U.S. Department of Justice: International Criminals Launder Billions of Dollars Through U.S. Financial Institutions, and Invest Profits in Publicly Traded Companies
April 25th, 2008I had always assumed the entire business of the markets to be a massive criminal enterprise that allowed public participation simply because it made a few people extremely wealthy… Assume maximum criminal behavior…
—Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets
I told you that trying to trade this crap, as a retailer, is the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight, and that the smart money doesn’t rely on luck.
—Jim Cramer on Staying Upwind When You Start a Fire
When I think of large, private capital accounts in London and the Bahamas, where the bulk of recent U.S. debt purchases are originating from, I think of narcotics money. Lots of narcotics money.
—Who Is Financing America’s Current Account Deficit?
So the SWAT teams are going to start kicking in doors on Wall Street? HAHA. Wrong.
My wild guess is that if just the heroin proceeds were pulled out of the system, the whole show would collapse within 24 hours.
Expect a “War on Drugs” type response to what they’re calling organized crime’s involvement in the financial markets. Upstarts will have the guns pointed at their heads while the big institutional stuff—that has been going on for decades—will continue without skipping a beat.
Via: Reuters:
Crime groups operating as “mobsters without borders” have gained significant footholds in global markets and provide logistic support to terrorists, the United States said on Wednesday.
Launching a campaign against such international criminals, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said they were more adaptable and sophisticated than La Cosa Nostra and other syndicates the U.S. government set out to defeat half a century ago.
“These international criminals pose real national security threats to this country,” Mukasey said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He cited recent cases, many with links to the former Soviet bloc.
“They touch all sectors of our economy, dealing in everything from cigarettes to oil; clothing to pharmaceuticals,” Mukasey said.
A department assessment of the organized crime threat found such groups “control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets,” Mukasey said.
“They are expanding their holdings in these sectors, which corrupts the normal functioning of these markets and may have a destabilizing effect on U.S. geopolitical interests.”
He cited Semion Mogilevich, indicted by the United States in 2003 and arrested in Russia this January, who was suspected of exerting influence over “large parts” of the natural gas industry in the former Soviet Union.
MONEY LAUNDERING
The groups launder billions of dollars through U.S. financial institutions, and invest profits in publicly traded companies. They also “exploit the Internet,” by running scams on eBay, flooding in-boxes with e-mail spam and laundering money through “virtual worlds” such as Second Life, Mukasey said.
Suspected arms traffickers such as Viktor Bout, a Russian national arrested in Thailand in March, provide support to terrorists, officials said. But they said there are no signs of close ties between organized crime and the “core al Qaeda” organization.
Deputy FBI Director John Pistole said the groups’ abilities to operate across national boundaries made them “mobsters without borders.”
To lead the fight, Mukasey said he had revived an Organized Crime Council of senior law enforcement officials across government, 15 years after it had gone dormant after winning major battles against U.S. organized crime.
The first task is to identify and target the global crime groups and their the leaders, Mukasey said. The department will give more information to the State Department to help it deny visas to known criminals, and to the Treasury Department so it could impose sanctions against money laundering.
It will also increase cooperation with foreign countries — training and assisting crime fighters.
But officials said they did not anticipate using anti-terrorist surveillance measures such as the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or seeking new authorities from Congress.
You should have slid in a Burrough’s quote. I never though, when I read of the Algebra of Need, that his pyramid so literally revolved around junk, but oh, so it may.
Golly, sure is a good thing that the CIA is above using illicit activities to fund their operations, unlike these “mobsters”. LOL!
My wild guess is that if just the heroin proceeds were pulled out of the system, the whole show would collapse within 24 hours.
You may very well be right about that. And the irony is, for all junkies are reviled, their tireless efforts to scrape together enough money for their next fix may very well be what is holding the catastrophic collapse of the international financial system at bay! (Whether or not that’s a good thing is probably a matter of one’s own personal evaluation.)
Anyone see Ken Lay lollygagging around on their last visit to the Caymans?
Financial-tax-booze-drug crimes in the U.S. have rarely been sucessfully prosecuted.
Truth is, (my thinking) is that these crimes are admired and used as the teaching model for the next great scam perpetrated by the banks, Wall Street, the CIA, and many, many U.S. “elected” officials, whatever their party may be.
The once mighty buck, and how it has fallen, might have a say in this.