International banking has always been subject to laws and rules that apply where their head offices operate as well as via international rules and standards. For an international law to apply, it often has to be codified within a country, as even if the law is accepted and applied through international agreements or treaties, the […]
Staying alive at DHS is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC. So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the Dream directive on deferred action—are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the US Congress in 1996 and their professional careers. Christopher Crane, head of the Council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books—ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the US illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in US prisons for felonies and misdemeanors)—are targets for disciplinary action….
Given the criminal billions available to ambitious ‘private wealth handlers’ inside the world’s biggest banks, the historic willingness of financial institutions to ‘look the other way,’ and the paltry repercussions, fines and deferred prosecution, for AML (anti-money laundering) non-compliance—it’s clear that powerful incentives continue to drive (and reassure) high-wire account executives ISO under-the-table commissions from traffickers (1-2 percent), and big bonuses from appreciative employers…
For years, the US government, along with FATF (the talking head for the AML community), has told banks the key is to ‘know your customer.’
Wrong.
The message should be “Know your banker.”
Listen.
The easiest way for criminals to launder dirty dollars is simply to pay a banker to do it, someone who manages millions a year for a financial institution that will never look him in the eye and announce, no-punches-pulled, that money laundering is a criminal offense, the kind that can land you in jail.
How much more of the $378 billion transmitted via the casa de cambios and inserted into Wachovia accounts represents criminal revenue is anyone’s guess, because no further inquiries into the origin of these funds has been undertaken.