Rubin in UN Finance Panel – a Case of Fox Guarding the Henhouse?

Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops  

Pacific News Service, Dec 20, 2000

Criminals — drug dealers or dictators — with embarrassing amounts of cash on hand, or corporations trying to avoid taxation, often use false fronts in poor countries to launder the funds. Major U.S. banks are heavily involved in this unsavory business, so banker Robert Rubin Robert Rubinmay face some interesting questions from the other members of a UN panel intended to help debtor nations.

There is more than a little irony in the appointment of Robert Rubin, a chairman of Citibank, to a United Nations panel which is supposed to propose methods for helping poor countries.

UN Tackles Money Laundering

Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops  

eCountries.com, Dec 15, 2000

The net around money launderers may be getting a bit tighter, with a new treaty signed in Palermo under the auspices of the UN. It’s a step in the right direction, but a lot remains to be done to effectively combat what has become a global plague.

For more than a decade, the international community has been wrestling with the issue of what to do about the worldwide bank secrecy system that allows drug traffickers, fraudulent business operators and tax cheats to flourish.