorist Money Train

How to Halt the Terrorist Money Train

www.nytimes.com

LAST month, HSBC admitted in court pleadings that it had allowed big Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder at least $881 million. The bank also admitted to using various schemes to move hundreds of millions of dollars to nations subject to trade sanctions, including Iran, Cuba and Sudan, in violation of the Trading With the Enemy Act. “On at least one occasion,” according to a statement by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, “HSBC instructed a bank in Iran on how to format payment messages so that the transactions would not be blocked or rejected by the United States.”

(visit the link for the full news article)

To be honest that first paragraph alone, even though I have read whole books about this, still blew my mind completely.

It is literally crazy that the banks are allowed to totally get away with this.

Forget underground lizard men, secret symbols all over the place, Freemasonry in hip hop and the other dubious theories, because the banks are ruling this world and there is HARD evidence to prove it. Right in front of our eyes.

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

ETA: This is a great piece of journalism.

You'd think they'd shut them down, but that whole too big to fail thing.

It's a win-win for the government. The cartels go about their business giving the government an 'enemy' to fight, then they get 1.9 billion in 'fines' from the offending bank.

HSBC to Pay 1.9 billion US fine

so it sounds like to me that the war on terror can easily be won by shutting down these banks who launder the terrorists money... simple done cut off the money, cut off the terror, we all go home have a drink and sleep one off.

This is easy...stop paying taxes

reply to post by LvSLoLo


I have never paid taxes im 10 steps ahead

reply to post by Scope and a Beam

So a penalty of 10% of pre-tax profits of one year for proven violations of 5 years is supposed to stop those involved? Yeah, right!

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater
reply to post by LvSLoLo

 

I have never paid taxes

im 10 steps ahead

If you've bought something you've paid taxes.

If some crackhead living with grandma gets busted with rocks in grandma;s house they may try to take her house under the abuse of civil forfeiture laws even tho it was paid for before the kid was born (obviously not paid for with ill gotten drug profits) but if a bank gets caught laundering billions of dollars of illegal drug money then they just get a slap on the wrist! Why doesnt Congress go after this and leave law abiding citizens alone (ref to the obsession on Capital Hill to go after assault weapons and high capacity magazines)?

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


Oh my goodness, this is a little rich even for my cynical tastes. It is certainly fair and right to lambast and chastise the banks for thier involvement in the movement of finance on behalf of terrorist and organised criminal associations, however, the part that the banks play in all this, is that of middle man, and nothing to do with the actual SOURCE of the funds being generated, and subsequently moved.

I think the key thing to remember, is that virtually all the big "terrorist" organisations are built on foundations layed by western powers decades ago, and many of them still have contacts inside the intelligence services of western nations. Until that gigantic balls up is rectified, it will not matter one iota how the banks suffer under the gaze of anti-corruption and anti-crime initiatives, because the organisations in question will aquire thier funds via other means.

Oh sure, a crate full of American Dollars thrown out of the back of a black budget aircraft will be more costly to arrange, and less effective than just wiring the money around, but that factor alone will not prevent the tendrils of organised crime from getting what they mistakenly believe they are due. The fact is that these organisations are far too damned useful to the intelligence community in other respects, for them to ever be properly bought down, without the secret services of all the western nations opening thier records to independent oversight. This factor is always overlooked in the mass media, and is not discussed as much as it might be, due to the imponderable nature of the links between terror/crime organisations, and the intelligence services of the west.

Essentially, there is a dead zone on this issue, where that which many suspect, is so outrageous and upsetting that it barely gets discussed, even amongst subversives, conspiracists, and the like. It is little wonder therefore, that proper movement in governments world wide, and in the circles of power which influence the intelligence industry, is somewhat lacking on this matter. If you consider the depths that would have to be probed, the carreers destroyed, the secrets bought to light, which would be the fore runner to a proper de-railment of this so called money train, you will see why it is highly unlikely to ever actually happen.

reply to post by TrueBrit


I wish I could star you many times over. Your post is the imponderable by too many and the untouchable by those who know better. It is just the truth and crux of the whole matter. Hopefully someday soon it will be its own undoing, the resulting of which would be nearly unfathomable the release it would bring about. Crime would lose its means of economic support and would no longer pay.

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


Great thread, OP. (S and F.)

This just shows again who the real enemy is.

I'm sure that figure of $881Million is probably very low. I seem to remember seeing a figure of around $340Billion being mentioned when this first broke. I'm sure the cut for laundering all that dirty money would have been a good percentage. Even at 10% fees that's still $34Billion in clear profit, minus of course the paltry $1.9Billion for being found out.

Thing is, the governments and organisations like the SEC know this goes on and it only becomes a problem when the whistleblowers calls become too loud. Then it's time for a dog and pony show investigation, subsequent fine and an apology from the bank with a promise not to be naughty again, along with the usual, "lessons have been learned" and how they'll tighten up their internal controls. Nobody goes to court, nobody gets arrested and nobody has to see the inside of a jail cell, let alone a police car. On the flip side, Joe public, hawking a few spliffs to make a bit on the side will get his door kicked in by a heavily armed SWAT team and see serious jail time... if he is lucky enough to live through the initial assault.

Terrorism is just the new buzzword they like to use to make it all sound scary. Truth is, there is no terrorism, just scare mongering and manufacured events to wave at the public. Our own governments and their alphabet agencies are the ones running the drugs, the banks launder the money which is then used on the open market either for legitimate investment or for off the books operations. How much of that dirty money has been used for "Campaign Funds" over the years and used to prolong the status quo of the big parties in control? I am guessing it's quite a lot.

So, what we have is in fact our own governments and big finance simply blaming the made up bogeymen for the drug problem, when it is indeed those same people that are the biggest players of all. You only have to look at the huge increases in the heroin coming out of Afghanistan since we invaded. Nothing is being done to eradicate the crops, and we even have the troops guarding it instead of destroying it. It's only business though, and very lucrative for those in the game.

This is an interesting article but its only highlighting a small part of the problem, if you are going to talk about Islamic terrorism then the big problem is Hawala, this is the means of banking that most Islamic terrorist groups utilise and it’s impossible to trace and very difficult to disrupt.

Then there is also another bigger problem any regular banks that they do use tend to be Islamic banks that the west has no jurisdiction over. So if you did stop the western banks you would not halt terrorist financing, it would probably be just a minor inconvenience for a few groups.

Britguy and TrueBrit both get my stars. The Brits are not being fooled by all this. It seems the London fog has lifted but appears to have settled somewhere over the Atlantic just as one approaches America. Perhaps a large part of the British Empire was built of drug money in past centuries but now that the Americans have muscled-in on the trade they keep up the subterfuge by pointing to a different bogeyman in the Middle East, not even the right one.

There really is only one way to de-fund the actual terrorists and stop the insanity and erosion of liberty but it is simply more profitable to turn up the heat and create more steam with the true cause of the problem. That heat and steam also creates more fog and makes the sleight-of-hand that much easier to conceal as well.

881? pfft. I bet it was at least 2 billion.


If you don't know much about this subject like me, read TrueBrit's post.

Gentlemen, please. The very moment you shut down drug trafficing and money laundering, you effectively shut down any major operation of the CIA.

Terrorists would go haywire across the US if the CIA protection is gone. Erm.

reply to post by Scope and a Beam

When I saw the title, I assumed that this was going to be a thread about cutting off tax money to the US government. My bad.

Originally posted by LvSLoLo
This is easy...stop paying taxes

The taxes we pay are just a small percent of the monies the banking industries are paid and earmarked! We would have to rid ourselves of the Fiat money machine, fractional reserve banking, libor schemes, money laundering and the other hundreds of other schemes the big banks use to prop up their controlling interests! Taxes are really just a way of keeping the poor and middle class down!

reply to post by scorpiosin

It's working quite well. Our so-called government is really a foreign-owned corporation. They're in business to make money. Fines do quite well. What they don't tell you is that the money goes to the creditors since United States Inc is bankrupt and operating in receivership.