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Citibank rubin banking on terror { October 15 2001 } October 15, 2001
Narco News 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
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
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 Amrica 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.
(PICTURE)
Citigroup Directors Robert Rubin, Alfredo Harp, Roberto
Hernndez 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-ordin ate 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.
Levin warned that failing to clamp down on this kind of money
laundering in the United States "could subjugate national security
interests to those of big business."
Catherine Austin Fitts, the former managing director of New
York financial powerhouse Dillon Read, warned, more than a
year ago, that the United States policies on money laundering
would lead to atrocity. She said that U.S. enforcement efforts
against money laundering are "designed to make the least
possible investment in the appearance of financial integrity, while
ensuring that the US can become the premier money laundering
country in the world, as well as the premiere reinvestment market
for successfully laundered funds." "Money laundering is the
engine" wrote Fitts, in her April 2000 correspondence from the
Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, where she attended Money
Laundering Alert's Conference on Money Laundering. "It
provides a low cost source of capital to build corporations in a
manner that destroys the ability of the customers to maintain their
cultural or political organization."
"The US enforcement effort to prevent money laundering is the
financial equivalent of landing on Normandy beach with a water
pistol," wrote Fitts, who said that even honest law enforcement
officials are completely outgunned by the banks, their attorneys
and lobbyists in trying to stamp out money laundering. "The
Money Laundering Enforcement and Compliance Industry is
designed to fail."
Writing from the belly of the beast, Fitts reported in April 2000,
"This is the most uptight uncomfortable group I have ever been
with. I got into the elevator with a relaxed and fun black guy
yesterday. I commented about how uptight this crowd was. He
laughed and said "Oh, that is because there are so many spooks
around."
"At lunch," Fitts reported from the conference, "the guy from
Citigroup was talking with someone from Bank of New York
who looked genetically just like him. They were talking about
who was 'agency' or not and how they coordinate with the
'agency'. I was wearing blue jeans. I guess they did not realize I
would understand what they were talking about."
The 'agency'? This brings us to the "CIA exemption" in U.S.
money-laundering laws. One of the tougher U.S. anti-money
laundering laws is called the Narcotics Kingpins Act. This act
was approved by Congress in 1999 to freeze and seize the
assets of drug money launderers. Industry lobbyists worked so
hard to weaken that bill that a U.S. Congressmen, on the floor of
the House, felt compelled to criticize the "narco-lobbyists" who
pressured to gut the bill. "The narco-lobbyists were paid well,"
said the Congressman in 1999. Apparently, it is still happening in
2001.
A little-known fact about the Narco Kingpins act is that it
provides for a "CIA exemption." Before the U.S. publishes and
updates its list of narco-kingpins across the globe whose assets
are to be frozen and seized, the list is shown to the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, which has, under the law, a veto power
exercised in secrecy. This provision is both to protect criminals
and bankers who launder drug money while simultaneously
serving as CIA informants, and to give the CIA tremendous
power to recruit new informants among corrupt officials and
bankers, trading impunity for agency.
How could this be relevant to the September 11th attacks?
The U.S. government and media have placed the blame for the
attacks on the organization of Osama Bin Laden and his allies,
the Taliban in Afghanistan. Narco News repeats that Washington
has not yet offered clear evidence of who may have been behind
the crimes of September 11th, as articulately explained by former
U.S. Army Special Operations Master Sgt. Stan Goff on our
pages.
But Citigroup's Bob Rubin seems to accept the hypothesis that
Bin Ladin and the Taliban were responsible. In his Financial
Times column, he praises the Clinton and Bush administrations
for their actions, prior to September 11th, against Bin Laden and
the Taliban, as if they had done any good at all in protecting the
victims of September. "In July 1999," writes Rubin of his salad
days at Treasury, his boss, Bill Clinton, "signed an order
imposing an asset freeze against the Taliban. The basis of this
order was a finding that the Taliban had allowed Osama bin
Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation to use its territory as a safe
haven and base of operations." Still, if bin Laden and the Taliban
were, as Washington claims, responsible for the September 11th
attacks, the asset freeze obviously proved impotent.
In Rubin's July of 1999, the U.S. government was still backing
the Peru regime of Alberto Fujimori and his strongman Vladimiro
Montesinos, despite mountains of evidence linking that regime,
and Montesinos in particular, with terrorism and
narco-trafficking. It is now undisputed that Montesinos was a
CIA "intelligence asset." He was run by the CIA, even as he
trampled on human rights and impeded true democracy in Peru -
maybe, in fact, because he committed those atrocities.
During that same period, while Citigroup's Robert Rubin was the
top U.S. official against money laundering as Treasury Secretary,
Citigroup helped Montesinos and his family launder more than
$18 million U.S. dollars. This was documented last Spring by
Narco News. Montesinos subsequently fell from grace with
Washington and the CIA, became a fugitive, was later
apprehended by the government of Venezuela and immediately
extradited to Peru, where he is now reportedly incarcerated and
awaiting trial for a long list of crimes and corruptions. Among the
large body of evidence against Montesinos are videotapes he
made, secretly, of his meetings with officials, including U.S.
officials, in his office. Videos that Montesinos had intended to
blackmail others now have converted into evidence against him.
On one of those videotapes, filmed in January 2000, Montesinos
told a Peruvian official that Bin Laden used Peru's capital city of
Lima as his organization's center of Latin American activities.
``This is the rest area," Montesinos was recorded as saying,
almost boasting, "not to carry out operations in Lima but to act
on white Americans in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the rest of
Latin America.''
The videotape was broadcast on September 21 on the TV
station Frequencia Latina in Peru. The Al Quaida network of Bin
Laden could not have enjoyed such refuge in Peru without the
approval of Montesinos, who ran Peru with an iron fist, and
collected a free from all whom he protected. This, as the U.S.
government, according to Peruvian prosecutors, also gave $10
million dollars to groups under control of Montesinos, and as
Citigroup helped launder $18 million dollars in Montesinos' illicit
money.
Specifically, Citigroup laundered Montesinos money through its
"Private Banking" program; the precise program that would be
targeted by the legislation in Washington that Citigroup is
lobbying to gut.
Robert Rubin of Citigroup says that "Fighting terrorism on a
global scale must include a consistent and co-ordinated approach
to stemming the flow of funds to terrorist organizations."
Afghanistan is being bombed today for exactly what Citigroup
Private Banking client Montesinos did: for giving refuge to Bin
Laden's organization.
Meanwhile, Rubin's lobbyists, backed by all the economic and
political power of Citigroup, the largest financial institution in the
world, are working overtime to make sure that nothing - not even
the lessons of September 11th - will be able to stop them from
laundering the dirty money of terrorists like Montesinos and
those he protected, again and again.
The impunity of White Collar Terrorism, reaping its profits from
the U.S. policy of drug prohibition and the corrupt and selective
enforcement by the government that protects it, guarantees that
Bush's "war on terrorism" is already lost. "Very unpatriotic,"
comments Senator Grassley of the bankers' lobbying efforts.
Rubin and Citigroup, by placing everyone at future risk to ensure
their future Private Banking profits, are very unpatriotic, indeed.
To Read More Narco News, Click Here
There's No Hidin' Place 'Round Here
=====
Visit Barrie's web site for an examination of how Wall Street and
the media work together to further the agenda of the powerful
banking elite.
http://financialmarket-media-manipulation.com
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