Offshore, Scoops
The Village Voice, Dec 7, 1999
After it was revealed in August that $7 billion to $15 billion had been siphoned out of Russia through the Bank of New York, the nation’s influentials were shocked, shocked. America’s most sophisticated financiers were vulnerable to tawdry Russian fraudsters? The press gasped at the scale, congressional committees mobilized, and the Clinton administration trumpeted an anti-money-laundering strategy.
But the scandal was no surprise to federal immigration agent Thomas D. O’Connell. Nor was it the first time a New York bank had been soiled by money believed stolen by Russian con men. Though it has not been reported until now, the Bank of New York and other New York banks”including Chemical, Chase Manhattan, and Citibank” were and most likely still are conduits for the proceeds of a still-to-be-tallied series of crimes, with at least a thousand shell company bank accounts laundering dirty cash.
Offshore, Scoops
The Progressive, Dec 1999
The Russian banking scandal should have been no surprise to Western financial experts. The Bank of New York laundered some $7 billion in Russian money through the offshore system.
The sudden attention by U.S. government officials and the mainstream media to the $7 billion or more of Russian money laundered through the Bank of New York might make you think this is the first time that multimillions have been stolen from Russia-or elsewhere-and washed through the international offshore system. In fact, it’s not even the first time for the Bank of New York.
Travel
Planning a visit to our cousins, the Brits? In London, there are several main areas best to stay in. Most convenient is the West End — known as Theatreland. You can move further west and live near one of the big parks or squares — Green Park or Grosvenor.
Here is the majestic Millennium Britannia in Grosvenor Square. 
Or you can choose to be in Knightsbridge, Chelsea or Kensington, the trendy areas that are minutes from downtown by tube and have the flavor of an upscale Greenwich Village and Upper West Side. I checked out hotels in each of those neighborhoods.
Offshore, Scoops
Global Finance, Nov 1999
The US government is making its boldest move yet to combat international money laundering via offshore bank secrecy havens. Officials who once insisted capital should flow to wherever the market says to flow now want to make it more costly for American banks to lend to entities in bad jurisdictions.
The American crackdown depends on the passing of new law that require banks to set aside reserves for the loans they have made to high-risk jurisdictions. The strategy, announced in September, is undergoing a 90-day US interagency review. It targets offshore centers that hide the beneficial owners of companies and bank accountants and refuse to cooperate with international law enforcers on the trail of illicit funds.
Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops
Earth Times News Service, Oct 31, 1999
The dangers of international money laundering are massively magnified by electronic transfers and the new electronic cash. The really big challenge that’s coming, that’s arrived, is electronic cash, said Thomas Roche, Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That’s going to present really daunting challenges. There’s always been an audit trail in credit cards and checks.
Scoops
In the 1990s I was doing research about human rights policy and spent some time at presidential libraries. I was quite interested in a secret memorandum in the Ford Library. In the standard way classified documents are indicated, it appeared in the Chile files on a pink sheet as a memorandum with a date, the number of pages and not much else. It was 1995.I asked for it to be declassified. Four years later, it arrived in the mail.
Scoops
