Welcome back to the sietch all of you rabble-rousing, freedom loving heretics!
So far in this series I’ve taken you on a personally guided tour of how the illicit drug trade went from a few, small, passionate farmers who were growing Cannabis back in the 70’s and selling it on handshake based agreements (at a time when the legality of doing so was dubious), through my personal on-the-scene documentation of the involvement of Reagan neocons in the Columbian cocaine drug trade, to the takeover of the illicit drug trade by international globalists. Today we’re going to delve into the ultimate arbiters of the all of this, bankers. Without crooked bankers, neither the international drug trade in illegal drugs, would be possible.
It’s worth mentioning here that if it’s this easy to move money around the world to enable the global illicit drug trade, imagine how easy it is for banks to work on behalf of the supposed ‘legal trade in bioweapon jabs’ that enables that globalist eugenics program.
cash talks
Due to the nature of the illicit drug trade, most deals are conducted in cash. We’re talking about a lot of cash. This 2020 report by Forbes points out that the UN has calculated that banks launder up to 2 trillion dollars per year, much of that being from illicit drugs.
During 2020 banks around the world were fined for $14.21 billion for money laundering. US banks make the top 3 offenders list. Goldman Sachs, which was also one of the primary parties responsible for the 2008 financial crises and was bailed out by a massive socialist taxpayer subsidy, leads the 2020 list with $6.2 billion in fines. Clearly, Goldman Sachs didn’t learn any lessons from its dark past or it’s socialist bailout and sees these fines as part of doing business. Another bank with an ongoing dark history is Wells Fargo. It’s second with $3 billion in fines. JP Morgan has a little over $1 billion in fines. No US bankers went to jail.
As was pointed out in the last post, the US Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), is charged with monitoring and controlling any form of questionable money transaction in the US. Here is their mission statement.
“The mission of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is to safeguard the financial system from illicit use, combat money laundering and its related crimes including terrorism, and promote national security through the strategic use of financial authorities and the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence.”
As was also pointed out in the last post, FinCEN has recently broadened its definition of what’s involved in “combating money laundering” as well as what constitutes a terrorist. The language would now permit them to use the same tactics in the US that Justin Trudeau used to seize the bank accounts of hard working people who supported the trucker protests in Canada. This is yet another form of subversion to take away our Constitutional rights.
Theoretically, FinCEN relies on Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR’s) voluntarily provided by bankers for information regarding questionable transactions. I guess we are to assume that all bankers immediately decline to have a billion dollars in cash deposited into their banks (with the promise of more to come if they cooperate) if they suspect foul play. We are also to assume that if they do accept such a tidy deposit, that they all automatically inform FinCEN.
When one considers all the thousands of drug related a money transactions that take place every day in tens of thousands of banks around the US, it’s not surprising that a certain amount of honest folks working in those banks will file reports to FinCEN. But it wasn’t until the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) filed an FOI with FinCEN to release documents pertaining to this matter that we began to get an idea of the massive extent in which banks participate in the drug trade.
Because ICIJ has extracted over 18,000 reports from FinCEN, their website is extensive - it’s loaded with all kinds of information and lists. The list of corrupt banks is so extensive it boggles the mind.
Here is the ICIJ list of US banks - only - from one year, 2009. (Click on explore the transactions, scroll down and click on the US, then click on show me the banks. I’m sorry, Substack rejected copying and it would have required about 30 or 40 screen shots.) Is your bank on this list?
As you can see, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, some of the largest banks in the US are also some of the worst offenders, or at least they were in 2009.
Keep in mind that this exhaustive list is merely a sample from one year of US banks. Once we understand that the ICIJ has complied similar lists from banks all over the world from 1999 to 2017, the scope of the illegal nature of the banking industry begins to come into focus. Additionally, in spite of the overwhelming reach of this list, we need to keep in mind that, whether it be due to corruption or complete ignorance on the part of the banker, these FinCEN files likely represent only a small fraction of the total number of drug related transactions that take place at banks. In short, the bigger the bank and the more branches it has, especially if it has branches in multiple countries, not only is it guaranteed to be on the list, it’s guaranteed that it will be participating on an increasing scale depending on the size of the bank and the number of international locations.
Furthermore, in many cases the ICIJ found that in the rare event that FinCEN actually took regulatory action and imposed a fine for laundering drug money, the fines imposed were often paltry, typically for amounts much less than the profits made from making the transaction. In other words, there is no incentive for banks to cease doing business with illicit drug cartels (or legal ones for that matter).
All of this provides good reasons to avoid big banks and keep your money in small, local banks or credit unions where you can talk directly to the owners.
International banks are especially attractive to cartels that operate in numerous countries. Moving large amounts of cash has always been a problematic and cumbersome process for drug dealers. Many have been caught trying to do so, only to have it taken away because they have no receipt or proof of origin. I know someone who was returning from a transaction and got caught in an airport in Denver with a large amount of cash and lost it because he had no receipt.
A million dollars in $100 dollar bills requires a package about the size of a carry-on airline luggage. One hundred million requires 100 of those, an amount that will weigh 2,200 pounds - not something that can be tossed into the trunk of the average passenger car or taken with you on an international flight.
So drug dealers and international bankers have developed work-arounds to bypass the problem of moving bulk amounts of cash. One is to divide it into smaller amounts and spread them as deposits into the same account in various branches of the same bank. Another is to put the money in multiple accounts in different banks. For the international dealer, the money is then available in his or her local branches of those international banks in his or her country of residence.
Another solution is to work with amenable banksters who are willing to do things on the sly. Perhaps the bankster needs to make their balance sheets look good for an investor or a regulatory authority, or maybe they’re just flat-out corrupt and are taking a cut in exchange for doing large transactions on the down and dirty. One way the latter is done is by simply keeping the transaction off the record trough computer manipulations.
The point being, the days of needing to take huge risks by transporting large, cumbersome amounts of cash across borders are long gone.
While there is likely not a single large bank that is completely innocent, some are more guilty than others, or at least they appear to be because they have gotten caught doing some highly illegal business. Chances are good that there are other banks that have done far worse things and have gotten away with it. Furthermore, according to the Panama Papers scandal - also covered by the ICIJ - we know that many very large, very illicit transactions have been allowed by FinCEN. Whether that was to track the money or if corruption was at play, we will never know. Whatever the case, those involved made a lot of money in the process. It’s safe to assume that this practice continues today.
Let’s consider three of the worst offenders.
bcci
Doing a search for the most corrupt banks - not just in the US but anywhere, brings up an interesting litany of banks from around the world. Most are based in the US, but a bank cited in several articles I came across is Bank of Credit and Commerce International based in the tiny Arab country, the UAE. Although laundering drug money is theoretically a major crime and doing so can deeply damage the reputation of any bank that participates in that activity, banks have many ways to do so and cover it up. With an impressive list of brainy pencil pushers running the show, in 1972 BCCI began teaching the rest of the banks around the world how to launder drug money.
One of the most effective tools is to hire Washington insiders to guide the bank around the facade of regulations meant to restrict banking activities. Another effective approach is to fund the campaigns of politicians that are, or will be, in regulatory positions. BCCI thought these would be effective stonewalling tactics down the road. They were… for a while.
While those previous tactics were not necessarily new and innovative, the BCCI team may have been the first bank to adopt practices that were commonly used by the mafia to launder money. These tactics included setting up anonymous shell companies all over the world, conducting anonymous real estate transactions all over the world, investing in anonymous firms all over the world and investing in stock trades all over the world, to name a few. The idea being, spread the money around to make it difficult for regulators to track the source. Once the profits are realized from these transactions, the money has been laundered and upon taking, appear to be profits from legitimate business transactions.
Drug cartels were not BCCI’s only customers. Pakistan’s brutal dictatorial first family took advantage of BCCI to hide the money they embezzled, as did other brutal Middle Eastern regimes.
In its later stages, as it was becoming apparent to a few alert reporters who were paying careful attention, BCCI began resorting to the typical mafia approach to silence people - hiring law firms to harass journalists who were getting too close, with lawsuits or threats of lawsuits. In a few cases beatings and sabotage were used.
In 1991 the Ponzi scheme BCCI founders had been running since its founding in 1972 caught up to them and the bank was raided by regulators from 7 different countries. However, little of the 10 billion that the banksters had stolen over that time period was recovered. Most of the illegal investments that had been made on behalf of their corrupt clients had succeeded in being laundered and… the profits taken.
In spite of all of this, no regulations have been put in place to close the door on the tactics BCCI used to run their ponzi scheme. Either regulatory agencies have chosen to look the other way, or they didn’t learn any lessons from this, or… the most likely answer, the deep state powers behind the agencies find the tactics too useful to legislate out of existence. Anyway you look at it, it’s hard to get past the idea that the entire banking and regulatory system is corrupt.
hsbc
One of the most notorious banks for laundering drug money has been HSBC, which was knowingly laundering money for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Columbia’s Norte del Valle cartel. HSBC was also caught illegally moving money for Iran and trying to hide the transactions. In 2012 HSBC agreed to pay a $1.9 fine for its wrongdoing, a mere slap on the hands. As usual, no one went to jail.
deutchebank
Apart from its role as being one of the leading banks using the ponzi scheme known as subprime mortgages, (you know, the scheme banksters used to bundle subprime mortgages and sell them as high quality investments) which led to the 2008 financial crises, and apart from its checkered history with Donald Trump, Deutchebank has also been ordered to pay 258 million to the Federal Reserve for money laundering. It continues to do so today.
It appears that the banks, the regulatory agencies and the cartels are all one big happy family… they are all making money.
freedom or tyranny
I say this as someone who for 35 years has been adamantly opposed to the use of any drug, legal or not, the only thing that will end this nightmare is the legalization of all drugs. As I’ve said here several times before, I’ll take the chaos of freedom over the tyranny of control anytime. Put it all in Gods hands and let the chips fall where they may.
It appears the war on drugs is as profitable as any of the wars that the USA has been involved in, whether it be cancer, or proxy wars or whatever. Corruption is obviously so rampant that we have become inured to the stench of it. The whole has become so hollowed out that it will implode before too long.
I've been wondering how cbdc's and the banning of cash is going to get around this to continue it, because that's what we'll all have to do.