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October 15, 2001

Citigroup's Rubin:

Banking on Terror

Citigroup Lobbies to Weaken Anti-Terror Legislation
Anti-Terror Controls Could Clip Bank Industry's Narco-Profits

Senator: Bank Lobbyists "are being very unpatriotic"
Time To Expose the "White Collar Terrorists"

Editorial
By Al Giordano

The view is suddenly different from Citigroup headquarters in New York, and from the boardrooms of the large banks and financial institutions that compete with it, too.
We are not speaking of the empty vista of a city skyline where two towers once stood and thousands of innocent lives were lost. The sweat under the white collars of bank executives in New York is not due to fear of suicide bombers. The specter haunting Citigroup and the other large banks is that the fast march of current events could lead to a new public understanding and outrage: that terrorism and the illicit drug trade that funds it could not exist without banks to launder their funds.
The bankers and financiers knew, or should have known, all along that their money-laundering business has caused many atrocities, and would eventually lead to massacres on the scale of September 11th.

Three words must now enter the public lexicon: "White Collar Terrorists."

The kingpins of global organized crime do not wear sombreros nor turbans. They wear suits and ties. They attend political fundraisers. They hire big lobbying firms. They pressure and push lawmakers for loopholes that have, so far, allowed a system of "private banking," "correspondent banks," and "offshore shell banks" to launder the money of corrupt regimes and criminal empires across the world.

Citigroup is the largest financial institution in the world. It has been caught time and time again in narco-money laundering trails in our América and across the globe.

Citigroup, according to the Washington Post, is now lobbying to weaken anti-terrorism money-laundering legislation in Washington.

Narco News has extensively documented Citigroup's history of impunity and corruption when it comes to laundering drug money for corrupt regimes in Mexico and Peru, and Argentina, among other nations. We have also reported on the hypocrisy of Citigroup executive chairman Robert Rubin, who prosecuted Banamex in the Operation Casablanca case when he was U.S. Treasury Secretary, and then orchestrated the former National Bank of Mexico's purchase by Citigroup. Rubin, as alleged in a pending federal lawsuit by a former U.S. Customs Agent against his former department, presided over a Treasury regime that punished, harassed and silenced honest whistleblowers against corruption in his agencies.

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush has proclaimed that Washington will now clamp down on the money laundering that funds terrorist organizations. But the White House has, so far, only frozen assets of foreign businesses, all of them from the Arab regions. The executive branch continues to allow impunity and corruption by U.S. financial powers, even as it grandstands against the terror-money trail.

Congress, however, has stood up to take on the real power-behind-the-terror-throne: United States banking and financial interests. The Washington Post reported last week that "Some of the nation's largest banks -- including Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. -- are lobbying to change key provisions of proposed money-laundering legislation."

The Washington Post reports:
Citigroup and other big banks want to change the wording of a provision that would require banks to actively monitor transactions they conduct for their wealthiest clients -- "private banking" customers -- and for clients of other banks -- "correspondent banking" services, sources said.

The banks want to include language that would give the secretary of the Treasury the authority to exempt U.S. banks from having to exercise enhanced oversight when doing business with banks from countries that have weak money-laundering laws, an industry lawyer familiar with the lobbying effort said.

In addition, Citigroup executive Rick Small has proposed language that would soften a provision barring U.S. banks from doing business with offshore shell banks that have no physical office and no affiliation with an established bank. Until recently, Small was one of the Federal Reserve Board's top money-laundering experts. He didn't return calls.

Each of these three areas of Citigroup's business - Private Banking, Correspondent Banking, and relations with Offshore Shell Banks - are keys to a system in which U.S. banks have been allowed to virtually monopolize the drug money trade. While U.S. authorities rail about "drug dealers," "cartels" and "narco-guerrillas," the true kingpins of the illegal drug trade are the banks and institutions that launder the drug money and hoard the profits. It is precisely for them that drug prohibition exists, and that governments protect them by prosecuting the lower levels of the illicit drug trade.

Bush's dishonest "war on terrorism" has so far followed the drug-war model of hypocrisy. He has targeted foreigners and outlaws, while leaving the powerful White Collar Terrorists within the United States to conduct business-as-usual. And thus, the institutional apparatus that funds and ensures future acts of terrorism is left in place, untouched.

Citigroup director Robert Rubin's cynical role as apologist and publicist for White Collar Terrorism did not end when he left his job as Treasury Secretary.

After the September 11th attacks, and the presidential speeches about money laundering by terrorists, Rubin penned a column for the Financial Times of London titled, with a straight face, "Getting Tough on Terror Funding."
"Fighting terrorism on a global scale must include a consistent and co-ordinated approach to stemming the flow of funds to terrorist organizations," began Rubin in his column.

Citigroup Directors Robert Rubin, Alfredo Harp, Roberto Hernández and Sandy Weill

Rubin praised the Clinton administration's actions (in effect, patting himself on the back for his own failures as Treasury Secretary) and also the Bush administration (in effect, polishing the apple for the administration whose complicity Rubin's Citigroup needs to continue business-as-usual).

According to banker Rubin, the U.S. government that regulates his and other banks has been an effective foe of illicit money laundering. In Rubin's self-interested fantasy world, one can close his eyes and almost see the twin towers of World Trade, still standing, and more than 4,000 workers assassinated there, still riding the elevator, smiling from 9 to 5 each day.

"The keys to success in this arena," writes the architect of Washington's failed policies against money-laundering, "are persistence, patience and, especially, international co-operation."

The blame, Rubin implies, lies not with the culture of impunity that allows U.S. bankers the loopholes they need to launder the drug money of despots and mafias across the world. Rubin seeks to point the finger away from his industry's responsibility and profits, toward foreign nations: "to be successful, the US must secure the full co-operation of the international community in adopting policies and procedures to identify, track and block the flow of funds related to money laundering or support for terrorism."

"Many countries," Rubin tells us, "lack the laws, enforcement mechanisms and political will to stem undesirable financial flows. Now is the time to address those weaknesses."

But what about the country where Rubin lives, and the government that regulates his bank? "The US cannot be effective in its financial assault on terrorism by going it alone," he argues.

Perhaps sensing that members of Congress are justifiably concerned that the United States has not effectively stemmed the illegal money laundering business within its borders, Rubin suggests that his fox be deputized to guard the chickens: "It is vitally important that the US government co-ordinate with the private sector throughout this process to maximise the effectiveness of this effort."
But as Rubin makes his hollow calls for "international cooperation," he and his bank are being most uncooperative with Congressional efforts to end money laundering at home, in the financial capital of the world.

Legislation sponsored by Senators Carl M. Levin (D-Michigan) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the Washington Post, "is intended to make it easier for federal authorities to detect and dismantle the financial networks of global terrorists, drug dealers and other criminals."

The Senate Banking committee passed the anti-terror money laundering bill early this month. The Senators complained to the Washington Post that there are "efforts by industry to water down the bill." The Post specifically fingered Rubin's Citigroup and J.P. Morgan bank lobbyists as the perpetrators of the attempted dental surgery upon the legislation, intended, said Senator Levin, to assure that the anti-money laundering provisions would "have no teeth."
At Narco News, we will add this entire affair to our growing list of questions to be posed to Citigroup's Robert Rubin when we place him under oath and depose him in the Drug War on Trial case.