TD Bank Hit with Record US$3 Billion Fine Over Drug Cartel Money Laundering
October 16th, 2024Just another day at the office.
Via: CTV News:
TD Bank will pay US$3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels, regulators announced Thursday.
The fine includes a US$1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay US$1.8 billion to the U.S. Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the U.S. government’s investigation that the bank violated the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement that TD Bank had “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its procedures of monitoring transactions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news late Wednesday.
Do we see masses of employees resigning rather than work for a criminal company? Do we see masses of account-holders changing banks?
People ask how the US could have become so corrupted and disrupted. It’s because one person after another chooses not to notice when wrong is done, or only to whine a little, while those who make stronger objections go to jail or get permanently silenced.
We’ve gone from a nation where everybody pitches in and helps, like a volunteer fire department, to a nation where everybody has his or her specific job and does only that, leaving every other task to somebody else whose job that is supposed to be. But because the people whose job it is to police us and jail criminals have all been defunded, fired, or corrupted, law enforcement has become, on the one hand, primarily traffic ticketing and restraining the mentally ill and ethnically violent, and, on the other hand, protecting the military-industrial complex (MIC) big guys like banks whose invisible crimes incrementally harm thousands or millions of us.
Back in the day, I participated in completely peaceful marches against the Vietnam war. No harm came to anyone or anything, no charges were filed. The war was ended, at least in part, due to that kind of public action.
Three years ago, I saw J6 happen on the internet. Government agents turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos, caused injuries and deaths, and enticed participants to trespass. Over 1,000 people have been arrested, some still kept without trial in solitary confinement. Fifty years after Vietnam, the government no longer backs off its repressions but increases them.
Nowadays, I boycott criminal or immoral industries and govt-sponsored activities I can legally avoid. I know what else I could do to peacefully protest MIC crime, but I’m afraid to do it. I’d be out there alone, throwing my one bucket of water on the blazing inferno and getting arrested for it. All I dare to do is not to do something, not to cooperate with or support wrongdoing.
We live in a police state. Because we thought it could never happen, we didn’t see it happening. Once we recognized it, too few did too little to correct it. Even so, if enough of us do what little we can, it can be pushed far enough towards correction that it can no longer remain as bad as it is. Pull a few bricks out of the base of the tower, and…