Posted on 07/10/2011 3:36:59 PM PDT by BBell
Wachovia apparently funneled enormous amounts of drug money form Mexico. Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
(Excerpt) Read more at bigbankdeposits.com ...
Apparently this happened last year but some how I missed it. Here is an MSNBC article fromMarch of 2010.
I used to use them. They hit you up for everything. I use a credit union now. The service is exemplary and can’t remember being hit with trivial fees.
Me too. I love my credit union!
Freak Wachovia/Wells Fargo, BoA, Citi, etc. Monster-Mega banks will be the total ruination of society as we know it.
It is a shame someone did not serve prison time for this. While 99.99 percent of the people in the company were innocent someone approved this. A bank should be able to afford the best lawyers out there so a settlement is not surprising.
It's the only way to go.
pingedy
Lanundering only $420 BILLION? Why would anyone think that banks would fight drug legalization over such small potatoes?
ty for ping;
FROM ARTICLE:
Under the agreement, Wells Fargo cannot use taxpayer money provided under the federal financial bailout program — known as TARP — to pay its fine and forfeiture amounts. A Wachovia spokewoman said Wells Fargo fully repaid its TARP money to the government in late 2009, before the money-laundering settlement was finalized.
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FROM VIDEO:
$378.4 bil in laundering; settles for $110 mil plus additional $50 mil in fines.
Wachovia London money-laundering official, Martin Woods, gets fired for filing so many suspicious activity reports re: money from Mexico.
Fired for “failure to perform” lol; lol; lol
Makes ya wonder, huh?
I can’t imagine any private citizen using a bank with a name like Wachovia. Either way one pronounces the name it is ominous. It advertises itself with its name as either Big Brother or Big Bully.
I think your future tense is out of date. Present or even past perfect might be more appropriate.
Credit union is the only way to go. Back in the old days when I used a bank my account was always dribbling away even when I took nothing out of it. With my credit union the nibbling and dribbling do not happen. I had to put up with teller incompetence from time to time but now it is all on line. I rarely have to walk into the building.
“Makes ya wonder, huh?”
Not in the slightest. Wachovia must have got on the wrong side of somebody, like Bear Stearns did.
one possibility, but that fine was a slap on the wrist.
I thought you were wondering about F&F.
That too,but why pick on wachovia. They are not the only ones. Which bank did schumer start the run on that started the meltdown?
The probe, which began in 2005 when a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics dog in Florida detected cocaine traces in an airplane, ultimately uncovered at least $110 million in drug profits laundered from Mexico through Wachovia. The total settlement includes forfeiture in that amount plus a $50 million fine. "DEA will follow drug money wherever it leads us," said Mark R. Trouville, chief of the DEA's Miami office. The agreement means Wachovia and its executives will avoid criminal prosecution in return for the $160 million payment and significant improvements in its anti-money laundering program. If those and other conditions are met within one year, potential criminal charges for failure to maintain a system to detect money launderers will be dropped.
So they bought their way out of criminal charges.
2 other institutions implicated in this investigation; no charges; no fines. Wachovia was up to their necks.
Excellent in-depth article on Wachovia (quite a history from 1879):
http://dailycensored.com/2010/07/12/wachovia-bank-and-wells-fargo-drug-laundermats-to-the-world/
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp.......
Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product. According to the US Treasury, the bank admitted in court:
“As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk. Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business (ibid).”...
Laundered funds not limited to drugs
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, US Department of Justice, some of the drug gangs have delved into other illegal activities such as gunrunning, kidnapping and smuggling people across the border, as well as into seemingly legitimate areas such as trucking, travel services and air cargo transport (Publication Date: February 2010, Document ID: 2010-Q0317-001, U.S. Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Center, http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs38/38661/index.htm).
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Another excellent article:
Antoino Maria Costa, former executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in 2008, “there’s evidence to suggest that proceeds from drugs and crimes were the only liquid investment capital for banks in trouble of collapsing [during the financial crisis].”
If billions of dollars in drug money rescued banks and other financial institutions from closing down then it’s reasonable to argue that the economy itself is addicted to drugs....
Overall, the amount of drug proceeds ($378 billion dollars) that the CDC deposited into Wachovia Bank actually equaled one third of Mexico’s entire $1.4 trillion dollar annual GDP.
As part of the agreement Wachovia agreed to pay the government a fine of $110 million dollars with an additional fine of $50 million dollars to be paid to the U.S. Treasury Department. The total fine of $160 million dollars was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3 billion dollars in profit made in 2009.
By the time Wachovia agreed to pay the hefty fine, Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia during the banking crisis for $12.7 billion. Then Well Fargo reaped a windfall from the government, a gift of $25 billion dollars of taxpayers money as part of President Obama stimulus package in 2009....
“Both of the drug-running American airplanes cited — a DC-9 airliner (tail# N900SA) [was] also caught in the Yucatan in 2008 carrying 4 tons of cocaine which had connecttions with the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.”
Hopsicker gave the low down on the second airplane. “The Gulfstream was — or had been — a CIA plane. And the officers of Skyway Aircraft which owned the airplanes included former CIA and NSA (National Security Agency) operatives.”
“One would think an important story of this magnitude would make headlines in every American newspaper and major TV networks including cable programs. But none of the prominent news media outlats reported the story of the U.S. registered aircrafts caught with the narcotics.”
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One more (can’t quote):
I only heard of this because I was listening to the radio and a caller brought it up. He said the news media was ignoring it. I looked it up and I found out a lot of information on it. I did a search of FR before I posted this and I could not find that anything about it had been posted before.
The dailycensored.com article is a good one. Loaded with information.
Appreciate that you posted and that MM pinged me. By most news standard, it is an old story, but 1) recent (2011) articles are still being printed on the story, and 2) as MM has pointed out, no reasonable person can believe other banks aren’t deeply involved in current money laundering.
Not that the UN can be believed but this quote in my last post got my attention:
Antoino Maria Costa, former executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in 2008, “there’s evidence to suggest that proceeds from drugs and crimes were the only liquid investment capital for banks in trouble of collapsing [during the financial crisis].”
If billions of dollars in drug money rescued banks and other financial institutions from closing down then it’s reasonable to argue that the economy itself is addicted to drugs....
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