OMFG: Citibank shut down in Japan for money laundering like the scum they really are. Reuters news agency reported that regulators charged the bank with "failing to prevent suspected money laundering." Citibank has been caught before courting big depositors, no matter how nefarious their operations may be. On Oct. 30, 1998, the General Accounting Office issued a report giving detailed information showing that the bank ignored the law and its own internal procedures in assisting Raul Salinas, brother of the former president of Mexico, to move between $90 million and $100 million of suspected drug money out of Mexico. Read the Report, OSI-99-1 Private Banking: Raul Salinas, Citibank, and Alleged Money Laundering.
This happened in 1995 while Salinas was in jail on a murder charge. His brother, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was the Mexican president who had gotten his country to go along with NAFTA, the U.S.-sponsored trade agreement.
Any worker who has ever tried to open a checking account will be shocked at the special treatment accorded Salinas. At a time when he was in prison on a murder charge, Citibank opened an account for him in the name of his fiancée. It accepted a double-endorsed check that wasn't even made out to her real name.
Had the check been for $100, the bank would have told her to take a hike. But the checks she used to open the account added up to $100 million. So she got special treatment--from Citibank's offices in Mexico City, New York, Zurich and London--and was able to open an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.
Look at that pictogram will you? A plotted, deliberate and patently illegal scheme by a bunch of corporate thugs and hucksters. I love the "alias" part -- they can do all of this yet they couldn't tell us who "JRT" is? This goes to NY Bar Grievance as well.
Apparently it's not enough for Citibank to trick young college students in Ohio, or to steal $14M from poor and deceased folks in California, they have to export their brand of corporate crime to Japan. I'll be urging a boycott tomorrow on TOUCH 106.1 FM.
Sam Shaulson, I am filing this tomorrow with MCAD. See what can of worms you opened up for your scumbag client? Good night dude.
-The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
PS: Then they were at it again in Russia. GAO report.
Shaulson_Merits_Surreply
Then they were at it again in Russia.
ReplyDeleteGAO report.
We previously reported similar violations by one of these banks.20
20 Private Banking: Raul Salinas, Citibank, and Alleged Money Laundering (GAO/OSI-99-1, Oct. 30, 1998).
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The relationship between Citibank and IBC expanded in 1996 when Euro-American was formed and IBC/Euro-American began referring Russian companies to Citibank for the purpose of opening accounts. According to the Citibank account officer, the president of IBC vouched for the newly formed companies and said that he knew the officers of the companies personally, by reputation, or as a result of conducting his own investigation. Citibank opened the accounts based upon the IBC president's representations, with the stipulation that the customers would personally appear at Citibank with appropriate identification within 30 days of opening the account. A Euro-American employee served as a Russian interpreter for those customers who personally appeared at Citibank to open accounts. Citibank did not conduct due diligence regarding IBC/Euro- American-referred customers.16
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16 We previously reported that Citibank's failure to enforce its know your customer policy facilitated a money-laundering scheme that disguised the origin, destination, and beneficial owner of the funds involved. See Private Banking: Raul Salinas, Citibank, and Alleged Money Laundering (GAO/OSI-99-1, Oct. 30, 1998).
A Citibank official advised us that the bank closed some of the accounts opened for IBC clients because the clients had failed to appear personally at Citibank offices within 30 days after the accounts were opened. He added that the accounts were fully functional for the initial 30-day period, allowing wire transfer capabilities, and that all transactions in and out of these accounts were by wire transfers. Although we do not know the number of IBC/Euro-American referred Citibank customers who appeared personally at the bank, our review of records obtained from Citibank indicates that no accounts of IBC/Euro-American referred customers were closed within 4 months of being opened. Further, more than $800 million was deposited through wire transfer transactions from foreign countries into IBC/Euro-American client accounts at Citibank. Over 70 percent of these deposits was subsequently moved out of the U.S. banking system through wire transfer transactions to accounts in foreign countries. According to a Citibank official, these deposits included funds from Russia; and Citibank no longer opens accounts for clients of IBC/Euro-American because of concerns over suspicious account activity.
US Bank Money Laundering -
ReplyDeleteEnormous By Any Measure
By James Petras
Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University
9-1-2
For example, in the case of Raul Salinas, PB personnel at Citibank helped Salinas transfer $90 to $100 million out of Mexico in a manner that effectively disguised the funds' sources and destination thus breaking the funds' paper trail.
In routine fashion, Citibank set up a dummy offshore corporation, provided Salinas with a secret code name, provided an alias for a third party intermediary who deposited the money in a Citibank account in Mexico and transferred the money in a concentration account to New York where it was then moved to Switzerland and London.
The PICs are designed by the big banks for the purpose of holding and hiding a person's assets. The nominal officers, trustees and shareholder of these shell corporations are themselves shell corporations controlled by the PB. The PIC then becomes the holder of the various bank and investment accounts and the ownership of the private bank clients is buried in the records of so-called jurisdiction such as the Cayman Islands.
Private bankers of the big banks like Citibank keep pre-packaged PICs on the shelf awaiting activation when a private bank client wants one. The system works like Russian Matryoshka dolls, shells within shells within shells, which in the end can be impenetrable to a legal process.
The complicity of the state in big bank money laundering is evident when one reviews the historic record. Big bank money laundering has been investigated, audited, criticized and subject to legislation; the banks have written procedures to comply. Yet banks like Citibank and the other big ten banks ignore the procedures and laws and the government ignores the non-compliance.
I know Sam is reading the final Surreply so I will tell him that Version 2.0 included a reference to the Russian fiasco as well.
ReplyDelete9th December 2009 09:23:37
Exit Link
http://www.wepapers.com/Papers/86599/Shaulson_Merits_Surreply
Another GOA investigation on Citibank again helping to launder money. People associated with haters like Citibank and their legal counsel no doubt want to put me in prison but it is they who should have gone to prison, you bet.