-->Wir wissen inzwischen als gesichert, dass Sadham Hussein, von seinen eigenen
Leuten im Erdloch gefangen gehalten worden ist. Der 'Freigabe' an die Allierten
gingen mehrwöchige Verhandlungen voraus, wie, wann und vor allem wer alles von
der Lösegeld-Summe über $ 25 Mio. erhält/beteiligt wird.

Erforderlich ist immer ein verdammt gutes Net-Work, denn Bezahler und Empfänger
wollen alles anonym abwickeln. Die Militärs können keine Blösse brauchen mit
irgendwelchen Kriminellen einen Deal gemacht zu haben.

Aus dem nachfolgenden Beitrag ist ersichtlich, wo sich jeder Betrag und jede
Summe, ohne Probleme und Fragen (schon gar kein Ausfüllen von Fragebogen)
in bar im Koffer oder mit diskreter Ueberweisung zur ANLAGE bringen KANN.

quote:

Big Bad Banks to Big to Punish for being Bad

Dec. 25, 2003, 6:41PM


Money laundering: a wink and a nod
Experts fault banks as cash flows
Bloomberg Business News

Armed with a search warrant, a team of investigators for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau raided a three-room office on East 54th Street on Feb. 4. The raid was part of a money-laundering investigation that led to an indictment against Beacon Hill Service, a company with 12 employees.

Beacon Hill had made wire transfers totaling more than $9 billion through its three dozen accounts at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, Morgenthau says.

J.P. Morgan Chase wasn't charged with any crimes. No big U.S. bank has ever been prosecuted for money laundering. If convicted of laundering, a bank could be shut down under the Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act of 1992.

"The money center banks are beyond regulation," says attorney Jack Blum, formerly a Senate investigator and a money-laundering consultant to the United Nations."There's no capacity to regulate or punish them because they're too big to be threatened with failure."

Beacon Hill, a company that wired money into and out of the United States for its clients, shut down a day after the raid. A dozen employees who'd worked at that location since April 1994 lost their jobs, including President Anibal Contreras, 45, a Guatemalan immigrant, Morgenthau says.

In June 2003, Beacon Hill was indicted by a New York grand jury for receiving and transmitting money without a New York State Banking Department license.

Morgenthau, 84, who says the Beacon Hill case is part of a continuing investigation of money laundering by his office, adds that prosecutors say the transfers were used for tax evasion and moving the proceeds of political corruption, including bribes, out of Brazil.

Money laundering has been illegal in the United States since 1986. Money laundering is the movement of funds through an account or a series of accounts, often held in several countries, to disguise income from crimes, such as drug trafficking, as earnings from legitimate activities.

In September, Celent Communications, a Boston-based financial research company, released a study that found money laundering through banks has increased in each of the past four years and is projected to reach $424 billion in 2004.

Morgenthau declines to comment on whether his office will charge J.P. Morgan. Blum, the former federal prosecutor, says that if history is a guide, J.P. Morgan isn't likely to be charged.

Kristin Lemkau, a J.P. Morgan managing director, says the bank's compliance department became concerned about Beacon Hill's accounts in 1997 and asked Beacon Hill to hire Decision Strategies, a New York-based consulting company that develops compliance programs and does investigations.

Decision Strategies, which Lemkau says found no evidence of money laundering, made suggestions on how Beacon Hill could strengthen its bookkeeping, she says. The bank accepted the consultants' findings and allowed Beacon Hill to continue wiring money through its accounts, she says.

Because both the nature of Beacon Hill's work and the location of its customers in Latin America pose high risks for money laundering, J.P. Morgan should have dug deeper, New York State Banking Superintendent Diana Taylor says.

U.S. banks have allowed or assisted in the laundering of dirty money for years, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs found in February 2001.

The subcommittee estimated in 1999 that U.S. banks condone or actively participate in the laundering of more than $250 billion a year, primarily from drug trafficking and organized crime.

"Virtually every U.S. bank we examined had opened accounts for offshore banks or banks in suspicious jurisdictions, yet few were paying attention or taking steps needed to make sure these banks weren't misusing their accounts," says Sen. Carl Levin, 69, D-Mich., who led the investigation."The result of these due diligence failures has made the U.S. banking system a conduit for criminal proceeds and money laundering."

The subcommittee found that in the 1990s, Citigroup's predecessor, Citicorp, had either allowed or assisted in laundering by the Juarez drug cartel, the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico, based in the border city of the same name; by the families of four foreign leaders who stole government funds; and by people and companies that had paid bribes to company and government officials.

One of the companies that used a Citicorp account to launder money was IBM, the world's largest computer company. IBM paid $300,000 in 2000 to settle Securities and Exchange Commission claims that it failed to disclose it had paid a $4.5 million bribe to directors of Banco de la Nacion Argentina to win a $250 million contract in 1994, according to the SEC.

IBM neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. Senate investigators found that $1 million of the IBM bribe had been laundered through a Citicorp account. Citicorp was never charged or fined.

Today, almost three years after the Senate subcommittee hearing, too many banks and securities firms continue to allow money laundering, Levin says.

On Oct. 26, 2001, six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. It required that banks verify the identity of their customers and that they set up systems for spotting patterns of suspicious money transfers.

Banks are willing to launder money or turn a blind eye to customers who do because money laundering brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, says Raymond Baker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

Baker, 68, who has spent seven years researching money laundering in 23 nations, says banks aren't concerned about being prosecuted." `Don't ask, don't tell' is the prevailing norm in the banking community," Baker says, adding that banks are more interested in collecting fees than in following money-laundering laws.

John Byrne, senior counsel at the American Bankers Association, defends his industry's efforts to fight and report money laundering.

"We're not perfect," he says."I think we do have a good record."

Prosecutors don't bring money-laundering charges against the largest banks for fear of creating panic among investors and world economic turmoil, says Ian Comisky, a former federal prosecutor.


unquote
___


DEN LETZTEN PARAGRAPHEN 2 x lesen, da liegt die Crux der Geschäfts-Grundlage eingebunden.

Emerald.

PS: Ich kann nicht verstehen, dass manche immer noch nach Nauru und Zypern disponieren?

-->>
MAD COW MADE INTO HAMBURGER

Second Herd Quarantined in Mad Cow Scare
Fri December 26, 2003 05:59 PM ET


By Randy Fabi and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Agriculture Department on Friday quarantined a second herd of cattle in Washington state in connection with the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, as cattle producers scrambled to minimize damage to the $27 billion industry.

The cattle industry, reeling from the discovery of the deadly, brain-wasting disease, on Friday withdrew objections to tighter controls that would prevent sick animals from entering the food supply.

White House officials said that the U.S. beef supply is safe for consumers and a spokesman said President Bush continues to eat beef.

The second Washington state herd placed under quarantine brings to 4,400 the number of animals under observation.

With more than two dozen countries banning the import of U.S. beef, including $1 billion-a-year customer Japan, federal Agriculture Department officials said their probe into the origin of the disease could take months and widen far beyond the dairy farm in Mabton, Washington, where the 4-year-old Holstein was discovered.

In Chicago, cattle futures fell by the maximum allowable amount for the second consecutive day and experts said beef prices could tumble by a further 20 percent and predicted that exports to Japan and other key market would be disrupted well into the new year.

Venezuela and Egypt on Friday joined some two dozen nations that halted imports of U.S. beef. Food company stocks also tumbled as investors worried that U.S. consumers could begin to eat less beef.

The U.S. Agriculture Department on Friday quarantined a second herd of 400 bull calves in Sunnyside, Washington, not far from Mabton, that contains a calf recently born to the original infected Holstein.

The USDA had previously quarantined a 4,000-animal herd at the dairy farm in Mabton, where the infected cow lived before it was slaughtered on Dec. 9. The cow was sent to slaughter after complications from calving left her unable to walk.

The U.S. Cattlemen's Association, the industry's major group, on Friday changed it position on dealing with sick cattle, saying that those are too sick to walk -- so-called downer animals -- should be tested for mad cow disease before they are slaughtered and processed for consumption.

THE ANIMAL THAT CAMES DOWN WITH THE NATION'S FIRST CASE OF MAD COW DISEASE HAD BEEN MADE INTO HAMBURGER AND PROBABLY EATEN BEFORE THE U.S. AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT RECEIVED TEST RESULTS.

Ranchers and farmers now support a"test and hold" program that segregated the carcasses of sick animals from others until testing for mad cow, Terry Stokes, chief executive officer of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said.

The cattle industry previously contended that downer cattle pose no clear-cut risk to the human food supply. A USDA spokeswoman said the department was reviewing all of its existing mad cow safeguards for possible improvements, but declined further comment.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also said it was assessing its rules, with an eye toward possibly banning the use of cattle remains in all animal food.

The U.S. government said it was sending trade experts to Japan, the biggest single buyer of U.S. beef, to begin talks on Monday on how to address that nation's concerns and resume beef shipments.

An outbreak of mad cow disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), forced the slaughter of millions of cattle in Europe in the 1990s. At least 137 people, mostly in Britain, died of a human form of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

In both cattle and humans, the disease destroys portions of the brain, causing paralysis and blindness. There is no cure.

The investigation to pinpoint how the U.S. cow was infected will take time, said Ron DeHaven, USDA's chief veterinarian.

"It might not be a matter of days, it might be a matter of weeks or months," DeHaven told reporters.

It was"highly unlikely" that BSE -- which is conveyed through infected brains, spinal column and nervous system tissue -- could be spread to other animals through birth, but scientists cannot rule out that possibility, he said.

The investigation by the USDA and the FDA focused on where the infected cow was born and what kind of feed she consumed early in life.

"We assume it was infected very early in life because the average incubation period is generally four or five years," said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian.

In 1997, the FDA banned the use of cattle remains as an ingredient in feed for other cows. However, cattle brains, spinal cords and other potentially risky material can be ground up and used in feed for poultry, pigs and household pets.

DeHaven also said it was"premature" to speculate whether the infected cow was born in Canada. In May, Canadian officials found a single case of BSE in a Black Angus cow in Alberta. Investigators were never able to determine the cause.

The U.S. probe could be broadened to"potentially many states," DeHaven said.

Shares in beef processor Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) were pounded again on Friday. Major hamburger chains like McDonald's Corp. (MCD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) recovered modestly, as investors tried to gauge the impact on consumer demand.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Wednesday placed the debt ratings of most U.S. beef protein processors on watch, with negative implications.



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WHERE WAS THE HAMBURGER SOLD TO? MCD? WMT? WHERE?

Emerald:

PS: Ich fürchte die Zahlungs/Handels-Bilanz wird nochmals ganz leicht rückläufig tendieren: No US-Meat anymore: Eat your stake offshore!