Thursday, April 07, 2011

Move on, nothing to see here

And they'll never suffer any real repercussions...in fact, have some more money!

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.


Now, if some poor schmuck, preferable of a brown-hue that Joe Arpaio could assault with a tan, were involved in laundering a few tens of thousands through his small business that would be the end -- and a 20-year term to boot.

But for Wells Fargo...well, you already knew where this was heading.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.


...and this:

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

4 comments:

sukabi said...

Are you really surprised Atta? If there was ever any real investigation of the banking system, you'd more than likely find that besides defrauding their customers, the banks are engaged in money laundering drug and black market weapon money as one of their prime strategies for revenue generation...

there's an ex- LA detective (can't remember his name) that regularly worked with FBI, DEA on drug stings... claims that the entire "war on drugs" is a front for massive money laundering by Wall Street / banks and the alphabet agencies enable this... claims it's allowed to continue because our "betters" believe our economy / lifestyle isn't sustainable without the added $$ / that our revenue from taxes alone doesn't come close to funding it...

it's gotta make you wonder how much that's true, with all the fraud on a massive scale, and not one of the fuckers responsible has been frog marched off to jail... what secrets do their safes hold that keeps them from being prosecuted?

DrDick said...

Silly Attaturk! Laws are for the little people, not the MOTUs.

pansypoo said...

if obama was white, he MIGHT have gotten away with the FDR closing the backs to clean them out. i am sure the gnews still would have had a conniption.

Anonymous said...

why not just legalize it all? then money will all be nice and clean and not have to be laundered?
vox