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.
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.
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.
THE SWISS, IT TURNS OUT, who long polished their image as upstanding burghers, were bankers and money-launders of the Nazis, confidence men who took depositors’ money, hid the records, and refused to pay back rightful owners. Incredibly, they are outraged that world opinion considers them unsavory and insists they return the booty, valued by the World Jewish Congress at $3 billion. Equally incredible, the Swiss continue to stonewall justice in the face of demands for restitution by governments, organizations, and individuals.
The Swiss, it turns out, who long polished their image as upstanding burghers, were bankers and money-launders of the Nazis, confidence men who took depositors’ money, hid the records and refused to pay back rightful owners. Incredibly, they are outraged that world opinion considers them unsavory and insists they return the booty, valued by the World Jewish Congress at $3 billion. Equally incredible, the Swiss continue to stonewall justice in the face of demands for restitution by governments, organizations and individuals.
Unfortunately, since there is no international criminal court, the Swiss bankers and their associates cannot be brought to trial for their actions. Since national governments are generally loathe to lean on, much less punish, allies (how else to explain why the United States and other Western nations let the Swiss get away with keeping much of the pilfered gold), citizens and local officials must force some measure of justice.
Acknowledging past U.S. failures to press the Swiss to return stolen funds, Under Secretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat is brokering discussions between Swiss banks and American lawyers regarding a class action lawsuit filed in New York federal court in 1996. The suit seeks $20 billion in damages from the banks for cheating Holocaust victims and their heirs. There are more than 350,000 Holocaust survivors, 100,000 of them living in the United States.
Will people one day talk about the looting of Russia the way they recently talked about the looting of Zaire?
Western leaders meet this weekend (June 20-22) in Denver at the G-8 Summit on economic policy. They have the chance to take the drastic action needed to combat the criminalization of the Russian economy which threatens not only Russia but their own countries as well.
The G-8, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, probably won’t do anything to deal with this problem, but it won’t be for lack of knowing about it.
Three weeks ago, a conference was held in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, on money laundering. Among those in attendance were two members of the Mansur family, which has gained international prominence for — you guessed it — alleged money laundering. Two other family members have been indicted by the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, but still enjoy life at home on Aruba, another Dutch dependency, and travel to Europe, beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
The sponsors of the gathering included the Association of International Bankers of the Netherlands Antilles and the Association of the Compliance Officers of the Netherlands Antilles. The bankers and compliance officers of the Netherlands Antilles are, to say the least, not noted for rigorous action against money laundering — nor are their Dutch counterparts.
Lucy Komisar covered the women’s convention in Houston and wrote about it for The Nation, December 10, 1977. (text version is below) WITH THE WOMEN AT HOUSTON: FEMINISM AS NATIONAL POLITICS LUCY KOMISAR The blue and green bunting, the state delegation signs, the three-cornered hats that said Free D.C., the […]
