Tag Archives: money laundering

Conservative Candace Owens Crashes Ukraine War Party, by Daniel McAdams

Posted on November 14, 2022 | 2 comments

It was clear to Candace Owens that Ukraine is a money laundering operation even before the FTX scandal. From Daniel McAdams at ronpaulinstitute.org:

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It’s weak to start with a disclaimer, but I am afraid I have no choice. I have no cable and I do not watch mainstream media at all. I find a few clips here and there. So I do not pretend to operate with the totality of available information at my fingertips. And I do not doubt that many will send eloquent counter-arguments for what I am about to write. Additionally I do not follow mainstream conservatism or liberalism – or neo-liberalism – because I find it all to be mostly vapid and worthless. But that is not the point. The point is moving the great middle in one direction or another and that is why I write the following.

From what I have seen of conservative commentator Candace Owens I have found her to be an extremely intelligent quick-thinker who develops and delivers comments, quips, and retorts as if from an automatic weapon. She stands her ground and comes armed with facts to back up her positions.

She has taken some risky positions, which is rare among political commentators on the Left and Right (as they most often resemble cookie cutters or tin soldiers). Though she has walked back her association with the controversial Kanye West as he trod unwaveringly upon all the third rails, she did not throw her former-billionaire friend completely under the bus nor did she grovel for forgiveness vowing that she did not know the man, as did Peter with Jesus.

That is why I was so pleasantly surprised to see her appear on Tucker Carlson – himself happy to often color outside the lines – to denounce the seemingly bottomless pit that is US financial support for Ukraine and its president, the “former” NC-17 comedic actor Vladimir Zelensky.

On Carlson’s show, Owens made the excellent point that just one day after the ignominious US retreat from Afghanistan – where we left billions in advanced weapons behind – the Biden Administration announced that it was teaming up with European partners to push for Ukraine’s accession to NATO.

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Revenge of the Money Launderers, by Matt Taibbi

Posted on September 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

One of the fringe benefits of being a bankster is that you’ll never get prosecuted for your crimes, and the government bails you out when you need it. From Matt Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:

The “FinCen files” story reveals: getting caught doesn’t stop banks from taking dirty money. It may even encourage them

Sincere apologies to subscribers who received a fragmented article previously. This is the complete piece:

On December 11, 2012, U.S. Justice Department officials called a press conference in Brooklyn. The key players were once and future bank lawyer Lanny Breuer (disguised at the time as Barack Obama’s Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DOJ’s Criminal Division), and Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and future Attorney General. The duo revealed that HSBC, the largest bank in Europe, had agreed to a $1.9 billion settlement for years of money-laundering offenses.

An alphabet soup of regulatory agencies was represented that day, from the Justice Department, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Treasury, the New York County District Attorney, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, among others.

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Posted in Banking, Crime, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Government

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Ukrainian MP Claims $7.4 Billion Obama-Linked Laundering, Puts Biden Group Take At $16.5 Million, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 20, 2019 | 2 comments

The real reason the Democrats are pursuing impeachment on the Ukraine matter is to throw a smoke screen, hiding their own massive corruption in that country. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update 2: Dobinsky, the MP, says one of the leaked documents is a “signed suspicion” at 1:19 in the video below. This has been described in Ukrainian media as an investigative step which documents allegations against an individual or individuals, similar to a criminal referral. While Donibsky says during the press conference that “Zlochevsky was charged,” we have updated our headline and report accordingly.

A transcription of key portions of the press conference can found here, via Tanya Tay Posobiec.

Update: Reuters sheds additional light on the press conference, noting that the document from the Prosecutor General’s office was leaked and not officially released.

A Ukrainian MP says a document leaked from the Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General contains claims against Burisma owner Nikolai Zlochevsky, as well as Hunter Biden and his partners – who allegedly received $16.5 million for their ‘services’ – according to Alexander Dubinsky of the ruling Servant of the People Party.

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Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Investigations, Law, Politics

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The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Mechanism of the Super-Wealthy: Money-Laundering 2.0, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on December 31, 2017 | Leave a comment

The very wealthy have a variety of ways to legally launder their money. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Financial and political power are two sides of one coin.
We all know the rich are getting richer, and the super-rich are getting super-richer. This reality is illustrated in the chart of income gains, the vast majority of which have flowed to the top .01%–not the top 1%, or the top .1% — to the very tippy top of the wealth-power pyramid:
Though all sorts of reasons have been offered to explain this trend–I’ve described the mechanisms of financialization here for years–two that don’t attract much mainstream media attention are money laundering and control fraud, i.e. changing the rules of what’s legal so what was illegal yesterday is legal today–presto-magico, illegally skimmed wealth is now “legal.”
Correspondent JD recently submitted an excellent summary of the progression from Money Laundering 1.0 to Money Laundering 2.0:
Money laundering 1.0 is making dirty money legal, control fraud is manipulating the ‘legal’ options, and money laundering 2.0 is making sure that ‘legal’ fortunes are not taxed and cannot be clawed back.”
Conventional money laundering works by shifting ill-gotten gains into legitimate banks and/or assets. Ill-gotten gains can be laundered quite easily by buying homes or businesses (in the U.S., Europe, etc.) with cash. The home or enterprises can then be sold and the net is now legit.
Another kind of money laundering opens shell accounts in U.S. states with no income tax or offshore tax havens and then transfers intellectual property or other income-producing assets into the shell accounts.
As JD pointed out in his email to me, control fraud is a profoundly insightful concept presented by author William K. Black (Wikipedia), the essence of which is that those with control/ power in centralized institutions can defraud the institutions and their users/citizenry by modifying the rules of what’s legal/allowable, and do so legally, i.e. within the letter of the law if not the intent of the law.
To continue reading: The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Mechanism of the Super-Wealthy: Money-Laundering 2.0

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How Much Money Laundering is Going On in the Housing Market? A Lot, by Wolf Richter

Posted on February 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

Dirty people with dirty money have propped up high end housing markets. Who knew? Well, just about anyone with half a brain who was paying attention. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Answers trickle in. Tough luck for New York, San Francisco, Miami…

“I am shocked – shocked – to find that money laundering is going on in here!” – Borrowed and twisted from Casablanca.

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced on Thursday that it would extend for another 180 days a “temporary” program that was due to expire on Thursday, and that it had originally kicked off in January 2016 and expanded in July, to identify and track secret homebuyers who hide behind shell companies and “other opaque structures” for the purpose of money laundering.

And it has already gleaned some insights.

The US housing market has been a perfect platform to launder large amounts of money, no questions asked. Brokers, banks, and other industry professionals played along. There were no reporting requirements. Everyone in the world knew it. And they came to launder their cash by buying expensive homes.

But FinCEN, via its evocatively named Geographic Targeting Orders (GTO), wants to know who these opaque homebuyers are. To find out, the GTOs “temporarily require US title insurance companies to identify the natural persons behind shell companies used to pay ‘all cash’ [i.e. without bank financing] for high-end residential real estate in six major metropolitan areas.”

FinCEN is soliciting the help of title insurance companies “because title insurance is a common feature in the vast majority of real estate transactions,” and these companies can provide “valuable information about real estate transactions of concern.”

In its July announcement, when the program was expanded from two metros – Manhattan and Miami Data – to six metros, FinCEN Acting Director Jamal El-Hindi wouldn’t say to what extent money laundering was involved, but he did throw in a tantalizing tidbit: “The information we have obtained from our initial GTOs suggests that we are on the right track.”

This time around, FinCEN gave a number, a percentage of “suspicious activity”:

FinCEN has found that about 30% of the transactions covered by the GTOs involve a beneficial owner or purchaser representative that is also the subject of a previous suspicious activity report. This corroborates FinCEN’s concerns about the use of shell companies to buy luxury real estate in “all-cash” transactions.

30%!

To continue reading: How Much Money Laundering is Going On in the Housing Market? A Lot

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“Unprecedented Leak” Exposes The Criminal Financial Dealings Of Some Of The World’s Wealthiest People, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 4, 2016 | 2 comments

A more extensive article on the Panama papers featured on an SLL post yesterday, “Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite’s tax haven.” From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

An unprecedented leak of more than 11 million documents, called the “Panama Papers”, has revealed the hidden financial dealings of some of the world’s wealthiest people, as well as 12 current and former world leaders and 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.

More than 200,000 companies, foundations and trusts are contained in the leak of information which came from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama called Mossack Fonseca, whose files include the offshore holdings of drug dealers, Mafia members, corrupt politicians and tax evaders – and wrongdoing galore.

The law firm is one of the world’s top creators of shell companies, which can be legally used to hide the ownership of assets. The data includes emails, contracts, bank records, property deeds, passport copies and other sensitive information dating from 1977 to as recently as December 2015.

It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world — providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues.

Here is the brief summary of how these documents have been revealed, via the Sueddeutsche Zeitung:

Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell firms enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady.

In the months that followed, the number of documents continued to grow far beyond the original leak. Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data, making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures.

The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes.

A quick snapshot of the scale of the leak in context:

To continue reading: “Unprecedented Leak” Exposes The Criminal Financial Dealings Of Some Of The World’s Wealthiest People

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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite’s tax havens, by Richard Bilton

Posted on April 3, 2016 | 1 comment

This story will probably get buried, but if it doesn’t, it could get interesting. From Richard Bilton at bbc.com:

Eleven million documents were leaked from one of the world’s most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

They show how Mossack Fonseca has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

The company says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.

The documents show links to 72 current or former heads of state in the data, including dictators accused of looting their own countries.

Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years.

“I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents,” he said.

The data contains secret offshore companies linked to the families and associates of Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad.

Russian connection

It also reveals a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.

The operation was run by Bank Rossiya, which is subject to US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The documents reveal for the first time how the bank operates.

To continue reading: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite’s tax havens

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