An interview about Money Laundering

Here is a 9 minute interview I did recently for Real Media about Money Laundering and what happened to me when I wrote about it. It’s an extract from a much longer and wide ranging interview.

In case you’re interested I wrote in more length about the incident in “Making the Truth Illegal – revisited”

 

34 thoughts on “An interview about Money Laundering”

  1. I once put out an article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free about a London policeman who said that the City of London was the crime capital of the world, but the Guardian moderators removed it in a jiffy. I had a number of incidents like this so I stopped reading the Guardian. The Guardian did not support a Bernie Sanders in the Democrat party leadership election. That’s scandalous.

    1. Hello Kavy. Yes I can’t help but feel that for all the tremendous investigative work the Guardian has done and still does, we are seeing the paper reaching the limit of its political tether. I think the Guardian is a strong voice of reform but it is not a radical paper. I feel it is, in its soul, committed to the present political/economic form and believes it can be made good again. Needless to say I do not share this view.

      1. Yes, I agree with you, David. The paper has some good points but in the end it’s part of the system which is rotten. I used to wonder why the comments section was so dominated by right wingers, then I found out they were removing many of the posts by people on the left.

        The Guardian once run a story about Russia being a police state, so I wrote in with a report that in the US the police had killed 5000 civilians over the last five years, but the Guardian moderators removed it in a jiffy. Jonathon Cook, who used to write for the Guardian, says the paper is Orwellian.

      2. Dear David, As a Green Party leadership candidate I was sorry to see you only garnered 956 votes; I left the Greens years ago, although if you had won I would have rejoined.

        As a former member I received an email this morning from the Green Party, which read “We are angry, and we are sad. We’ve seen a racist and misogynist elected to be president of the US after a campaign built on fear and lies.”

        Yes it was a campaign of lies, the Hilary supporting mainstream media in particular. Both UKIP and Trump are working class movements, anti-establishment and anti-globalisation, shouldn’t the Greens be supporting this instead of banging on about the fact a rich man said a rude word and bragged about enjoying intercourse? I hope Caroline doesn’t enjoy Sarah Silverman, Sex in the City or any of that ilk, as they can also be offensive and sexist.

        I would be interested in your comments on the recent election of Donald Trump.

        I got Saturday’s edition of the Guardian as it comes free with a supermarket card. After the working classes in America elected a president who promised to roll back globalism and protect their interests. What could be viewed as a left-wing movement, and certainly one of the most interesting developments. My fear is only that Trump will not be able to deliver on his promises, but there are soundings that he may try to reduce US support for NATO.t

        1. I’m not sure about that working class movement regarding the Trump win: only 40% of the registered voting electorate voted for both Trump and Hillary, 9% voted third party and the remaining 51% stayed home.

          This was a great article and vid, outstanding.

          In 1995, MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System) was filed with the State of Delaware Division of Corporations (File No. 2543543).

          In the late 1990s, a memo from Timothy Geithner (Clinton Administration) was sent to Larry Summers, reminding him to be sure to include the verbiage on the acceptance and use of credit derivatives by client signatories to the WTO’s Financial Services Agreement (uncovered by Greg Palast).

          Then the explosion of credit derivatives usage (CDOs, Credit Default Swaps on all those CDOs, etc. — all related back to MERS, of course.)

          Then we see that all those banks involved with illegal foreclosures (fraudclosures) are also involved in money laundering, e.g., HSBC, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc., etc.

          Yes, the money laundering was involved as the easiest process to do it is through real estate, the largest business in America, and usually the largest in most countries. Not the top money earning, but a way to make bucks while doing those insurance swindles (CDSes) and multiple sells of mortgages and illegal rehypothecation (CDOs, etc.).

          So naturally, HSBC does not want that 1,000 page report released in America, because it very well contains data relating back to MERS.

          A convoluted money-grubbing conspiracy, and probably the largest in human history.

          Much thanks to intrepid stalwarts like Mr. Malone!

      1. Thanks, I got in contact with Owen Jones. I was very polite. I think he really does want to do his best, like Seumas Milne and George Monbiot does, but they only have a small window to work in.

      2. Personally I find the Guardian’s identity politics, political correctness and obsession with defending mass immigration (a key neoliberal policy) utterly nauseating. I’ve met Owen Jones: nice lad but utterly dogmatic in his clunky socialism.

  2. The problem is that “money laundering” is a government-created, artificial crime. If any actual crime was committed it would have to have been in the acquisition of the money in the first place. And I’d feel a great deal more incensed about this purported crime if it transpired that the money was stolen from a private sector owner.

    Good luck with your candidacy. But beware of taking the left-wing “spend-spend-spend-because-X-is-needed” tack. Indeed, why can’t the Green Party adopt a libertarian concern for the individual and advocate a smaller role for government? Could the Green Party support ‘Brexit’?

    Otherwise, there are the Lib-Dems and Labour and you ARE different…aren’t you?

    1. The ruling elite own the government, they are the government, that is the problem. Getting our democratic government back is the solution. Libertarianism was invented by the ruling elite to do away with democracy. Libertarianism is oligarch friendly.

      Libertarianism does not offer freedom, but enslavement of the many by the few. The elite want the freedom to do what they like without us having any way of stopping them. That’s what’s libertarianism promises, our subjugation . They say they would remove taxes, but the ruling elite would just put tolls on everything instead. They will make maximum profits by charging as much as they can, as much as the market will stand. They will make us poor and work us harder and say it’s down to market forces.

    2. Hello Kreditanstalt,

      The Green Party mainfesto for 2015 had a comitment to a Brexit Referendum, p.71 Europe
      ”The Green Party recognises that the UK is part of Europe and that we cannot cut ourselves off from our geography or its political
      realities. Our message on Europe is positive, not based on fear and nostalgia.
      Much EU action has been progressive: safeguarding basic rights, peace and security achieved through mutual understanding,
      environmental protection, the spread of culture and ideas, and regulation of the financial system. And in other areas, such as
      welfare policy, open discussion and coordination are useful.
      However, we prioritise local self-reliance rather than the EU’s unsustainable economics of free trade and growth. We would not
      adopt the Euro, which cannot work properly without much deeper political integration, and this would be contrary to our policy
      of subsidiarity.
      We support the proposal to have an in–out referendum so that the British people can have their say. This is because much has
      changed since the UK joined the Common Market in 1974. Endless debate on membership is a diversion from more important
      matters, such as ending inequality and adapting our economy to One-Planet Living.
      So it’s yes to Europe, yes to reform of the EU but also yes to a referendum. This is the policy that led to the election of an
      additional Green MEP, Molly Scott Cato, in the South West last year.https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto_Searchable.pdf.

      ‘However, we prioritise local self-reliance rather than the EU’s unsustainable economics of free trade and growth. We would not
      adopt the Euro, which cannot work properly without much deeper political integration, and this would be contrary to our policy
      of subsidiarity.´´

      The Green Party manifesto further backs up its comittment to decentralising power and making community up governence the model. Proposals for amongst other things proportional representation would break up of the two party monopoly baked into the cake centralised on Westminster.

      On Money . p.47 Manifesto.

      ”We believe that the time has come to recognise that the creation of currency and the control of the money supply is far too
      important to be left to profit-seeking private sector banks and should be brought back under the democratic control of the state.
      Quantitative easing was but a first step. Commercial banks should be no more than the custodians of publicly created money in
      current accounts, and the creation of that money should become the function of a new monetary authority, independent of day-to-
      day government control. This policy would protect ordinary bank accounts, and

      allow banks to fail safely

      separate ordinary and investment business

      provide some control on overall lending and debt”

      What struck me reading both the Green and UKIP manifestos for 2015 was how similar they actually are, they identify a clear problem but have different political views on solutions which stem from a different view on Political Economy.

      Whats this all got to do with Money Laudering ? Davids articles in this area tackle the institutionalised criminality inherent in the marketisation of the Drugs Trade. The war on drugs is a great driver of profits for the Crime syndicates and a useful pool of ´Dark Money ´for use in political below radar operations. The drugs War also has Prison, law inforcement and military benefits.

      Iran Contra and the Hot Springs connection to Bill Clinton is particualrly topical at the moment and ties the CLintons in with the Bush Family business which is mainly oil but strays into this territory given Bush freres CIA pedigree.

      Other interesting areas are of course Gun Running and sanctions busting, Turkeys black market in the Oil comandeered by Islamic state in Syria. The digital financial system is both huge and opaque from the money creation process through to the circulation many iterations into the doss houses with blood splattered walls. The Farmers of Humanity take their cut without a bead of sweat troubling thier Year Round sun tanned Brows.

      David came second in the GP Leadership election to the co leader Team of Caroline Lucas and Johnathan Bartley. Caroline was at the launch of and is a member of the DIEM 25 movement that seeks to reform the EU from Within.

      A MANIFESTO FOR DEMOCRATISING EUROPE

      ”For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy!

      They speak in democracy’s name but only to deny, exorcise and suppress it in practice. They seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities. For rule by Europe’s peoples, government by the demos, is their nightmare.

      The European Union could have been the proverbial Beacon on the Hill, showing the world how peace and solidarity may be snatched from the jaws of centuries-long conflict and bigotry. Alas, today, a common bureaucracy and a common currency divide European peoples that were beginning to unite despite our different languages and cultures.

      Now, today, Europeans are feeling let down by EU institutions everywhere.From Helsinki to Lisbon, from Dublin to Crete, from Leipzig to Aberdeen. A stark choice is approaching fast. The choice between authentic democracy and insidious disintegration.

      At the heart of our disintegrating EU there lies a guilty deceit: A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as ‘apolitical’, ‘technical’, ‘procedural’ and ‘neutral’. Its purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, communities, working conditions and environment.

      The price of this deceit is not merely the end of democracy but also the dream of shared prosperity:

      The Eurozone economies are being marched off the cliff of competitive austerity, resulting in permanent recession in the weaker countries and low investment in the core countries
      EU member-states outside the Eurozone are alienated, seeking inspiration and partners in suspect quarters
      Unprecedented inequality, declining hope and misanthropy flourish throughout Europe

      The more they asphyxiate democracy, the less legitimate their political authority becomes, the stronger the forces of economic recession, and the greater their need for further authoritarianism. Thus democracy’s enemies gather renewed power while losing legitimacy and confining hope and prosperity to the very few (who may only enjoy it behind the gates and the fences needed to shield them from the rest of society). ”
      https://diem25.org/manifesto-short-version/

      Not much I can finds to argue with there. The concerns regarding the European Union and its Technocratic Fascism apply equally well to the Need to reform our societies most powerful institutions The Global Banks and Financial Services conglomerates. We do need to ask ourselves how Culpable we are ourselves and how much inconvienience we are prepared to endure to Secure the reforms needed.

      Our own Bourgoise sensibilities ,( I happily admit to my own and much like EGO it helps to be aware of ones own predjudices if attempting to be objective) are the greatest assets those in power have . That is our own tendency to confirm and conform conventions and supply the Consent to be ruled by the Ceasars who control increasingly minutley our daily lives and Life Chances.

      I am looking forward to seeing the extended version of Davids Interview, The interference in the press and the corruption of the fourth Estate is amply described in the discussion about the Guardian in the comments here)and its decline. Peter Oboornes departure from the Telegraph was a concrete example of an honest man kicking back against the Corporate Spin Machine and symbiotic coruptions that constitute the revolving door of Government, Finance and Industry . It was ever thus to a greater or lesser extent.

      An Ode. The Merchant, To Secure

      The merchant, to secure his treasure,
      Conveys it in a borrow’d name:
      Euphelia serves to grace my measure:
      But Cloe is my real flame.

      My softest verse, my darling lyre,
      Upon Euphelia’s toilet lay;
      When Cloe noted her desire,
      That I should sing, that I should play.

      My lyre I tune, my voice I raise,
      But with my numbers mix my sighs;
      And, whilst I sing Euphelia’s praise,
      I fix my soul on Cloe’s eyes.

      Fair Cloe blush’d: Euphelia frown’d:
      I sung, and gazed: I play’d, and trembled:
      And Venus to the Loves around
      Remark’d how ill we all dissembled.

      Cupid Turned Ploughman. – From Moschus

      His lamp, his bow, and quiver laid aside,
      A rustic wallet o’er his shoulders tied,
      Sly Cupid, always on new mischief bent,
      To the rich field and furrow’d tillage went;
      Like any ploughman toil’d the little god,
      His tune he whistled, and his wheat he sow’d;
      Then sat and laugh’d, and to the skies above
      Raising his eye, he thus insulted Jove:
      Lay by your hail, your hurtful storms restrain,
      And as I bid you let it shine or rain,
      Else you again beneath my yoke shall bow,
      Feel the sharp goad, and draw the servile plough;
      What once Europa was Nannette is now.

      Matthew Prior.(21 July 1664 – 18 September 1721)

      1. I was in despair, but Yaris Varoufakis is doing a good job and I signed his Diem25 petition. Then I signed loads of CND petitions. I even signed some by which magazine which is campaigning for better banks. I also signed petitions to stop CETA and TIPP being passed.

        I’m thankful that David works so hard at this to try to bring about a better, fairer society. Lots of people are fighting hard for democracy and this gives me encouragement. The elite are so powerful, and they own the media, while too many people are not well informed. Let’s hope we can turn things around.

        New Labour and the a Orange Book liberals were diabolical. But now the Liberals have voted not to replace Trident so perhaps the party is going back to it’s traditional way. I joined the Labour Party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Hopefully the tide is changing and we will get our democracy back.

        Good informative article, Roger.

    3. Really, both parties are spend spend spend and guess where the money is going, the pockets of the rich. Think seriously about this. The green party IS different from both the left and the right.

  3. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

    Excellent. Elsewhere in the blogosphere I posed the following:

    For countries that already have a very high standard of living globalism makes no sense at its heart, why would they want to “level the playing field” with countries with no indoor plumbing, no wages, and no environmental controls? The answer is that globalization benefits ONLY the owners of the means of production, and since they take their winnings to Panama where they are not taxed it is a double whammy on the standards of living of their host countries for whom they are nothing but parasites.

  4. A slight change of Tack. Money Laundering and many other crimes committed in the name of the war of drugs is a complete crock. Let us get serious about not only decriminalising drugs,but in fact legalising them and allowing the normal channels of production ,distribution,and marketing within a non toxic legal framework. Let the entrepreneurial spirit of motivated manufacturers fight it out for market share. Normalisation would remove all of the dangers we have created by making some drugs illegal. No producer wants to kill their market ,otherwise all whisky/wine drinkers would be dead. The world will not change other than become less dangerous for everybody and new ways of maintaining a healthy outlook will be available.
    The losers in the change will be all those ,and there are many , whose future income and prospects are enhanced by this pointless myth of the winnable war.

    1. There is a HUGE problem with MONOPOLIES… and that is why Bill Gates is richer than his parents who were already rich… Buffett looks for ‘motes’ read monopoly power. Pig Pharma looks for monopoly power….

      “Let the entrepreneurial spirit of motivated manufacturers fight it out for market share.” This sentence is incorrect because the motivated manufacturers are buying regulations galore to protect their product/monopoly —– drum roll, to PREVENT Competition…..

  5. “England resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kowtowed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income.” Orwell

    I think we can be confident that Britain will do well even after the Brexit. There will still be a lotta money to be laundered, the Chinese will keep on buying houses (probably another form of laundering), etc.

    Maybe the whole western world would collapse if it werent allowed to launder dirty money.

  6. Ah yes, Banksters.

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

    HSBC, involved in the illegal drug trade, ever since the Opium Wars in China

  7. David says how conservatives told people that governments need to run their economies like a family budget, while not telling people that most households are deeply in debt due to their mortgages without which they would not be able to own a house. But do governments need to borrow money at all? Modern Money Theory says no because sovereign governments with central banks can create their own currency. Then as the government spends its own currency it puts money into the economy and this gets into the private sector creating even more jobs and prosperity. Austerity is completely unnecessary.

    As the government spends – say for instance on wages for hospital staff – it will continue to put money into the economy and there may come a point when inflation starts and so the government taxes to take out the excessive money. This protects savings and the value of the pound in a person’s pocket. Who can argue with that? Taxes also give value to the government money. In an MMT run country taxes can be low, something the Conservatives, the elite, and the bankers don’t want people to know about, that socialism can therefore be inexpensive.

    MMT can be tricky to understand but this talk by Bill Mitchell is good. I like it because he talks about social issues. There probably are better videos for understanding MMT but they can get technical, plus this is a nice interview. Bondholders are getting a free ride, says Bill Mitchell, and yet they criticise people on government benefits while they take far more government subsidy for themselves. This is what our press, like the Guardian, should be telling people.

    The group Positive Money propose something similar.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyDRwSqp2E

    1. Hello Kavy,

      I agree about governments not needing to raise money by borrowing. In fact they should not borrow. As you say its a scam whose main purpose is political. It artificially put finance above governance. But felt this was a more difficult point to get across in the time I had.

      1. Hi David, long time.

        Once again, the scam is not only political.

        The scam is certainly politically expedient. But the problem, from the arithmetical point of view, resides elsewhere.

        Wealth inequality is built into the monetary system trhough an arithmetical transfer of property, thus wealth.

        When you accept money in exchange for work, you are exchanging something you own outritght for something you do not own and owe interest on.

        From the legal point of view, this type of money belongs to the Federal Reserve. Hence, it is merely lent to you for temporary use (central banks in the developed industrialised world and all members of the floating exchange mechanism use US$ as reserves).

        Since governments run perpetual fiscal deficit, the money received in exchange for labor is also perpetually devalued.

        Also, since government runs perpetual fiscal deficits, the fiscal burden on society can only increase. This perpetual increase manifests through ever more complex legislation and ever heavier fiscal demands.

        In exchanging your time, skills and ideas for money therefore, you are ALWAYS AND PERPETUALLY at an asymmetrical purchasing power disadvantage.

        Economic entities attempt to compensate this asymmetrical advantage by going into debt and trying to engage in lateral transactions like buying a house. But these are only temporary reprieves.

        In this system, the owner of the currency will, eventually, divest society of wealth and property.

        This is an arithmetical truism.

        Why nobody talks about it is beyond me. Yet, it is simple.

        Our monetary system is equivalent to playing Monopoly with the owner of the factory that produces the game and that always reserves for himself the privilege to:

        Be the bank

        Receive continuous supplies of notes from the factory floor

        You can’t win.

        In this system, your only option for long term survival is to somehow get closer to the owner of the currency. Either though merger and acquisition or as a purveryor of services to the entities that gravitate around the owner of the currency

        Other than that, debt slavery is an arithmetical certainty

  8. I’m going on demonstration next week with Positive Money outside the Bank of England to campaign for Qauntitive Easing for the people and to end it for the financial sector. 3rd November 8am to 10am. I think it is time for me to become more active. Maybe I will see some of you there?

    Time:
    Thursday, 3 November 2016 08:00 – 10:00 GMT

    Host:
    Positive Money

    Location:

    Outside Bank of England & Royal Exchange (London, London)
    1 Cornhill
    London, London EC3V 3ND

    http://act.positivemoney.org/page/event/detail/positivemoneyevent/wr4x

  9. Evonomics is a fantastic site, it identifies problems and then find solutions, so its optimistic. I thought this article below was excellent.

    Getting Radical Might Be the Most Practical Way to Fix Inequality : Why we need more radical policies so that we don’t just repeat the debt-fueled booms all over again

    Adair Turner is a banker who he is moving in a radically different direction to most bankers. Here’s an except:

    Adair Turner, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and former Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (2008-13), is the author of a new book that takes aim at economic and political orthodoxies, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance. As Turner sees it, policy makers and economic thinkers across the globe remain in thrall to the belief that only unfettered financial markets deliver the best for societies. The resulting bias favors fixed rules and mathematical models often wildly out of touch with real world conditions.

    http://evonomics.com/getting-radical-inequality-adair-turner-lynn-parramore/

  10. Video: Roberto Saviano on the War Against Organised Crime

    Roberto Saviano is a very brave man who has put 16 Mafia bosses in jail. This is what he says about money laundering and the City of London:

    He revealed his latest work of investigative reporting, Zero Zero Zero, in which he delves into the sprawling network of the global cocaine trade. He traced how the $400 billion a year generated by drugs trafficking filters into the international banking system through money laundering from Wall Street to the City of London. The cocaine trade isn’t just a playground for criminals, Saviano argued. It is part of the structure of our global economy where some of the biggest players — the banks — have profited without facing a single criminal conviction.

    Journalist and author of Gomorrah, an internationally bestselling investigation of the Camorra crime syndicate in Naples. After receiving death threats from mafia bosses in 2006, he was granted a permanent police escort by the Italian Minister of the Interior. He was awarded the PEN/Pinter prize in 2011.

    Video:

    http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/roberto-saviano-on-the-war-against-organised-crime/

  11. Great to hear a sane voice within the confines of what ever increasingly feels like an asylum run by lunatics, which doesn’t seem likely to improve when either the Donald or nurse Ratched get elected. All part of that huge web of corruption that contains a foul spider named greed. Speaking of webs, O/T I know, but this article on the possible future of the hotel EU, I think gives some idea of the difficulties involved in reforming it etc.

    ” You can checkout any time you want, but you can never leave “.

    http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1318.php

    1. At least Frederic Heine and Thomas Sablowski end on a positive note, that we can rebuild Europe from the bottom up as a socialist society. People have so much to gain from it, rather than this harsh neoliberal system.

      1. I suppose that those who profit from it will cling to it by their fingernails, which will probably result in it’s eventual collapse after they have cultivated a fertile breeding ground for all those things that crawl from under stones within the resulting darkness – on the other hand, something of hope might be born.

        I’m finding it hard to be optimistic at the moment, especially in terms of us all being on the cusp of the US pantomime result. I listened to this earlier, which makes sense to me & it seems that it is now much more pertinent than it was when first heard, just over 70 years ago – Viggo is a good guy :

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaFZJ_ymueA&index=2&list=LLHavDAeDMMItTuPCAqIIPUA

  12. Thanks for posting this – I loved the “assholes!”

    More on HSBC here – h/t ZeroHedge
    All the plenary’s men
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gK3s5j7PgA
    “You see, prosecutors working on the HSBC case were actually going to indict the bank, but they got overruled, and HSBC and its team of criminals skated. The story of how exactly that reversal came about reveals, if not the King himself, then certainly many of the King’s top men.”

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