NESTS ALONG WALL STREET: Part II

Nests Along
Wall Street

~ PART II ~

~ o ~

“I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.”

— U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler, in Common Sense, Nov, 1935.

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NOW, FOR A CLOSER LOOK AT SOME OF THOSE “GILDED CAGES”...

TAKE A WALK DOWN
WALL STREET

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M

Adelphia Communications Corporation - The cable guys.

Adelphia is filing for Chapter 11

By Deborah Solomon, The Wall Street Journal

NEW YORK, June 25, 2002 —— Adelphia Communications Corp. is in the process of filing for bankruptcy court protection in New York, according to people familiar with situation....

THE BANKRUPTCY FILING, which had been expected for about a week, was preceded late last week by a deal that gave Adelphia financing of as much as $1.5 billion to allow it to continue operating.

The lender banks, which include J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., granted $500 million immediately and planned to approve the remaining $1 billion contingent on preparation of an acceptable business plan....

Adelphia is the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission accounting probe, and two federal grand-jury investigations into multibillion dollar off-balance-sheet loans given to the Rigas family.

The family has relinquished control of Adelphia’s board, and new directors disclosed that Adelphia’s cash flow, revenue and subscriber figures had been overstated.

The new management team also disclosed a web of dealing that included $2.45 billion in company-backed loans....

American Express - The credit card company and, according to some reports, a major money-laundering machine.

From Conspirators’ Hierarchy: . . . Others on the board of Xerox are Howard Clark of the American Express Company, one of the main conduits for moving drug money through “travelers checks” . . .

* * *

From The Laundrymen: . . . Over the years, the Justice Department has become more adroit at digging deeper into a bank’s affairs and rooting out the laundrymen . . .

At the end of 1994, the government’s wrath was directed at the American Express Bank International, after two of its senior officers were indicted in Houston for helping to wash $40 million belonging to Mexican drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego. . . .

A Mexican gas station owner named Ricardo Aguirre Villagomez ... was Abrego’s primary laundryman. Under Villagomez’s supervision, drug money collected on the streets of Texas was sent through exchange houses and banks along the Mexican border to Switzerland.

From there is was wired to a holding company in the Cayman Islands established for Villagomez by Antonio Giraldi and Maria Lourdes Reategui at the Beverly Hills branch of AMEX. Some of his money was invested in a Blockbuster Video franchise . . .

But the lion’s share went into American real estate. Giraldi and Reategui accepted $29 million as collateral for $19 million worth of property loans, reputedly making Villagomez the bank’s biggest customer — at least until U.S. Customs identified and froze the funds in the Caymans.

Giraldi and Reategui both pleaded not guilty to several charges, including money laundering, but a Brownsville, Texas jury found otherwise. He was sentenced to 10 years, and she got 3 ½.

The government then went after the bank, fining it $7 million.

American Express Bank International also had to forfeit $40 million of Villagomez’s laundered money and assets, and was obliged to spend $3 million on employee training. . . .

American Financial Group — From The Buying of the President: . . . Finally, we come to the No. 3 soft-money patron of the Republican party in the 1990s.

What would it take to get the U.S. government to go to bat for your company before an international trade organization even if there were virtually no American jobs at stake? Only about $4.5 million and some friends in high places.

Don’t believe us? Ask Carl Lindner, the founder of American Financial Group, Inc., a holding company specializing in insurance that in 1998 posted more than $4 billion in revenue. Lindner’s company and family have been among the biggest political donors ever, giving more than $1 million in soft money to the Democratic party and nearly $3.5 million to the Republican Party from 1991 through June 1999. . . .

Lindner’s biggest coup came in May 1999, when the World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the United States and several Latin American countries that had brought a complaint against the European Union for unfair tariffs on bananas.

In mid-1993, when the European Union imposed a tariff on bananas not coming from former European colonies in the Caribbean, Lindner’s Latin American-based Chiquita felt the crunch.

He immediately turned to the U.S. government for help, even though 39,000 of Chiquita’s 45,000 employees are in Latin America.

Linder met with then-U.S. Trade Representative Michael Kantor on Jan 13, 1994 to discuss the issue ... In August 1994, Dole and 11 other Senators urged Kantor to intervene and on Nov 17 Dole, Gingrich, and House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt wrote to the President asking for similar assistance. . . .

By April 1996, Kantor announced that he would bring the U.S.— that is, Lindner’s — case before the World Trade Organization. In May 1999, the WTO awarded the United States more than $190 million in punitive tariffs based on European violations of free-trade principles.

Lindner’s money had bought him access, and the access had bought him action. . . .

See also: Yakuza

Bank of America - From The Buying of the President (1996): . . . While the interstate banking bill was moving through conference, on Aug 23, 1994, Clinton and Hugh McColl (president of NationsBank) were present at the White House Community Development bill signing, and the president declared, “Today, I’m proud to announce commitment from two of the nation’s leading banks to help us in this effort--$25 million from NationsBank and $50 million from Bank of America over the next four years.”

Five weeks later the interstate banking bill was law; the $3.5 million loan to the DNC came two weeks afterwards.

* * *

From The Washington Post, 2/5/01, by Kathleen Day: REPORT FINDS WIDE MONEY-LAUNDERING . . .

The failure of U.S. banks and regulators to track transactions with foreign banks enables criminals to route billions of dollars from drug sales, Internet gambling, tax evasion or other illegal activities into the United States each year, a new Senate subcommittee report concludes. . . .

“Inattention and disinterest by U.S. banks in screening the foreign banks they take in as clients have allowed rogue foreign banks and their criminal clients to carry on money laundering and other criminal activity in the United States and to benefit from the protections afforded by the safety and soundness of the U.S. banking industry,” said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee.

RUSSIAN SCANDAL SPARKS PROBE

The subcommittee launched its investigation after a Russian money-laundering scandal erupted at Bank of New York 18 months ago. It examined a number of well-known banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and First Union Corp....

In all, the subcommittee staff questioned 20 institutions and pursued, in detail, more that a dozen U.S. banks involving “dirty money” flowing through U.S. accounts from suspicious foreign banks, especially offshore banks in jurisdictions with weak money-laundering laws, according to the report. . . .

The correspondent relationships that offshore banks have with American banks have become a major tool to facilitate such laundering, the report says.

$1 TRILLION LAUNDERED ANNUALLY

Money laundering is the act of concealing the source of funds obtained from an illegal activity.

An estimated $1 trillion is laundered each year– about half of it, or $500 billion, through the United States, according to the report....

Bank of Boston - From The Laundrymen: . . . Despite peace initiatives in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) continues to ride shotgun on shipments for international traffickers, deal drugs, run protection rackets, and rob banks and post offices on mainland Britain. ... Cash-rich, they wash their money through pubs and drinking clubs, construction firms, taxi companies, and private security services. Once they’ve laundered it, they invest their money in such places as the London Stock Exchange.

Nearly $5 million a year is sent to the IRA from the United States through NORAID. Considering the large Irish population in Massachusetts, it’s hardly surprising the Bank of Boston has been used as a sink for a cell of the Provisional IRA. In the early 1970s, an ad hoc coalition was formed between active members of that cell and local Mafia dons. . . . Organized crime wanted marijuana, the Provo sympathizers became the importers. The middleman, Joe Murray, ... ran a towing company in nearby Charlestown. ... Murray smuggled tons of drugs into the Boston area on fishing boats. The cash he received for his efforts, laundered through the Bank of Boston, was spent on arms, which those same boats then transported to Northern Ireland.

The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 attempted to force banks, savings and loans, and other financial institutions to report all cash transactions over $1,000 to the IRS. But the ceiling proved to be too low. . . . Because there weren’t enough people to process them, most of those forms wound up decomposing in a Detroit warehouse.

Although forty-three ... banks, including Chase Manhattan and Bank of America were penalized for a total of $20 million, the currency-reporting requirement was still widely disregarded until 1985. That’s when the government decided to call time. It accused the Bank of Boston of gross and flagrant violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, alleging that the bank had failed to report 1,163 cash transactions amounting to $1.22 billion.

Among the companies the Bank of Boston had supposedly exempted from cash reporting was the law firm of F. Lee Bailey. More ominously, the bank had given dispensation to a pair of real estate agencies controlled by a local organized crime boss. In the face of overwhelming evidence, the Bank of Boston pleaded guilty, admitting to an additional $110 million worth of violations, and was fined a then-record $500,000.

Bank Chara - From Red Mafiya: . . . The FBI got particularly lucky in the autumn of 1994 when Bank Chara in Moscow collapsed under suspicious circumstances, costing it depositors more than $30 million.

Some $3.5 million of the money had been invested in Summit International, a New York investment house that had been founded by two of Chara’s Russian board members, Alexander Volkov and Vladimer Voloshin.

The Summit executives were no strangers to organized crime. Volkov, Summit’s president, is an ... ex-KGB officer with a noxious temper. Voloshin, Summit’s VP, is a member of the Lyubertskaya crime family in Moscow, where he had once mixed up a target’s address and torched the wrong apartment, as well as its female inhabitant.

Their unlicensed Wall Street investment firm was actually a giant Ponzi scheme, preying mostly on Russian emigres who were promised up to 120% per annum returns on phony companies with names like “Silicon Walley.” To cover itself in a cloak of fiscal respectability, Summit entered into a contract with Prudential Securities vice president Ronald Doria to serve as its financial adviser. (Doria was later terminated by Prudential, and took the Fifth, refusing to testify, during a National Association of Securities Dealers arbitration hearing.)

Between 1993 and 1995, Volkov and Voloshin took in $8 million from investors, spending nearly the entire sum on their own lavish entertainment: beautiful women, long weekends in the Caribbean, and gambling junkets to Atlantic City. In one night alone, Voloshin lost $100,000 at Bally’s Hotel, he covered it with his investors’ money.

In the spring of 1995 Bank Chara’s new president, Roustam Sadykov, flew to New York to ask Summit’s directors to return the bank’s missing funds. When the men refused, Sadykov turned to (Vyacheslav Kirillovich) Ivankov to collect the debt....

When Ivankov and two henchmen paid a visit to Summit’s Wall Street offices, Volkov and Voloshin fled in terror to Miami. But Ivankov’s men caught up with them when they returned to Manhattan, kidnaping them at gunpoint from the bar of the Hilton Hotel and forcing them to sign a contract promising to pay one of Ivankov’s associates $3.5 million.

“You understand who you are dealing with?” snarled Ivankov to the Summit officials....

As an inducement to honor their commitment, Voloshin’s father was stomped to death in a Moscow train station....

Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) - From The Laundrymen:

Banco Ambrosiano was the greatest banking collapse in Europe since the end of World War II. It was shortly to be followed by the greatest banking collapse in the history of banking...

In 1988, the Justice Department launched Operation C-Chase, the letter C standing for currency. Posing as drug dealers, undercover agents put out the bait that they had loads of currency to launder.

And BCCI fell for it....

A costly and complicated five-year operation— involving agents from Customs, the IRS, the DEA, and the FBI— C-Chase produced more than twelve hundred conversations and nearly four hundred hours of clandestinely recorded videotape. By assisting drug dealers to wash $34 million, the Justice Department was able to indict, and in 1990 to convict, several BCCI bankers and dozens of other individuals. In one blow, the Americans had unknowingly pulled the bottom out from under a gargantuan house of cards. . . .

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From Multinational Monitor, 12/94: The Corporate Hall of Shame . . . The 10 Worst Corporations of 1994 — Who examines the examiners? . . . PRICE WATERHOUSE faces approximately $12.5 billion in legal claims from the Deloitte & Touche liquidators of the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International over Price’s audit of the bank. . . .

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For more, GO TO > > > The Strange Saga of BCCI; What Price Waterhouse?

Bank of Hawaii - One of Hawaii’s largest banks.

From greaterthings.com, by Greg Wongham:

HAWAIIAN BANKS LINK: China-US Campaign
Scandal and Illicit Capital Flow

The Link Between Mochtar Riady and the Clinton Administration

The problems with the FDIC/Donna Tanoue and the two big Hawaii banks will undoubtedly effect people throughout the country. I believe that the Hawaii links to Mochtar Riady are attempting to gain access to the American capital market through Riady’s brother-in-law, Mumin Ala Gundawun. Riady was too hot (BCCI, Chinagate), so they wisely chose to approach their plan via the Hawaii connection.

Sec. Treas., Robert Rubin played a major role in setting up this new bank scandal by lobbying for repeal of the Bank Holding Company Act. The purpose for this action is to allow Bank Holding companies (Hawaii’s Pacific Century Financial Corp and BancWest) to expand their financial services, thus allowing them to become full service securities brokerages. This seems like an ideal front to legitimize their deals to the American capital markets....

Overview. I am the producer/host of a public access TV show called “Corruption in Hawaii.” I have spent 6 years exposing different aspects of the Hawaii machine....

During the month of August ... a segment of my show (was) titled, “What does Hawaii’s Bank Losses Mean to You?” The show featured a guest who described the losses he experienced in his family trust which was handled by Pacific Century Financial Corp (formerly Bank of Hawaii). He lost $1 million, plus $300 thousand in legal fees.

Numerous people called and said that they too, had experienced significant losses. Last week the public access station pulled the segment of the show. The next day the CEO of Pacific Century resigned. Two of the board of directors for the public access station are with the two big banks....

The important points in this story revolve around the fact that Hawaii’s Democratic machine played a major role in the Chinagate scenario that grew out of the investigation into illegal foreign campaign fundraising.

The machine headed by Hawaii’s political godfather, Senator Dan Inouye was being investigated by the FBI during former (R) President George Bush’s tenure. The basis of the investigation stemmed from allegations of extortion and bribery aimed at the administration of former (D) Gov. John Waihee. The investigation was killed by Clinton’s friend Webster Hubbell, the number three man in the Justice Dept under Janet Reno. (AP story by J. Solomon: FBI failed to act on fund-raising of ex-Hawaii couple.)...

Eventually the investigation focused on Indonesian banking tycoon, Mochtar Riady and his Lippo Group.

The basis of the story I am trying to relay to you is that Hawaii’s Democratic Machine used the billions of dollars of the Kamehameha Schools / Bishop Estate assets to undertake the task of underwriting and orchestrating the initial public offering of the Xiamen International Bank on the Hang Seng and the NY Stock Exchange. This would have the effect of legitimizing a Communist Chinese banking entity on the biggest stock exchange in the U.S. and open the doors allowing American money to capitalize a communist regime....

It begins in 1963 to 1970, when a group of Hawaii legislators killed a Bank Examiner Bill. They were already employed as legal counsel or otherwise associated with the top banks. This, I felt, was a good point to begin telling you the story because it begins to reflect a pattern of using politically appointed people to legally white-wash or cover-up the wrong-doing of the big banking and financial interests here in Hawaii.

Today the same thing is happening, and this time they were successful in persuading President Clinton to push Hawaii’s Donna Tanoue to become the head of the FDIC. The significance in this is that the only time anyone here in Hawaii ever heard of Ms Tanoue was when she was tapped to cover-up the scandals that arose when 9 out of 20 of Hawaii’s Industrial banks failed. Many of them were linked to former (D) Gov. George Ariyoshi and the high ranking Democratic ‘old boys’. The results were that no one was convicted or sentenced to do time and the people of Hawaii ended up footing the bills....

The point is ... that once again Hawaii’s top banks are in a financial tail-spin and Donna Tanoue has been conveniently positioned to allow the banks to expand throughout Asia, the Pacific-Rim and the western part of the U.S....

For more, GO TO > > > Predators in Paradise

Bank of New York - On 09/22/99, James A. Leach, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee of Banking and Financial Services issued this Press Release at the conclusion of the first two days of money laundering hearings concerning the Bank of New York:

The meaning of today’s testimony is than money-laundering has gone to the tome of the Russian political structure with the confirmation that President Yeltsin’s son-in-law is the beneficiary of two accounts in the Cayman Island’s branch of a reputable New York bank....

Second, the Bank of New York confirmed $7.5 billion in questionable money flowed through eight accounts controlled by one figure over a three-year period....

Third, the CEO of the Bank of New York acknowledged that his bank has correspondent relationships with 160 Russian banks and that on an average day $3.5 billion flows through those accounts.

This figure is particularly noteworthy given prior testimony before the Committee that many Russian banks are mob-influenced and serve more as money-laundering platforms than providers of traditional banking services.

* * *

The New York Times, 02/17/00: . . A former executive of the Bank of New York and her husband told a federal judge yesterday that they helped a group of small but politically connected Russian banks create an elaborate money laundering scheme that moved billions of dollars out of Russia through the American bank....

After more than 18 months of investigation, federal authorities delivered Lucy Edwards, a former Bank of New York vice president, and her husband, Peter Berlin, to the U.S. District in Manhattan. They described how between 1996 and last year, more than $7 billion left Russia illegally and flowed through a network of front company accounts at the Bank of New York that were controlled by Mr. Berlin. From there, the money was transferred to offshore accounts.

The network, according to the couple, was designed by Russian bankers to whisk money electronically between Russia and the United States for three broad purposes: to evade Russian taxes on money from legitimate business transactions, to avoid Russian customs duties on imports, and to “wash” the profits of outright criminal enterprises through legitimate banks, including a $300,000 ransom payment in 1998 to the kidnappers of a businessman in Russia.

The couple, who said they were paid nearly $2 million for their services, said the scheme allowed Russian bankers to conduct illegal banking activities in the U.S. that circumvented the scrutiny of federal banking regulators and law enforcement officials....

The couple agreed to plead guilty to a series of federal crimes, which carry sentences of up to 10 years in prison and heavy fines, and to cooperate with investigators in a plea bargain that federal authorities hope will produce more charges....

* * *

“More than one or two people had to turn the other way,” an investigator said, “You don’t transfer $7 billion through the spanking new Eastern European division without somebody knowing.”...

* * *

Ms. Edwards, Mr. Berlin and three companies controlled by Mr. Berlin — Benex, Bec International and Lowland — pleaded guilty to laundering money to promote criminal activity and defraud the Russian Government; conducting unlicensed banking operations; establishing an unauthorized branch of a foreign bank; operating an illegal money transmitting business; bribing a bank employee; receiving illegal payments as a bank employee and laundering those payments abroad; tax evasion; and fraudulently obtaining visas for hundreds of Russians to enter the United States....

* * *

Ms. Edwards ... said she was first approached in late 1995 by representatives of DKB, a Russian bank whose full name is Depozitarno-Kliringovy Bank, who were interested in using the Bank of New York’s offices and technology to illegally move money out of Russia. During the following years, Ms. Edwards said, those activities came to include money laundering and the other schemes to which she pleaded guilty....

Russian banking during the 1990's has been a notoriously freewheeling affair, with allegations of extensive involvement in the banks by organized criminals.

Ms. Edwards noted in her testimony that DKB’s Moscow employees told her in 1998 that they were afraid to leave the bank’s headquarters because “customers with machine guns were waiting for them.”...

Banker’s Trust - From Corporate Crime Reporter, 3/15/99: . . . Bankers Trust was fined $60 million for its role in a scheme by high-ranking bank officials to enhance the bank’s financial performance by falsely recording approximately $19.1 million unlawfully recorded as the bank’s income and reserves to their rightful owners.

Bankers Trust’s plan to return the remaining balance of the $19.1 million will be supervised by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Three Bankers Trust executives were indicted...

“Bankers Trust’s guilty plea should send a strong signal to all companies that negative consequences will flow from putting pressure on their executives and employees to generate revenues and meet expense targets with any means necessary,” said U.S. Atty Mary Jo White.

“While a corporation, especially a financial institution — naturally expresses concern and interest in the bottom line, it must at the same time ensure that it fosters a corporate culture requiring strict compliance with all applicable legal and ethical obligations.”

Barclay’s Bank - Barclays PLC is a UK-based financial services group engaged primarily in banking and investment banking businesses, and, according to Dr. John Coleman in his book, The Conspirators’ Hierarchy, a member of the Committee of 300.

* * *

From The Guardian, 9/25/99, by Jane Martinson:

Briton Investigated in US Bank Scam

International police agencies are investigating possible links between a British man suspected of involvement in a $17m (£10.4m) securities fraud and the global money-laundering scam encompassing the Bank of New York and the Russian mafia.

Andrew Warren, a Surrey-based solicitor who is wanted in the United States for his alleged involvement in a securities fraud, is suspected of setting up shell companies for Russian clients as part of a money-laundering exercise.

Britain's national crime squad and the US authorities are investigating alleged dealings between these shell companies and two companies linked with Peter Berlin, the Russian émigré at the heart of the Bank of New York inquiry. The two companies, Benex, which is registered in Essex, and Becs International, are alleged to have been used to divert up to $15bn from Russia during the past 18 months.

Mr Warren, who lives in Chauldron, Surrey, was arrested by the national crime squad last year and has since been on police bail while the UK investigation continues.

No direct links between Mr Warren and Mr Berlin are understood to have been found. The investigation is understood to have focused on the dealings between Mr Warren's alleged clients and the companies set up by Mr Berlin, who is married to a Bank of New York employee who has been sacked as a result of the money- laundering investigation.

The Manhattan district attorney's office started extradition procedures against Mr Warren in June when it charged him with enterprise corruption, 15 counts of securities fraud and 61 of falsifying records. The British police are still investigating the case.

Barclays Bank also appears to have been implicated. Money from the $17m scam is understood to have been deposited in the bank's offshore accounts in Jersey.

Barclays is also understood to be one of several international banks which were used to illegally transfer funds out of Russia....

* * *

From The Laundrymen: . . .

BRINKS-MAT MELTDOWN.

Shortly before dawn on Saturday morning, Nov 26, 1983, armed hoodlums broke into the heavily fortressed Brinks-Mat warehouse at Unit 7 of the International Trading Estate....

With great expertise, they neutralized the guards ... Then, with gruesome brutality, they terrorized the guards— pistol whipping them, pouring gasoline over them, and holding lit matches close enough to make them believe they were going to be torched....

One hour and forty-five minutes later, the gang was gone. With them went 6,500 gold bars. Three and a half tons worth.

The price of gold on the London market had closed the night before at about $357 an ounce, valuing the booty at just under $40 million. The following morning, when word of the size of the haul got out, gold prices jumped $18, giving the thieves an additional paper profit of $2 million.

Although Scotland Yard never established whether there were six men in the gang or eight, it arrested four of them within two weeks.

A year later, three of those four were in jail. One was Mickey McAvoy, a 38-year-old professional thug ... Another was 41-year-old Brian Robinson, a professional criminal ... As the reputed masterminds, and for the depth of their barbarity, they were both sent away for 25 years.

The only thing they had to look forward to was the gold.

A year after the largest heist in British history, the police still hadn’t found a single ounce.

~ ~ ~

Brian Perry ran a minicab agency in east London . . . John Lloyd ... lived with an archetypal gangster’s moll— a woman named Jeannie Savage . . . They were the ones McAvoy trusted to make sure his share would be waiting for him when he got out.

To help, Perry and Lloyd brought in a crony of theirs called Kenneth Noye . . . most of the time he dealt in watches and jewelry, and, unlike Perry and Lloyd, did have a record— for receiving stolen goods, shoplifting, assaulting a police officer, and gun licensing violations.

One of his pals was John Palmer, a 34-year old jeweler who some years before set up a gold bullion dealership in Bristol called Scadlynn Ltd. Noye brought Palmer in to use Scadlynn.

Now [Noye] began transporting McAvoy’s gold to Scadlynn— taking exactly 11 resmelted bars per journey . . . Scadlynn, meanwhile, sold the resmelted gold at the going scrap rate, plus a valued-added tax (VAT), which stood at 15%. For its trouble, it would keep the undeclared VAT.

The money from the scrap was deposited at a local branch of Barclays Bank, then withdrawn as cash, stuffed into black garbage bags, and trucked to London. Over the next five months, Scadlynn paid Noye, Perry, and Lloyd in excess of $15 million.

Using a false passport bearing the name Sydney Harris, Noye deposited his share at a Bank of Ireland office in south London, where it was wired immediately to a Dublin branch. McAvoy’s girlfriend, Kathy Meacock, did the same thing on alternate days. So did Jeannie Savage.

If anyone at Barclays or the Bank of Ireland was in the least suspicious, they apparently weren’t troubled enough to tell the police about it.

~ ~ ~

Brian Perry also had a buddy named Gordon John Parry . . . Parry in turn brought in Michael Relton, a crooked lawyer who’d defended him on a drug trafficking charge....

With Relton’s help, Parry deposited $1,190,250 from Scadlynn into a Bank of Ireland branch in southwest London. The money was then wired offshore to the bank’s office in Douglas, on the Isle of Man. Next, Parry convinced his wife’s cousin to help, and she used the bank to send $750,000 to the Isle of Man.

Other deposits followed, bringing the total washed through that branch to $2.25 million. To confuse anyone who might attempt to follow the paper trail, Parry brought some of the money back from the Isle of Man, redeposited it, and sent it offshore to yet another bank. And all this time, Noye continued to deliver gold to Scadlynn— eleven bars per journey— while Scadlynn kept melting it down, selling it as scrap, and sending cash to London....

In early August 1984, Relton helped Parry open an account at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Zurich. Although they later claimed it was nothing more than coincidence, each of them opened accounts at the same branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Between them, they deposited a total of $735,000, bringing their Zurich holdings to just under $1.5 million....

Scadlynn was proving to be a cash cow beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. It got to the point where they were moving so much money that Barclays had to bring in extra tellers just to deal with Scadlynn’s business....

Tipped off by the Jersey police, Scotland Yard put Noye under surveillance. After observing him in the frequent company of Brian Reader— a wanted criminal whom they’d believed had been hiding in Spain— they brought in C-11, a specialist unit used exclusively for top-secret, close-target reconnaissance.

On a cold and dark Saturday evening in Jan 1985, two officers scaled the perimeter wall of Noye’s house and positioned themselves to spend the night on the grounds. One of those officers was John Fordham, a nine-year veteran of C-11.

One of Noye’s rottweillers discovered Fordham. Two more dogs joined the commotion. That’s when Noye arrived, possibly with Reader, carrying a four-inch knife.

Fordham’s body was recovered with eleven stab wounds, mostly in his back.

Noye was immediately arrested, Reader was picked up a few miles away, and the two were charged with murder. Noye pleaded self-defense. Reader claimed he wasn’t involved at all. To the utter astonishment of the police, ten months later a jury acquitted both of them. However, a small cache of gold bars was found at Noye’s house— enough to link them with the Brinks-Mat gold. Noye and Reader were charged with conspiracy to handle stolen goods.

Within three days, the police also arrested Palmer and moved in on Scadlynn....

~ ~ ~

[A Catbird Catcall: And where did this dirty money go after it left Barclays Bank? Of course only Royalty and Robert Rubin may really know, but — Barclays Bank is the 4^th largest institutional investor in Goldman Sachs; the 4^th largest in Marsh & McLennan; the 6^th in Chubb Group; the 2^nd in Citigroup; the 6^th in Lockheed Martin; the 4^th in Raytheon Company; the 5^th in Columbia/HCA; the 2^nd in Merrill Lynch; the 4^th in Riscorp, Inc.; the 3^rd in Conseco, Inc.; the 6^th in Trump Hotel/ Casino; the 7^th in Mirage Resorts, Inc.; the 5^th in Boyd Gaming Corp.; the 6^th in Harrah’s Enterprises; the 2^nd in Bank of America; the 4^th in American Express; the 3^rd in CBS Corp; the 2^nd in America Online, Inc; the 4^th in Time Warner, Inc.; the 5^th in Wilmington Trust; the 3^rd in PNC Bank; the 3^rd in Allstate Insurance; the 2^nd in American International Group (AIG); the 4^th in Xerox Corp; and the #1 institutional investor in Lucent Technologies and The Walt Disney Company — just to name a few possibilities.]

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From www.moneylaundering.com: . . . A front-page article in the Oct 20, 2000 edition of the Financial Times reports that the London branches of some of the world’s largest banks played a key role in what is believed to be a $4 billion international money laundering operation involving former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha.

The Times says 15 banks, including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, handled transactions for the Abacha Family and their collaborators.

The transactions allegedly involved funds looted from Nigeria’s central bank and other corruption proceeds. The Times says British officials have been slow to respond to requests by the new government of Nigeria for assistance in that country’s investigation of Abacha....

* * *

And did you know? . . .

The sixth largest institutional investor in Barclays is Citigroup. The tenth largest is Bank of America.

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Recommended Reading: The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300

Bentley Financial Services - From Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 21, 2001:

Financial firm in Pennsylvania placed in receivership

by Jim Jordan

A Pennsylvania firm that invested more than $4 billion for 3,200 banks, credit unions, non-profit groups and individuals since 1986, including credit unions in Kentucky, has been placed in receivership by a Philadelphia judge.

Bentley Financial Services and its founder, Robert L. Bentley, are accused of fraud and securities violations, but not of losing or stealing investors’ money.

“What we are being told (by state and federal regulators) – is that no assets will be lost,” said Piper Swanson, manager of Metro Employees Credit Union in Lexington. . . .

Swanson declined to say how much money Metro has invested with Bentley, but she said the 10-month investment matures Jan. 1.

Metro, which serves Lexington police and other local government workers, researched Bentley’s record before making the investment, Swanson said.

Major factors were Bentley’s 15-year track record and its ability to return high yields on federally insured investments, she said. . . .

On Oct. 23, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia that accused Bentley of selling uninsured “privately issued notes” to investors by telling them the notes were actually federally insured.

What Bentley was doing, the SEC alleged, was buying long-term CDs from banks and then selling a portion of each CD, represented by an uninsured note, to investors at a lower interest rate than Bentley was receiving on the long-term CD....

The SEC also accused Bentley and his firm of operating as an unregistered securities dealer in issuing the notes.

Bentley, 43, of Paoli, Pa., is a registered representative of TDI Securities Inc. in Denver, the SEC said, but the “fraudulent note sales” were not done through TDI.

The SEC also said fraud was involved because investors could get their principal back when their notes matured only if Bender had been able to attract new investors whose money could be used to pay off the older notes.

Another Bentley company, Entrust Group, was used to buy and hold the long-term CDs.

In mid-September, Bentley had $318.8 million in notes outstanding, the SEC said.

Since Oct. 23, a federal judge in Philadelphia has issued a preliminary injunction against the firm and Bentley, frozen the firm’s assets and appointed Philadelphia lawyer David H. Marion as receiver....

Carl Lindner - From Frontline: Carl Lindner, a Cincinnati businessman with international interests ranging from banking to bananas, is one of the nation's wealthiest men. His frequent, abundant contributions to political candidates and parties have put him at times in the public spotlight.

His friends defend his political giving as merely the generosity of a public spirited citizen. His critics suspect that his money buys him political access and influence. In either event, he is one of several large contributors at the center of the controversy over whether the American campaign-finance system is serving the public interest.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, he dropped out of high school to help run the family's ice-cream store when his father became ill. With a head for figures and a knack for financial deals, Lindner built the business into a chain of stores known as United Dairy Farmers. Today there are over 200 such stores run by his brother Robert. Dairy-store profits have fueled Lindner's investments in financial institutions. First, he acquired savings and loans companies and then diversified into the insurance business. Today he runs a corporate empire known as American Financial Group.

As chairman and chief executive of American Financial Group, Lindner presides over business assets worth $14 billion by his own reckoning. He is a former part owner of The Cincinnati Enquirer. He controls, among other businesses, Chiquita Brands bananas. Lindner has made a name for himself on Wall Street as an astute investor. He has a reputation for "bottom fishing" -- that is, buying a financially troubled or undervalued company at a bargain price and transforming it into a profitable enterprise. He was an important customer of "junk" bond king Michael Milken, who worked for the now-defunct investment banking firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert.

For years American Financial employed a Cincinnati lawyer, Charles Keating, as corporate counsel and executive vice president. Lindner and Keating parted company, and Keating moved to Phoenix and gained notoriety in the 1980s as the man behind the multibillion-dollar failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan....

Lindner gives heavily to political campaigns. While his contributions in Cincinnati and Ohio heavily favor Republicans, in national races he gives generously to both sides. Since 1988, Lindner and his associates and companies have given $650,000 in soft money to the Democrats and $1.5 million to the Republicans, according to Common Cause, a Washington watchdog group. Lindner, his family, and business associates also make donations directly to politicians.

Among them: $106,000 to George Bush's presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992; and $172,500 to Senator Robert Dole since 1980. In a field of the "top ten career patrons" of Senator Dole, Lindner ranks seventh, reports the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan Washington public interest research group. Dole has also made frequent use of private jets owned by the Lindner family -- twelve flights in 1995 alone, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Recently, Majority Leader Dole, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and members of the Clinton Administration have moved to help Chiquita open European markets to its bananas. For years, Chiquita grew lots of bananas throughout Latin America and was the largest supplier to Europe. Then in 1993, the European Union announced changes to its trade regulations on banana import quotas. Colombia and Costa Rica agreed to this new European "banana plan" and were key to making it work. Chiquita said because of this new policy, which it claims violated trade laws, sales and profits dropped.

Although there are relatively few US jobs at stake, Lindner has managed to bring his "banana problem" to the top of our national agenda. The Clinton Administration investigated the idea of imposing trade sanctions against Colombia and Costa Rica, and Bob Dole pushed the issue in Congress. In January of this year, US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor concluded his year-long investigation of the European banana trade dispute and determined that Costa Rica and Colombia's trade agreements with the Europeans are "unfair."

Despite Chiquita's lobbying, the US has decided for the time being not to impose retaliatory sanctions against the two countries, instead pressuring the Europeans to open their banana market to free trade.... * * *

From Intelligence Connection, by Brian Quig:

Charles Keating started out as an attorney for Carl Lindner, the original owner of AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CORPORATION.

Lindner, a well documented profiteer off the VIETNAM WAR, is a much bigger player than Keating. Lindner owned 7 failed S & Ls but has gone virtually unmentioned in regards to the S & L looting scandal.

Linder owns 38.5% of the CIRCLE K CORPORATION (which exploits the underclass in America the same way his UNITED BRANDS exploits the underclass of Honduras) and has been reported to be one of the ten wealthiest men in America and one of the 5 top financiers of CIA.

At the same time as Keating was purchasing the ACC HQ property, Linder was transferring almost the total assets of his AMERICAN FINANCIAL CORPORATION (a private company requiring no stockholder reports) into a Honduran company, UNITED BRANDS taking UB from a publicly traded to a private company.

UNITED BRANDS was formed when UNITED FRUIT, a CIA front prominent in several Latin American coups (as well as the assassination of President Kennedy) was merged with a second company....

See also: American Continental Corp.

For more, GO TO > > > Prudential: A Nest on Shaky Ground; Vultures in The Meadows

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. - From American City Business Journals, March 27, 2001:

Chinese corruption probe targets Sinopec executive

DALLAS -- Six months after China-based oil company Sinopec made a $3.5 billion offering to foreign investors, a top executive has been suspended and is under investigation on corruption allegations related to "economic problems," The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Among the key investors in the company, also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., is Irving-based ExxonMobil Corp., BP Amoco P.L.C. and Royal Dutch Shell Group.

The Journal said their combined investment in the IPO of the Chinese oil venture exceeded $1.8 billion.

The Journal quoted a spokesman with Sinopec as saying 59-year-old Han Qingzhi, the general manager of wholly owned subsidiary Sinopec Sales Co., was relieved of his duties more than a week ago.

The company official did not elaborate on the focus of the investigation, which reportedly has drawn the attention of Chinese government graft inspectors.

The top official of Hubei Xinghua Co., another Sinopec subsidiary, was given a suspended death sentence last year for embezzling $600,000 from the oil company, The Journal reported.

Cisco Systems - From Parish & Company, 9/22/00: CISCO SYSTEMS WATERED STOCK SCHEME...

Microsoft erected a financial pyramid scheme, using employee stock options, designed to leverage growth in its stock price. Cisco Systems’ competitive response ... involved using a merger scheme designed to leverage growth in its own share price.

What neither company anticipated was the impact of Citigroup, quietly using a merger scheme similar to Cisco’s, in addition to a variety of predatory practices designed to generate merger fees through its Salomon Smith Barney subsidiary.

While all eyes are on technology, Citigroup has effectively unplugged the new economy due to excessive mergers and their various peripheral implications, in addition to becoming a watered stock itself. This may represent the biggest untold story in the financial media and also the greatest overall risk to the stock market and economy.

No one doubts the remarkable transformation brought about by the Internet. It has ignited a whole new era of economic prosperity. With an 85% market share in routers Cisco has certainly seized this opportunity and seen its stock market value soar to half a trillion dollars. . . .

Meanwhile, Cisco Systems’ remarkable market capitalization is supported by only $20 billion in total revenue and represents a mere $2.35 in sales per share. The current share price is $67 and there are 8.5 billion shares of stock outstanding, including options. It’s the 8.5 billion shares outstanding that deserves more attention along with the illusion that Cisco is rewarding employees with stock options when in reality employees are prepaying their own wages while management pilfers the retirement system in a desperate attempt to sustain their financial scheme. A scheme largely based upon Microsoft like anti-competitive business practices still unknown to the general public.

Cisco claims that “everyone is doing it” yet this report will confirm that this is simply not true. One notable exemption, however, is Citigroup, which now has 4.5 billion shares outstanding and is the largest bank in the country with a market value of $230 billion. Citigroup is using a similar merger scheme and the equivalent of a “fee mill” to sustain its stock price. This includes aggressively selling high priced annuity contracts into pension plans and various other practices, the exact opposite one would expect in a period of increased automation and efficiency. . . .

For the new economy to regain its footing, industry dominating predators like Cisco Systems and Citigroup must first be exposed for what they are doing. This will allow consumers to instead focus on the many excellent alternatives available, both as consumers of financial services and as investors. . . .

The Big Players and a Historical Perspective

Cisco Systems is using techniques no different than those used by Charles Keating. Many forget that Keating was a hero in his day ... with even Alan Greenspan referring to his bank as “an outstanding success.” Sadly, Keating was the catalyst in destroying a great industry that allowed many consumers to purchase their first home. . . .

You might ask, how does a company become worth half a trillion dollars with gross revenues of only $20 billion? And why do leading pension funds including Fidelity, Janus, AXA and Vanguard, which alone own more than $50 billion worth of Cisco shares, invest in the company? If $300 billion worth of Cisco shares are in equity mutual funds and other managed investment accounts, it is likely that more than $4.5 billion in management and brokerage fees, 1.5 percent, are being siphoned from its equity base each year....

Cisco is a giant company that has placed its employees, shareholders and customers in a mathematical vice resulting from a collapse of ethics and integrity by management. While they will note that “everyone is doing it,” we will see what is simply false....

Key Factors Leading To “Watered Stock” At Cisco Systems

1) Excessive use of the pooling method to account for acquisitions, thereby hiding the true cost of acquisition activity....

2) Paying employee wages mostly in non-qualified stock options. This removes the cost of labor from the financial statements and overstates earnings because these wages for options exercised, unlike cash wages, are not included as a charge to earnings.

3) Sales adjustments now represent a large component of gross revenues and investors should begin to ask questions. The first question should be, are gross revenues being manipulated by management? . . .

4) Cisco’s auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, are not independent and are helping disguise the scheme. This firm also audits Fidelity, Janus, AXA and Vanguard in addition to co-marketing Cisco’s products through its consulting division....

Cisco Systems Becomes a Financial Pyramid

...Cisco boasts that it will acquire 25 companies this year, many software related, by simply issuing more shares of stock that are never accounted for in the financial statements.

This is done by using what accountants call the ‘pooling technique’ for acquisitions. As with the excessive issuance of stock options to cover wage costs, no cash is required and such costs are not reflected in the financial statements. The only direct cost for pooling and options is a small amount of ink toner and paper used to print up new stock certificates...

Pooling, already outlawed in most countries, was scheduled to be repealed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in December. Cisco has since mounted a quiet and furious lobbying effort and already pushed the repeal back 6 months to June 2001....

In addition to pooling, Cisco Systems is also simultaneously issuing a large number of employee stock options instead of paying cash wages. The wage expense for the options exercised is not shown as a charge against the company’s earnings even though the company gets a full tax deduction for such wages. This explains why Cisco Systems no longer pays federal income tax, even though they report billions in profits...

The company has offloaded its entire tax burden to employees who, along with the retirement system, are being left with inflated shares....

Citigroup - In March, 1998, Citicorp and Travelers Group pioneered the merger of the banking and insurance industries with the announcement of a $74 billion merger that ranks as the largest transaction in the history of the financial services industry.

At the time of the merger, Citicorp was the second-largest bank in the U.S. with assets of almost $311 billion and more than 3,200 offices in 100 countries. Travelers, after completing the acquisition of Salomon Inc. (Salomon Smith Barney) was the largest U.S.-based insurance company with $387 billion in assets at year-end 1997. Combined assets of Citigroup total nearly $700 billion!

* * *

October 8, 2001

ATTACKS TAKE TOLL ON BIN LADEN COMPANY

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) – Respected across the Middle East, the Saudi Bin Laden Group renovated Islam’s holiest sites, helped build the skyline in Saudi Arabia’s capital – and forged ties with the kingdom and royal family that are critical to its business.

Since Sept. 11, these carefully nurtured business connections have been threatened.

The family has disowned Osama bin Laden, the main suspect behind the Sept. 11 assault, and there is no evidence of financial links between the suspected terrorist and the business conglomerate.

Yet, some of the Bin Laden Group’s international bankers and business associates said they are reconsidering or even cutting their ties. . . .

Citigroup, which provides banking services to the Bin Laden Group, would not discuss specific banking ties. But spokeswoman Susan Weeks said: “Given the events of the past two weeks, we will be monitoring the situation closely.”...

For more, GO TO > > > The Eagle Awakes; The Nests of Osama bin Laden

* * *

From The Washington Post, 2/5/01, by Kathleen Day: REPORT FINDS WIDE MONEY-LAUNDERING ...

RUSSIAN SCANDAL SPARKS PROBE

The correspondent relationships that offshore banks have with American banks have become a major tool to facilitate such laundering, the report says.

$1 TRILLION LAUNDERED ANNUALLY

Money laundering is the act of concealing the source of funds obtained from an illegal activity. An estimated $1 trillion is laundered each year– about half of it, or $500 billion, through the United States, according to the report....

In one case, for example, subcommittee investigators found that a convicted felon in California used Citigroup to launder nearly $8 million obtained through credit-card fraud. The money went first from the United States through bank accounts in the Cayman Islands to those in the South Pacific island country of Vanuatu and then back into the United States via an account in New York at Citigroup....

* * *

From www.moneylaundering.com: . . .

A front-page article in the Oct 20, 2000 edition of the Financial Times reports that the London branches of some of the world’s largest banks played a key role in what is believed to be a $4 billion international money laundering operation involving former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha.

* * *

November 3, 1997

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Melted Down,
Reissued NAZI GOLD

From Conspiracy Newsline

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York melted down $23 million worth of Nazi gold bars in the 1950s, replacing the swastika with a U.S. seal on the reissued bars. The New York Times cited recently-released Federal Reserve memos which indicated that the U.S. Treasury knew that the Nazis had looted the bars from Belgium and the Netherlands.

The gold was sold on the world markets by the Swiss National Bank during World War II. According to the Times, the Fed melted down the bars after the National City Bank (now known as Citibank) urged that they be reissued and used as collateral to help Spain purchase a new phone system from ITT. . . .

The documents did not indicate whether the Treasury or the Federal Reserve knew or suspected that the gold had come from Holocaust victims. But a federal report issued this year concluded that jewelry and gold fillings taken from concentration camp victims were melted together with gold the Nazis took from the central banks of Europe.

A Citicorp spokesman defended Citibank’s actions by explaining, “this all happened in an era when there wasn’t as much introspection about this kind of transaction.”. . .

* * *

From Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 01/05/99:

Citibank seeks receiver for Oahu Hotel- Citibank, N.A. of Hong Kong has asked a state court to appoint a receiver to take control of revenues generated by the Executive Centre Hotel. The action follows two foreclosure lawsuits against the 41-story hotel filed in December for overdue loan payments totaling $1.5 million.

The hotel is owned by MKS Executive Partners and SHW-Realty, holdings of Indonesian businessman Sukamto Sia. . . .

The hotel owners borrowed a total of about $80 million from Citibank in separate loans in the past 10 years.... payments on the loans stopped in September....

Sia, who was arrested in Las Vegas in October for bouncing $8 million in checks at the Rio and Caesars Palace, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Nov. 6....

* * *

For more, GO TO: Vampires in the City

Coca Cola Co. - From Rense.com, 09/05/00, By Sherman H. Skolnick, http://www.skolnicksreport.com:

Coca-Cola, The CIA,
& The Courts

Anatomy Of The Big Court Fix

One of the hardest things to understand for poorly informed folks is that the law and the facts are not the controlling factors in important cases in Court. Mind you, not every case is corrupted or "fixed". Too often, however, the big ones show signs there has been a malign, if not corrupt, influence on the Judge or Judges involved.

Our court reform group, targeting court corruption, has been active for four decades. We know what to look for. The assignment of cases, is, to us, a key sign.

We have been writing and commenting, and did a one-hour Cable TV Program, on the corruption in the case against The Coca-Cola Company, in Chicago's notorious federal district court. With no exceptions, every judgeship in the place has been bought and sold over the years. [Visit our website story, Buying a Judgeship.]

The case against Coca-Cola was brought in January, 1997, by a Nebraska attorney, John DeCamp, with long prior experience with the American CIA. [The plaintiff, Robert E. Kolody, found it difficult to get a local attorney.]

DeCamp was in a position to understand plenty. He was in a position to know that this important case in Chicago, involving claims against the soda pop monster for theft of intellectual property, storyboards and designs, would be difficult to continue. Any plaintiff's attorney might get chewed up and spit out, especially by Coca-Cola, a worldwide adjunct and proprietary operation of the American CIA.

By the corrupt process of random magic, instead of random selection, the Coca-Cola case was assigned to Chicago U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning . . . And the road to reportedly blackmailing her, to favor Coca-Cola, was already built.

Running on that road was waste hauler John Christopher who had a criminal past with reputed ties to organized crime. He agreed to be an FBI "mole" and to wear a "wire" to target some of Chicago's City Officials, known as "the best that money can buy".

The FBI / U.S. Justice Department project was dubbed "Silver Shovel". Screwing the residents in their own districts with poisonous waste, various city council Aldermen took apparent pay-offs or reportedly extorted pay-offs from Christopher, so he could illegally dump huge waste in their neighborhoods. Left-over construction junk. This was primarily or exclusively in poor black areas, with an empty lot or two, areas without financial or political clout.

By the way, after the FBI dust had settled, the U.S. Government did NOT quickly offer to haul away all the toxic mess that Christopher unloaded, often right near populated inner city areas.

"Silver Shovel" was a headlined scandal in the local press starting about January, 1996. By the time the Coca-Cola case got started a year later, City of Chicago Commissioner of Water, John Bolden, was targeted for federal criminal prosecution in "Silver Shovel".

His and the soda pop case were both pending before Judge Manning. Commissioner Bolden's defense attorney, James Montgomery, was reportedly a close crony of Judge Manning.

It was obvious to savvy sorts what might happen. Montgomery reportedly had ties of some sort over the years with Nevada gambling casino gangsters.

Reportedly part of the crime cartel and a big-time owner of gambling casinos, William F. Cellini reportedly had bought the federal judgeship for Manning, paying some one million dollars through then U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun [D., Ill.].

John DeCamp, in a position reportedly to understand a few things about Coca-Cola and the CIA and the Chicago federal judges, withdrew from the newly started case against Coke, in July, 1997. A few weeks later, started the federal criminal trial USA vs. John Bolden.

Same Judge.

Anyone knowing a lot about court knows that even trials by jury can be "fixed" or sabotaged by the trial Judge. Such as, by the Judge keeping out key evidence as being "inadmissible", by manipulating the dates and circumstances of the jury procedures. By slanting the court procedures against the prosecutors and in favor of the criminal defendant. By scheduling the jury under peculiar circumstances.

In September, 1997, the jury in the Bolden case came back with a split verdict. Guilty on tax evasion, wherein Bolden could get, at most, six months in prison. They acquitted Bolden on the more serious charges of extortion.

John Bolden was a bigshot making as much as 90 thousand dollars a year as Commissioner of Water for City of Chicago. [And perhaps much more as pay-offs to influence his official position.] He was a big fish. The team that helped put together the charges against Bolden were and are livid. Why?

They contend that Judge Manning, to go easy on Water Commissioner Bolden, got a financial benefit that some might construe as a bribe. The team, in plain language, grumbles loud enough for others to hear, that U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning is a crook, whose chair reportedly was bought for her by a crook, and that she belongs in prison, along with the one who bought her the Judgeship.

To understand this story fully, you have to understand the realities of political and financial power. Those who put together criminal charges are most often NOT concerned about bribes to Judges in CIVIL cases. So, if Judge Manning had been bribed or corruptly influenced or blackmailed in the CIVIL case, the one against Coca-Cola, well, the team is NOT concerned.

In the Water Commissioner's case, Judge Manning made the same mistake, however, as Chicago Federal Appeals Judge Otto Kerner, Jr., in 1969. He had reportedly taken a huge bribe in a CIVIL case, involving a five million dollar claim regarding a pet food company. The matter, however, that instigated the federal criminal charges against Judge Kerner was that he had been corrupted to turn loose the Silver-Hi-Jacking Gang, an important federal CRIMINAL case.

A federal judge is a fool to counter the prosecutors in a federal criminal case. A federal judge who takes bribes or financial benefits or is corruptly influenced or blackmailed, in a CIVIL case, most likely stays peacefully and quietly on the bench until he or she retires or croaks.

The other some two dozen U.S. District Judges that sit with Judge Manning in the federal courthouse in Chicago are just as corrupt as Manning. EXCEPT, they do not screw or sabotage or sabotage CRIMINAL cases. [This is not a blanket generality. I could detail their crimes as well, one by one.]

Judge Kerner learned the hard way the number one unwritten law that applies to crooked judges: YOU DO NOT SCREW AROUND WITH CRIMINAL CASES, only civil cases.

Our group, by the way, was instrumental in getting Kerner put in prison. He was the highest ranking sitting federal judge to be sent to jail for bribery in U.S. history. Also sent to jail with him, by our work, was his crony, the former Director of the Illinois Department of Revenue, the highest Illinois state tax collector, Theodore J. Isaacs.

When I publicly accused Kerner, he tried to get a fellow judge to jail me for contempt of court. Kerner held a press conference and all the local media carried his statement calling me a "liar".

But get this, he died an ex-convict. So who was lying after all?

Here are a few questions to think about:

[1] Were and are Coca-Cola's hotshot Chicago lawyers in a position to know that Judge Manning may be in big trouble and subject to blackmail, such as reportedly by Coke's lawyers, because of her role in the Water Commissioner's case. Coca-Cola's attorneys are: Ms Laura Beth Miller, of Brinks, Hofer, Gilson & Lione. . . .

[2] Why is nothing done about Simon Marketing, a marketing adjunct of Coca-Cola and also defendant with them? The one in court that purports to represent Simon Marketing, reportedly actually represents the insurance carrier. Are they committing a fraud upon the court? Simon Marketing merged with Cyrk, Inc., not shown in the Court record. Purporting to represent Simon Marketing is: Jacqueline A. Criswell. . . .

[3] Why did Judge Manning have six federal police in her courtroom, to intimidate me, when I testified at a hearing as to my investigations in respect to Judge Manning and the Coca-Cola case?

[4] The other judges in the federal courthouse with Judge Manning know better than to sabotage or corruptly screw up the prosecutors in a federal criminal case. How is it that she does not realize she on the road to possible disaster? Did she flunk out of Crooked Judge 101? The other crooked judges in her courthouse have all passed the test. They are each as corrupt as her but know how to survive as a corrupt judge.

Cynics claim that the School for training Corrupt Judges how to survive, is financed, in part, by gambling casino loot. Wise bookies are refusing bets, however, on Judge Manning, a judicial school drop-out. Do we know who actually runs such a school?

You betcha. . . .

For more on Simon Marketing and the McDonald’s McMillionaire scandal, see: Simon Worldwide Inc.

See in Part I: Douglas Ivester

Committee of 300 - Recommended Reading: Conspirators’ Hierarchy, by Dr. John Coleman

Commodity Futures Trading Commission - From: The Buying of the President (1996 ed): . . .

Phil Gramm has also been criticized for mixing government business and campaign politics by using his Senate office staff to work on campaigns. . . . At least two different aides to Senator Gramm have written memos about how Gramm’s wife, Wendy...should be used for his reelection bid....

That is particularly interesting in light of the powerful position she held in Washington as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As the nation’s leading regulator of futures contracts for all agricultural commodities, Wendy Gramm was under tight ethical constraints as to the degree and nature of her personal daily interaction with agribusiness interests.

In other words, the chairwoman of the powerful federal regulatory agency overseeing agriculture commodities futures trading would be helping her U.S. senator husband raise campaign funds from the corporations and individuals she regulated....

The CFTC oversees federal regulation of the nation’s fourteen commodities and futures exchanges. At those exchanges, contracts to buy and sell a seemingly endless variety of commodities are traded: oil and gas, soybeans, cattle, pork belies, corn, precious metals, cocoa, lumber, cranberries, and sugar, to name but a few. The regulatory duties of the CFTC are aimed largely at ensuring fairness and stability at the nation’s commodities exchanges.

One week after Bill Clinton won the presidential election it became clear that Wendy Gramm would be leaving the politically appointed CFTC post. On November 16, 1992, nine energy companies wrote to the commission seeking to exempt energy derivative contracts, a business valued at $5 TRILLION a year, from federal regulation....

In response to the energy companies’ request, Wendy Gramm set in motion the process that led to those energy derivative contracts, and other exotic financial transactions, being exempted from regulation. . . . A Center for Public Integrity investigation shows that of the nine companies that requested the exemption, seven had donated to Phil Gramm campaigns through PACs, company officers, or employees....

Cumulatively, Gramm’s campaigns had received $157,250 from the people who were asking his wife to exempt energy derivatives and the other transactions from regulation....

During Wendy Gramm’s tenure with the commodities commission, Phil Gramm accepted $38,500 in commodity honoraria, according to his actual disclosure records. . . At the same time she was heading the commodities commission, he was on the Senate Banking committee. That means that Phil Gramm, too, had regulatory jurisdiction and oversight regarding commodities.

On July 24, 1990, Phil Gramm voted to kill an amendment that would have lowered the sugar price support from eighteen cents a pound to sixteen cents a pound. That was a potential conflict of interest because Gramm’s disclosure show that at the time the couple owned between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in a sugar company named Castle and Cooke....

Coral Reinsurance - From: The Strange Clinton - Rubin - Insurance Industry Connection. 6/13/97: . . .

As American Deposit Corp. learned the hard way ... strong ties exist between Clinton, Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin and the insurance industry.

Insurance industry representatives secretly approached the IRS to issue damaging proposed regulations to the Retirement CD and the Treasury Department pressured the IRS to acquiesce.

Some say that campaign fund contributions were at the source of this action...

But was this the first time Clinton, Rubin and the insurance industry acted together for a dubious project? Apparently not. A strange and convoluted story begins in Arkansas in 1987.

In that year American International Group, Inc., headed by Maurice Greenburg, founded an offshore reinsurance company in Barbados. For several years, AIG denied being affiliated with Coral Reinsurance, as it was named....

While Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he founded the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, a government agency empowered to issue industrial bonds. The ADFA came to the attention of the Arkansas Committee, a group investigating rumors of drug trafficking out of the Mena, Arkansas airport.

Observing the adage, “follow the money,” they were lead to the ADFA. And the ADFA had some strange dealings....

The ADFA borrowed $5 million from the Chicago branch of Sanwa Bank. It then purchased slightly over $5 million in stock of Coral Reinsurance, the Barbados insurance company founded by AIG. Coral then deposited the $5 million, along with $55 million in other investors’ stock purchase funds, in Sanwa Bank. The net result was the bank loaned the money and got it all back in days....

This strange deal was the scheme on Goldman Sachs, headed at the time by Robert Rubin.

Goldman also provided guarantees to ADFA, such a put agreement should ADFA not be permitted to own the stock. (It is against the Arkansas Constitution for the government to own stock in corporations.)....

Some reporters draw inferences from several facts: Barbados has lax banking regulations and tight corporate secrecy laws preventing outsiders from learning corporate ownership; and when ADFA was set up, the legislation prohibited the state auditors from examining the agency...

* * *

For More, GO TO > > > AIG: The American Idol of Greed

Credit Lyonnais - In 1996, Credit Lyonnais was the world’s largest non-Japanese bank, ultimately owned by the French Government.

From the 10/01/96 net article, Credit Lyonnais & L.F. Rothchild Ready to Topple by J. Orlin Grabbe:...

What will happen when the world’s largest non-Japanese bank topples? The repercussions will ripple throughout the world banking system. Get ready to see Citibank, Chase and the Chicago Mercantile hammered....

Credit Lyonnais has long relied on two simple mechanisms to ensure its bloated growth; a ready supply of money-laundering deposits from the Cali cartel and similar sources, and financial infusions from the French government (which owns most of the bank) when all else fails...

Meanwhile, the bank has frittered away its assets in an endless array of non-performing loans. Representative of this is Credit Lyonnais’ financing of Giancarlo Parretti’s purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from Kirk Kerkorian in 1990 for $1.3 billion. Later, in 1992, Credit Lyonnais acquired the assets of MGM, which it then sold to a Kirk Kerkorian-backed group for $1.3 billion earlier this year . . . after having pouring millions of dollars into the company.

The big private loser so far is L.F. Rothschild, much of whose fortune is tied up in Credit Lyonnais. ... Meanwhile, the European Commission has launched a series of investigations into a number of suspicious transactions associated with Credit Lyonnaise...

Finally, there is the usual assortment of dead bodies that often appear in the banking world when millions of dollars are at stake.

One of these is Armschel Rothchild, who until his demise was the chairman of British mutual fund group, Rothschild Asset Management.

Amschel committed suicide by a very innovative method back in July. He took the belt from a hotel robe, tied one end to a towel rack, and the other end to his neck. He then hanged himself by, well, let’s see, “jerking back suddenly.” ... Hmmmmm.

* * *

From The Financial Express, 10/28/98: Credit Lyonnais sale put back to 1999 - French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn will unveil the terms of sale for French bank Credit Lyonnais on Thursday but the float will now be pushed back to 1999 . . . Several groups, including Europe’s largest two insurance companies — France’s AXA and Germany’s Allianz — have expressed interest in strategic stakes in the bank.

* * *

From Forbes Magazine, 12/13/99, by David McClintick:

The Dirtiest Bank
in the World

THE FIRE BEGAN at 8:30 on a Sunday morning in 1996 ... in the main trading room of Credit Lyonnais, one of France’s biggest banks. . . . Dozens of offices and thousands of documents, as well as the trading room, the largest in Continental Europe, built by Gustave Eiffel, were reduced to ashes and rubble. French police suspect the fire was the work of arsonists.

It’s a striking and fitting image of what Credit Lyonnais has become. Once a force in global finance, the bank is little more than half its former size, having been looted by criminals, racked by scandal and decimated by the loss of at least $20 billion ... in reckless and corrupt investments.

It is by far the biggest banking debacle in history. (CB: Until 2008...)

This institution, nationalized by the French government in 1945, is an object lesson in what can go wrong in a government-owned commercial enterprise without accountability....

A criminal inquiry, which began quietly five years ago as a narrow probe of an eccentric Italian tycoon, has grown dramatically into more than 100 separate cases of suspected fraud, embezzlement, bribery, perjury, forgery, money-laundering, and even blackmail and arson in France and several other nations, including the U.S. ...

The Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS and the Federal Reserve ... are examining Credit Lyonnais’ far-flung activities. Rarely have U.S. authorities so deeply probed the operations of a foreign bank. It is now clear that Credit Lyonnais was an octopus of fraud. By comparison, the infamous BCCI, which collapsed with a $7 billion loss, was small change....

Unlike BCCI, Credit Lyonnais is still with us. Reorganized in a French taxpayer-funded bailout that segregated most of the bad loans into a separate entity, the bank was privatized earlier this year, with the government retaining 10% of the common shares. Credit Lyonnais is now a profitable business, with assets of $214 billion, new management and a market value of $9.6 billion. But the sordid past is not behind it. It will be years before the lawsuits and criminal investigations are resolved and the bad assets liquidated....

Among possible crimes in the U.S. under investigation are securities fraud, mail fraud and lying to the Federal Reserve in connection with the purchase of the controversial California insurance company, Executive Life, and its junk bond portfolio....

If the Federal Reserve finds Credit Lyonnais culpable for serious misconduct, as it did Japan’s Daiwa Bank, it could fine it tens — even hundreds — of millions of dollars and even expel it from the country, where it is believed to earn more profit than in any nation outside France....

In France it is nothing less than a phenomenon of historic import, a jolting demonstration of the arrogance, insularity and lack of accountability of the state-dominated elite that has governed the country’s financial sector since World War II. The criminal investigation is the country’s largest ever. In a move virtually unprecedented in history, offices of the French Treasury, the core of the Ministry of Finance, have been searched for evidence of crime...

Investigators are probing a wide array of Credit Lyonnais’ clients and subsidiaries, some of which have bred sizable scandals of their own. These include the doings of such former clients as Robert Maxwell, the late British publisher who died under mysterious circumstances in 1991, and Bernard Tapie, who owned Adidas for a time with Credit Lyonnais’ help and later went to prison for bribery in a separate case....

Even a former governor of France’s central bank has been questioned. Investigators had discussed with other top officials whether their actions or inactions might have fostered Credit Lyonnais’ frauds and losses. Prominent financiers, well-known in global banking circles, face possible imprisonment, financial calamity and public disgrace....

* * *

From The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider, by Al Martin:

IRAN-CONTRA REAL ESTATE FRAUD

The final Iran-Contra note I wanted to make about Nevada was the egregious swindle that George Bush Sr. himself instituted in concert with Frankie Sue DelPapa on that Cosmos Development deal.

The scenario in question later became known as the Peruvian Gold Certificate Swindle, where DelPapa actually substituted corporate records.

Bush had formed a corporation with a very similar sounding name. This was commonly done – mimic corporations with similar sounding names.

You simply substitute the records and it was an out-and-out swindle of the Durham family. This is the scenario that the famous California conspiracy theorist, E.E. Eckert, got involved in....

What Eckert did was connect this fraud to ever larger frauds. He connected the gold certificate fraud into big money, tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans at Banque Paribas, Credit Lyonnais, Union Bank of Switzerland.

This is also part of the National Bank of Greece swindle that was instituted by Prime Minister Papandreou and George Bush together....

This wound up being an enormous swindle in the end and this is what is called the Grade One Swindles in Iran-Contra. These are the swindles that nobody is ever going to want to look at because it gets far too close to the way everything works and what it’s really all about.

For a long time Eckert tried to get the major media interested in it. And they would bite. ABC bit a couple of times on it. As long as the fraud could be contained, to say: “Well, it’s just a small $75 million fraud, and Bush was connected to it.”

But the minute Eckert was able to show that this was up in the clouds....

This is one of the frauds in the clouds that makes the world go around, that ultimately was to involve Daiwa Bank and Sumitomo Bank.

It’s an interesting example. They had hired me at one time as a consultant to provide some further information for them, which I did. They needed some connecting pieces of the puzzle.

But this is a very interesting fraud about which an entire book could be written. It’s a fraud that starts out with a $50,000 investment by George Bush, and ultimately it grows into a $2 or $3 billion international bank fraud.

How? By simply rehypothecating loans and/or borrowing ever greater amounts of money, using proceeds to pay back the old loans, or in some cases to partially pay them back, which was more common.

Then the corporate entity would go bankrupt. Credit Lyonnais was one of the very few banks to ever admit that it lost money, that it had in fact lost about $68 million on this fraud. Of course, they would have no comment when they were asked about George Bush’s involvement with this fraud.

But Eckert knew, and the Financial Times of London knew, that Bush’s signature was on loan papers at Credit Lyonnais.

You may remember this famous scenario. FT London revealed that Credit Lyonnais had a fire in their reserve document storage facility in Paris and (wouldn’t you know it?) there were three or four file cabinets that got burned up, including all of the Bush documents....

* * *

Pecked from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange website by the Catbird on 12/25/99:

Clearing Member Firms: Credit Lyonnais Rouse (USA) Limited

Firm Description: Credit Lyonnaise Rouse Limited, founded in 1847....

Credit Lyonnais Rouse Ltd. (CLR) is an international house with offices in the major financial centers of the world. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Credit Lyonnais S.A. (itself ultimately owned by the French Government), CLR enjoys a long history in satisfying customers who demand high quality, professional services in exchange-traded futures and options, cash markets and overnight Exchange for Physicals. . . .

[A Catbird comment: Wh-a-a-at? ...no mention of it being the dirtiest bank in the world???]

Credit Suisse First Boston - A Swiss-owned Boston-based bank with a long history – too long to view but a bit here.

CSFB gets new IPO headache
with U.S. House probe

By Brian Kelleher

NEW YORK, Sept 5, 2002 (Reuters) - Just when Credit Suisse First Boston must have thought it was off the regulatory radar, government investigators have placed the top Wall Street investment bank back into their sights.

A congressional inquiry into how underwriting firms allocate initial public offerings of stock has been expanded to include CSFB, a unit of Credit Suisse Group Inc. , and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Lawmakers are investigating whether firms favored top executives of companies which were also clients of the investment banks when they doled out shares of hot IPOs.

"It seems to have been a widespread practice (for investment banks) to hand these underwritings out as if they were frequent flyer miles, which I think is wrong," said Ray Soifer, a former bank analyst who runs Soifer Consulting.

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee initially began its investigation into IPO allocations at Salomon Smith Barney, the Citigroup Inc. brokerage, then expanded to include the other investment firms.

The House probe centers on whether Wall Street banking clients were bribed with IPO shares to keep sending their underwriting and merger advisory business to certain firms.

Along with the pressure from Congress, investment banks may eventually face stricter rules when doling out IPO shares.

Salomon revealed it allocated large numbers of shares to top WorldCom Inc. executives, including former Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers, who made $11 million over four years off the stock offerings.

Ohio Republican Michael Oxley, chairman of the committee, said insider allocation of IPO shares unfairly dilutes the value of the stock for the small investor.

It's not the first time CSFB's IPO process has raised eyebrows. In January, it agreed to pay $100 million to settle accusations it charged extraordinarily high trading commissions in exchange for shares of high-flying offerings.

CSFB become one of Wall Street's top tech IPO underwriters during the boom of the late 1990s and early 2000, when the shares were virtually guaranteed to skyrocket and created insatiable investor demand.

CSFB's West Coast banker Frank Quattrone, who drove the firm's success in the tech sector, may become a target of the allocation probe.

Quattrone pushed to get more IPO shares for brokers who worked with his group, according to The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Tech executives he worked with opened CSFB accounts and received up to 1,000 shares of hot IPOs, which were sometimes sold within days, the paper said. . . .

Harvey Pitt, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on Aug. 22 asked the National Association of Securities Dealers and the New York Stock Exchange to review the IPO allocation process to see if it needs to be reformed....

'FRIENDS OF FRANK'

The NASD on Aug. 15 suspended and fined six former and current CSFB executives a total of $320,000 for their roles in the original IPO probe. The four ex-staffers who were censured worked in CSFB's brokerage unit and reported to Quattrone.

By early 2000, executives for Quattrone banking clients had opened 160 CSFB brokerage accounts -- known as "Friends of Frank" accounts -- up from 26 in January 1999, the Journal said, citing a CSFB e-mail.

The value of those accounts tripled to a peak of $150 million, and the clients would sell two-thirds of their IPO allocations within a month of receiving them, the paper said. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > The Turnstone Birds

Dean Witter - From Associated Press:

Dean Witter Charged With Fraud

Elderly Investors Allegedly Lost $65 Million

NEW YORK, Nov 21, 2000 (AP)-- The National Association of Securities Dealers charged Monday that broker Dean Witter Reynolds unfairly coaxed thousands of elderly investors to put $2 billion into volatile bond funds by fraudulently marketing them as secure, conservative investments.

NASD regulators filed a complaint against Dean Witter and two executives, John B. Kemp and Lawrence J. Solari Jr., accusing them of targeting holders of certificates of deposit and other low-risk investments in the early 1990s for the brokerage's Term Trusts.

'Particularly surprising'

Dean Witter's bond funds were embraced by more than 100,000 customers, many of them elderly and on fixed incomes. About 30,000 of those investors lost $65 million after the value of the Term Trusts dropped precipitously in 1994, NASD Regulation said.

The brokerage firm denied the allegations Monday.

"We are disappointed that the NASDR, following an investigation that lagged for more than four and a half years, has decided to pursue this action," said Bret Gallaway, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Co. "The NASDR's action against our firm and the two named individuals is unfounded and particularly surprising since it concerns investments sold seven or eight years ago."

Long investigation

But Barry R. Goldsmith, the NASD's executive vice president for enforcement, said it took time before investors realized their losses and several years beyond that for investigators to uncover and document the depth of the problems.

"This is a major case. It's a fraud case and, obviously, before we bring a case like this with this kind of serious allegations, we want to make sure we have a complete record," Goldsmith said.

Dean Witter, which conducted an extensive internal marketing effort encouraging its brokers to sell the trusts, pocketed more than $119 million in underwriting fees and sales concessions, plus $7 million annually in management fees, the NASD said.

Kemp is president of Dean Witter Distributors and director of sales for Dean Witter InterCapital. Solari was the regional director of Dean Witter's Northeast Region. It was unclear if he still works for the company; Gallaway said he did not know offhand.

'Significant risks' or 'safe'

"The campaign presented the Term Trusts to brokers as a .... safe, high-quality alternative to CDs," the NASD said in a release Monday. "The campaign failed to mention, or obscured, the significant risks associated with Term Trusts."

Term trusts are proprietary bond funds structured to offer dividends outpacing the low interest rates offered of CDs. When the funds were offered in 1992 and 1993, much of their portfolio was comprised of risky mortgage-derivative securities highly sensitive to interest-rate fluctuations, according to the NASD.

When interest rates rose in 1994, the Term Trusts lost more than 30 percent of their value and the dividends paid to investors dropped by nearly one-third. Morgan Stanley no longer offers new Term Trusts, but the shares issued in the early 1990s continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Gallaway, the spokesman for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, noted that a federal judge in New York in 1996 dismissed a class action suit brought against the company for its marketing of term trusts.

But two other cases are still pending, a class action suit in state court in Orange County, Calif., and a suit in state court in Palm Beach County, Fla.

The NASD complaint, filed with assistance from the New York State Attorney General's office, will be settled before a panel made up of an independent hearing officer and two members of the securities industry. The panel has the power to impose penalties including fines, restitution and suspension or expulsion of members from the industry.

Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. - From Den of Thieves, by James B. Stewart:

On Sept 7, 1988, the SEC filed its long-expected lawsuit against Drexel.

The 184-page complaint named Drexel, Michael Milken and Lowell Milken, Cary Multasch, and another high-yield employee, Pamela Monzert, as well as the Posners, Milken’s clients in Fisch-Bach....

The SEC accuses them of insider trading, stock manipulations, fraud, and other violations of federal securities laws....

In December, 1988, Drexel agrees to plead guilty to six felonies, settle SEC charges, and pay a record $650 million.

In March, 1989, Michael Milken and his brother Lowell are indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud....

In October 1989 the junk bond market collapses....

In February, 1990, Drexel files for bankruptcy protection....

In April 1990, Milken agrees to plead guilty to six felonies and pay $600 million....

In November 1990, Milken is sentenced to ten years in prison....

Recommended Reading: Den of Thieves; F.I.A.S.C.O.

Dynegy Inc. - Another energy trader (like Enron) going down the slippery slide.

May 29, 2002

Dynegy chief executive Watson resigns

Its stock spiraling amid questions about possible sham trades, Dynegy Inc. announced the resignation of its chief executive Tuesday in yet another top-level shake-up of an energy trading company.

Chuck Watson, a co-founder of Dynegy, became the latest casualty of turmoil that has spread through the industry since the Enron Corp. scandal broke last fall. He led an abortive attempt to buy Enron as it was collapsing.

With his company's stock down as much as 88 percent in a year, Watson stepped down as both chief executive officer and chairman of the board.

DynCorp - From “From The Wilderness” - What Happens in Congress May Not Be As Important As What Happens With CIA, The Military and The Private Contractors Leading Us To War in Colombia . . .

When The Children of the
Bull Market Begin to Die

By Michael C. Ruppert

[Bill Clinton arrives in Cartagena Colombia on August 30, 2000 on the heels of three unpublicized massacres by right wing paramilitaries designed to inflame FARC guerillas. The real shooting and the American publicity machine churning out war fever will start on the same day. This was the lead story in the June issue of "From The Wilderness."]

While attention is being increasingly focused on a billion dollar military aid package for Colombia that is nearing Bill Clinton's desk for signature, experience - especially that taken so painfully from Vietnam - tells us that the real determinants of how deeply involved we will become in Colombia are not in Washington, but already down there stirring the pot.

As in Vietnam, and unlike the Contra War, Congress may just be playing "catch-up" with events created by various interests serving more than one master. And experts are becoming increasingly persuaded that our current Colombian experience is more like Vietnam than anything since.

The likelihood of direct involvement of U.S. forces in a dense hostile terrain, controlled by experienced, organized, well-armed, indigenous forces, toughened by three decades of civil war is growing daily. And indicators of the imminence of conflict are not to be found in whether the Senate or the House chops or adds a few dollars or helicopters which can all be restored without fanfare to the Foreign Aid Bill in Conference Committee at the last minute. They are to be found in the movements and actions of money, the U.S. military and some CIA / DoD connected corporations, possibly using "sheep-dipped" CIA and military personnel disguised as employees of private companies in roles that can only expand the conflict.

The money flow in and around Colombia, both as connected to the drug trade, to vast oil reserves and to the other abundant resources accessible through the "back door" to the Amazon, only hints at the financial and economic power accumulated in the country. As FTW observed a year ago, the wealth accumulated by the FARC guerrillas, largely through the "taxation" of the drug trade, was sufficient to induce Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, to travel to Colombia seeking investment funds for Wall Street.

That same wealth has made it possible, according to MS-NBC, for FARC to purchase enormous quantities of weapons from the Russian Federation and have them delivered to Colombia in huge Il-76 transport planes. The rebel forces (both FARC and ELN), now controlling a third of the countryside, are paying for the weapons with cocaine which is then flown back, under the control of the Russian Mafia for sale in Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.

The model is not substantially different from that employed by CIA protected assets and operations during the Contra War of the 1980s except that there is no ideological mask. And, as documented heavily by FTW (10/99), the proceeds of Russian organized crime are increasingly finding their way into profitable investments in U.S. banks like the Bank of New York or into Wall Street where history is again affirmed that the real power always profits from both sides of a war.

To understand the significance of this trade it must be noted that, in spite of the continuing expansion of violence between the three dominant factions (government, right wing paramilitaries and rebels), all of which deal prodigiously in drugs, Colombia has been able to steadily expand its drug production every year for the past ten years. Now the largest drug producing nation in the world, according to DEA and DoJ sources, Colombia produces almost all of the world's cocaine and almost two thirds of all the heroin entering the United States. If one imagines three rivals locked in a raging gun battle, one wonders how or why they could all simultaneously increase drug production at rates that would make major corporations jealous. Clearly something else is operating here and that is the hand guiding the huge accumulation of wealth resulting from decades narco-expansion.

That hand, we believe, is the CIA.

That accumulated drug wealth is what is attracting the likes of major World Trade Organization advocates like former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and his Darby Investments and multi-national giants like Philip-Morris, which, at press time, has announced plans to purchase Nabisco with some of the excess cash it has derived from laundering drug money.

The other key to understanding the motive for a full regional conflict in and around Colombia comes when one grasps fully that the accumulated equity of decades of drug trafficking, possibly several trillion dollars, would be enough, if properly focused in a unified national economy to threaten United States economic dominance in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the world. Better to have the country divided into warring factions and incapable of focusing a unified national will or acting as a regional lynchpin to lead other South American nations in opposition to the re-colonization of the region .

The Private Contractors

As noted by highly credible writers such as Peter Dale Scott, Col. Fletcher Prouty and even the legendary "retired" CIA executive Ted Shackley in his book The Third Option, the use of private corporations, whether directly owned by CIA as "proprietaries" or not, is a common practice for the extension of U.S. military and diplomatic power. Examples of the former in Vietnam include Civil Air Transport or Air America while examples of the later include large multi-nationals such as Bechtel, Brown and Root, AT&T or any of the major oil companies.

In regions where overt commitment of U.S. military forces is impolitic these private corporations, as they have evolved in the last few decades, can accomplish a multitude of objectives essential to inflaming regional conflicts to the point where U.S. military forces must be called in to save the day.

The use of these companies, which serve as actual profit centers for their private investors, their intelligence agency owners, or both, has evolved to the point where the corporations offer off-the-shelf war making capabilities from infantry fighters, to aerial reconnaissance, to general officers capable of setting up or commanding division sized maneuvers in client countries. The survivability of these companies is a priori tied to the creation of conflict and regional destabilization with the blessings of CIA so that there will always be customers. Peace becomes the enemy.

One such corporation, heavily involved in both Colombia and in Kosovo is the Virginia based DynCorp.

DynCorp, according to Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair, is the nation's twenty-second largest defense contractor with 1998 U.S. Government contract revenues of $475 million. DynCorp, which currently has between 300-600 contracted employees in Colombia, is performing functions like crop eradication (using defoliants - like Vietnam), to sophisticated aerial reconnaissance, to combat advisory roles training military and possibly even paramilitary forces.

When the history of the Colombian War is written it may well be noted that the first U.S. casualties were actually three DynCorp employees killed when their reconnaissance aircraft crashed on a mountaintop in the drug growing regions last summer. DynCorp employees have been described as being arrogant and more than willing to get "wet" by going out on combat missions and engaging in firefights.

A British source reminded us recently that DynCorp Chairman, Pug Winokur, begged out of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's ill fated last flight in the Balkans.

The same Pug Winokur is on the board of Harvard Endowments which had a behind the scenes hand in destroying the economic research conducted by former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts in 1996. That research was beginning to illuminate how the drug trade generates profits for Wall Street through the subsidized HUD housing market where Harvard is a heavy investor. . . .

(For more on this connection, GO TO > > > HUD)

The parallels between Colombia and Vietnam are inescapable and unavoidable. After twenty-five years, the passing of an entire generation, the forces that govern us behind the scenes are poised to unleash another "floating crap game" of profits, corporate expansion, re-colonization and even genocide. The one glaring and hope-giving difference is that this time the war will be justified on the basis of fighting not Communists, but drug traffickers - and only one gang of drug traffickers at that.

We will see the American people's willingness to accept this ploy when the children of the bull market begin to die.

ecampus.com - From The Courier-Journal, 6/27/01: Wendy’s Founder Sued Over ecampus . . . A group of Tennessee investors has sued Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, claiming he misled them into investing nearly $1.7 million in a now-bankrupt Internet company.

The company was ecampus.com, founded in 1999 by former Kentucky Gov. Wallace Wilkinson to sell books and other goods to college students.

Wilkinson was forced into bankruptcy in February, listing $418 million in debts, mostly from his collapsed textbook empire. Ecampus.com filed for bankruptcy in May, listing 429 investors.

Among them is Thomas, who has filed a lawsuit in Florida claiming he was misled into guaranteeing a $25 million loan to Wilkinson’s businesses last year.

Seventeen Knoxville investors filed suit last week in Knox County Circuit Court claiming they were misled by Thomas. They claim Thomas “touted this investment ‘as better than Wendy’s’” without disclosing that up to $20 million of a $50 million initial private stock offering for ecampus.com went to prop up Wilkinson’s bookstore business.

If the investors, who participated in a second private offering in 1999 that raised $31 million, had known of Thomas’ financial connection to Wilkinson or that ecampus.com’s money was being diverted, “they would not have invested in ecampus.com” their lawsuit said. . . .

* * *

From The Courier-Journal, 6/27/01, by David Mcginty: SEC Rules Violated, ecampus Suit Says ...

A group of Florida investors in ecampus.com, former Gov. Wallace Wilkinson’s failed on-line bookstore, are claiming that ecampus.com stock was sold to them under conditions that violate U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules.

The 11 investors, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Fla., allege that two ecampus.com figures, Kentucky businessman L.D. Gorman and Wendy’s restaurant founder Dave Thomas, solicited investors and sold shares in the company in a private stock offering, without complying with SEC rules for a private sale.

The 11 investors paid a total of $1.1 million to buy shares of ecampus.com stock in August 1999 at $3.90 a share.

Earlier this year, after Wilkinson’s personal bankruptcy had cast doubt on the viability of his business enterprises, including ecampus.com, the investors filed suit in state court in Florida. They claimed the stock sale violated state securities laws and named Gorman, Thomas and ecampus.com officers as defendants. (Wilkinson, because of his bankruptcy, is protected for the moment from such suits.)

The suit was later moved to federal court, and in a filing late last week the investors filed a new complaint, adding charges of violations of SEC rules.

Thomas and Gorman, the suit claims, did not disclose that they were founding investors in the company, at a price of $1 or less a share, and “stood to benefit significantly” from the August offering at $3.90 a share. Nor, the suit alleges, did they disclose that much of the money would go to Wallace’s Bookstores, another Wilkinson company in which Gorman and Thomas had an interest.

According to information filed in another court, Thomas owned stock in Wallace’s Bookstores worth $15.7 million and owned 2,622,950 shares of ecampus.com stock. Gorman owned stock in ecampus.com valued at $7.3 million and has been named by Wilkinson as a shareholder in Wallace’s.

Gorman and Thomas also offered the stock as a “private placement” exempt from registration with the SEC, although the stock offering failed to meet SEC requirements for such exemptions, the Florida investors claim. . . .

Further, the suit claims, investors were not supplied audited financial statements of the company, although they should have been.

Both Wallace’s Bookstores and ecampus.com have declared bankruptcy and are being liquidated. . . .

The circumstances under which Wilkinson sold stock in ecampus.com are being investigated by the SEC, which interviewed him last week. Also last week, Thomas was sued in a state court in Tennessee by a number of investors who claim he misled them into buying ecampus.com stock.

In a related matter, an affidavit filed in another federal lawsuit said that in early February, when Wilkinson filed for bankruptcy, Gorman said he “might have to sell” Citizens National Bank & Trust of Hazard to cover a debt the bankruptcy had saddle him with.

Gorman or his companies had loaned Wilkinson more than $40 million and had also signed a guaranty for a $25 million loan to Wilkinson from The United Co. When Wilkinson declared bankruptcy, The United Co. loan went into default.

Thomas, who also signed the guaranty, has since sued The United Co. and Gorman, claiming he was misled. . . .

The loan has not been repaid. In April, Citizens Bank announced it will be acquired in the fall by Whitaker Bank in Lexington for an undisclosed amount. . . .

* * *

For another interesting Dave Thomas investment, see “McKenzie Methane” in Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate

Enron Corporation - If you haven’t heard of them, go back to playing your video games .

Nov 28, 2001

Markets Down on Enron's Collapse

By Jerry Knight, Washington Post Staff Writer

The stock market was jolted today by the impending collapse of Enron Corp., the biggest company in the natural gas business and the nation's seventh largest corporation based on revenue.

Dynegy Inc., another big gas company, backed out of buying Enron at mid-day, leaving the giant gas company teetering toward bankruptcy. Enron's natural gas trading desk, which dominates that business, was shut down.

After credit rating agencies downgraded Enron to the "junk bond" level, the company stopped paying its bills and others refused to do business with it.

Enron's stock, worth nearly $90 a share a year ago, plunged into penny stock territory –– closing down $3.50 to 61 cents –– and some traders speculated that it might become worthless.

Enron's collapse pulled down the stocks of Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which only a few weeks ago gave Enron several hundred million dollars in unsecured loans.

Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase are both members of the Dow Jones industrial average, and the declines in their stocks alone knocked more than 30 points off the Dow, which fell nearly 161 points to 9711.86.

The sudden implosion of Enron is the most serious business failure since the dot.com and telecom collapse, and it triggered widespread selling on Wall Street. . . .

Enron's failure has nothing to do with economic conditions and everything to do with the way the company was run.

Only a few months ago, Enron was being touted as the model of the modern corporation. Starting out as a stodgy natural gas pipeline, Enron used the Internet to make itself the master gas trader, revolutionizing the business and generating vast profits.

Much of those profits turned out to be the product of mysterious deals with affiliated companies that never actually put any cash in Enron's coffers.

As Enron's problems began to become evident a few weeks ago, the Houston company put itself up for sale, finally accepting an $8.4 billion offer from much smaller Dynegy Inc. But the more Dynegy executives looked into Enron's business, they less they liked.

Today they pulled the plug leaving Enron little alternative but to file for bankruptcy. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > The Story of Enron

Ernst & Young, LLP - One of the Big Five accounting firms.

GO TO > > > P-s-s-t, wanna buy a good audit?

Federal Reserve Board - From Corporate Predators, by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman:

BOOM AND BAILOUT

So, you’re John Meriwether, the bond trader who was forced to leave Salomon Brothers in 1991 after a trading scandal.

And you leave to start Long Term Capital. And for the first couple of years, you are making 30 percent return on investment for your millionaire friends. And they are loving it. And then you lose the $4 billion. Who do you call? The Federal Reserve Board— bailout central.

So it was that on a late August day, New York Federal Reserve Bank President William J. McDonough received a phone call from Meriwether and bailout fix-it man supreme David W. Mullins, Jr, the architect of the bailout of the savings and loans under President Bush.

Big institutional investors in the hedge fund – Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., Bear, Stearns & Co., and Bankers Trust Corp— were also calling begging for a bailout.

These companies were of course seeking to save their own skin. But McDonough put forth the official spin before a House of Representatives Committee earlier this month.

“Everyone I spoke to that day volunteered concern about the serious effect the deteriorating situation of Long Term Capital could have on world markets,” McDonough said.

Ah, yes, world markets. And so McDonough calls Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and a bailout is arranged.

Former Lehman Brothers partner and current financial columnist Michael Thomas is right— it was improper for the Federal Reserve to arrange a private bailout. If Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs want to protect their behinds by arranging for a private bailout, fine. But the Fed should have stayed out of it.

Or, as former Fed Chair Paul Volcker asked in a speech, “Why should the weight of the Federal Government be brought to bear to help out a private investor?”

“Capitalists now all want it one way,” Thomas says. “They want to do whatever the hell they feel like, but let someone else pay. It’s called privatizing the profits and socializing the risks.”

Hedge funds, which make complicated financial bets with millions and billions of borrowed dollars and are almost totally unregulated, do indeed pose risks to the economy. Because of the nature of their gambles, they can lose huge amounts of money, leaving investors holding the bag (absent a bailout).

Even worse, they leverage borrowed money to exert extraordinary influence over markets, and cause serious problems when they overreact en masse to new fads. (That’s a big part of why the value of the dollar has plunged recently, for example.)

But these are reasons why hedge funds must be subjected to regulatory discipline— not an argument for why high rollers deserve government-orchestrated bailouts.

With the global financial system in frenetic disarray, Long Term Capital is not likely to be the last financial player to go bust. If the government is not able to act quickly to rein in hedge funds and other unbridled financial activities, it should at least declare that no bailouts will follow ... Each bailout makes the next one more likely, as investors are given implicit assurances that they will not have to face the down side of risky bets gone bad.

The gamblers in Atlantic City don’t get this kind of treatment. Neither should those on Wall Street. . . .

George Soros - From Free Republic, 2/12/98, posted by Stefan Lemieszewski:

The Secret Financial Network Behind ‘Wizard’ George Soros

This is another post in the series along the theme that: “Corrupt elites prosper at the people’s expense of the IMF, World Bank and ‘shock therapy’ policies of Western advisors under the guise of free-trade or democratic or market-reforms.”

In his article, “Communique of American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee,” ... Eugene M. Iwanciw wrote: “The American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee met in New York on Nov 17-18, 1995 and reiterated its strong conviction that a resilient Ukraine is in the interest of European stability and thus also American security.” . . .

The American participants of the AUAC sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) included:

Zbigniew Brzezinski (CSIS counselor); Richard Burt (chairman, International Equity Partners); Frank Carlucci (chairman, Carlyle Group); Gen. John Galvin (dean, Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy); Michael Jordan (chairman and CEO, Westinghouse Electric Corp); Henry Kissinger (chairman, Kissinger Associates) and George Soros (chairman, Soros Foundation).

Previous American advisers of AUAC included Malcolm Steve Forbes, Jr. (editor-in-chief, Forbes magazine) ... and Dwayne Orville Andreas (chairman and CEO, Archer Daniels Midland Co. ), whose company pleaded guilty last month for anti-trust and price-fixing violations and agreed to pay a $100 million fine– the largest fine on its kind ever.

Also in a previous post it was indicated that at least six of the current seven American members of AUAC are also members of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), including George Soros....

It has also been reported that Soros has contributed $15 million to groups advocating an array of alternatives to the Clinton administration’s “War on Drugs,” including a personal donation of $350,000 to fund a “medical marijuana” ballot initiative in California and a personal donation of $100,000 for a similar ballot initiative in Arizona.

The following Nov 1, 1996 article by the Executive Intelligence Review provides additional background information on George Soros...

The Secret Financial Network Behind “Wizard” George Soros, by William Engdahl...

Time magazine has characterized financier George Soros as a “modern-day Robin Hood,” who robs from the rich to give to the poor countries of eastern Europe and Russia. It claimed that Soros makes huge financial gains by speculating against western central banks, in order to use his profits to help the emerging post-communist economies of eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, to assist them to create what he calls and “Open Society.”

The Times statement is entirely accurate in the first part, and entirely inaccurate in the second. He robs from rich western countries, and uses his profits to rob even more savagely from the East, under the cloak of “philanthropy.” His goal is to loot wherever and however he can. Soros has been called the master manipulator of “hit-and-run capitalism.”

As we shall see, what Soros means by “open,” is a society that allows him and his financial predator friends to loot the resources and precious assets of former Warsaw Pact economies. By bringing people like Jeffrey Sachs or Sweden’s Anders Aslund and their economic shock therapy into these economies, Soros lays the groundwork for buying up the assets of whole regions of the world at dirt-cheap prices.

The Man who Broke the Bank of England?

An examination of Soros’s secretive financial network is vital to understand the true dimension of the “Soros problem” in eastern Europe and other nations.

Following the crisis of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism of Sept, 1992, when the Bank of England was forced to abandon efforts to stabilize the pound sterling, a little-known financial figure emerged from the shadows, to boast that he had personally made over $1 billion in speculation against the British pound. The speculator was the Hungarian-born George Soros, who spent the war in Hungary under false papers working for the Nazi government, identifying and expropriating the property of wealthy fellow Jews.

Soros left Hungary after the war, and established American citizenship after some years in London. Today, Soros is based in New York, but that tells little, if anything, of who and what he is.

Following his impressive claims to possession of a “Midas touch,” Soros has let his name be publicly used in a blatant attempt to influence world financial markets– an out-of-character act for most financial investors ... Soros the financier is as much a political animal, as a financial speculator.

Soros proclaimed in March 1993, with great publicity, that the price of gold was about to rise sharply; he said that he had just gotten “inside information” that China was about to buy huge sums of gold for its booming economy. Soros was able to trigger a rush into buying gold, which caused prices to rise more than 20% over four months...

Typically for Soros, once the fools rushed in to push prices higher, Soros and his friend Sir James Goldsmith secretly began selling their gold at a huge profit....

The Secret of the Quantum Fund NV.

Soros is the visible side of a vast and nasty secret network of private financial interests, controlled by the leading aristocratic and royal families of Europe, centered in the British House of Windsor. This network, called by its members the Club of Isles, was built upon the wreckage of the British Empire after World War II.

Rather than use the powers of the state to achieve their geopolitical goals, a secret, cross-linked holding of private financial interests, tied to the old aristocratic oligarchy of western Europe, was developed. ... Soros is one of what in medieval days were called Hofjuden, the “Court Jews,” who were deployed by the aristocratic families.

The most important of such “Jews who are not Jews,” are the Rothchilds, who launched Soros’s career. They are members of the Club of the Isles and retainers of the British royal family. This has been true since Amschel Rothschild sold the British Hessian troops to fight against George Washington during the American Revolution.

Soros is American only in his passport. He is a global financial operator, who happens to be in New York, simply because “that’s where the money is,” as the bank robber Willy Sutton once quipped, when asked why he always robbed banks.

Soros speculates in world financial markets through his offshore company, Quantum Fund NV, a private investment fund, or “hedge fund.” His hedge fund reportedly manages some $11-14 billion of funds on behalf of its clients, or investors– one of the most prominent of whom is, according to Soros, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, the wealthiest person in Europe.

The Quantum Fund is registered in the tax haven of Netherlands Antilles, in the Caribbean. This is to avoid paying taxes, as well as to hide the true nature of his investors and what he does with their money.

In order to avoid U.S. government supervision of his financial activities ... Soros moved his legal headquarters to the Caribbean tax haven of Curacao. The Netherlands Antilles has repeatedly been cited by the Task Force on Money Laundering of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as one of the world’s most important centers for laundering illegal proceeds of the Latin American cocaine and other drug traffic....

Soros has taken care that none of the 99 individual investors who participate in his various funds is an American national. By U.S. securities law, a hedge fund is limited to no more than 99 highly wealth individuals, so-called “sophisticated investors.” By structuring his investment company as an offshore hedge fund, Soros avoids public scrutiny.

Soros himself is not even on the board of Quantum Fund. Instead, for legal reasons, he serves the Quantum Fund as official “investment adviser,” through another company, Soros Fund Management, of New York City. If any demand were to be made of Soros to reveal the details of Quantum Fund’s operations, he is able to claim he is “merely its investment adviser.” Any competent police investigator looking at the complex legal structure of Soros’s businesses would conclude that there is prima facie evidence of either vast money laundering of illicit funds, or massive illegal tax evasion. Both may be true....

George Soros is part of a tightly knit financial mafia – “mafia,” in the sense of a closed masonic-like fraternity of families pursuing common aims. Anyone who dares to criticize Soros or any of his associates, is immediately hit with the charge of being “anti-Semitic” – a criticism which often silences or intimidates genuine critics of Soros’s unscrupulous operations....

According to knowledgeable U.S. and European investigators, Soros’s circle includes indicted metals and commodity speculator and fugitive Marc Rich of Zug, Switzerland and Tel Aviv; secretive Israeli arms and commodity dealer Shaul Eisenberg, and “Dirty Rafi” Eytan, both linked to the financial side of the Israeli Mossad; and the family of Jacob Lord Rothschild....

~ ~ ~

Comment on above article from navigator, 2/12/98: Soros is directly linked to Bill and Hillary. Along with Larry Lawrence (not really a wealthy man, rather a money launderer for organized crime) George Soros is one of the “legitimate” sources of Clinton campaign money and a financial director of the Elect Clinton campaign. The illegitimate sources being the PRC and money robbed from failed banks, etcetera.

* * *

From The Spotlight, by Godfrey Fortune, 3/2/98:

Speculators, D.C. in Cahoots

Fat Cat Internationalists Are Making a Fortune at Your Expense – with a Little Help from the U.S. Government.

It is now quite clear what happened in ‘Southeast Asia vis-a-vis currencies.

George Soros and his pals saw that the local economies were shaky and took advantage of the situation to make billions by selling their currencies short (with money borrowed from the banks).

Soros did the same in 1992, with the British pound and Italian lira. So did the big American brokerage firms, led by Salomon Brothers, with the Mexican peso.

Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, did something unforgivable when he actually dared to identify his enemies. But now he will have to go, cap in hand, and borrow from the international bankers, just like all the others. When you realize that Soros himself is deeply involved with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), you will realize that the shortselling and lending forces are working in unison.

The meeting of Asian and Southeast Asian government officials at which Mahathir denounced Soros and his pals for selling Southeast Asian currencies short was covered by British correspondent Derek Stoneham. He reported that when Mahathir made his denunciation, only U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Assistant Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat failed to applaud.

Within hours, they were denouncing Mahathir and calling reporters to defend Soros. As Albright told the London Financial Times, Soros is “a valued citizen [of the U.S.] who has done much good in the world. He is not involved in any financial dealings anywhere in Southeast Asia.” Eizenstat said it was “naive and mistaken” to blame the sudden shakeout on currency speculation: “Other forces – lagging trade, rising deficits – are behind this devaluation.”

CRASHES & SHORT SELLING

But such influences do not have sudden effects by themselves. Even persistent selling causes only gredual depression of the market. Crashes always involve short selling. They certainly did on this occasion.

As The Spotlight (9/22/97) reported, it wasn’t long before the computerized currency trading logs from Hong Kong and Singapore were made available to the unjustly maligned newspaper. These show that Soros quietly began betting against the Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit as early as Feb 1997.

In the first three months of 1997, his $10 billion Magnum Fund profits were a mere 2.3%. By August they were 22.3%....

A Soros raid involves gearing short positions up to $20-30 billion with the help of bank loans. Few countries have sufficient reserves to stand against such pressure, and his profits are commensurate.

Southeast Asian diplomats whom I meet at functions in Vienna confirm The Spotlight allegations but ... the Southeast Asian governments which resent the money power are by no means guiltless themselves.

And the Indonesians are the most corrupt of all. . . .

* * *

From The Spotlight, by Martin Mann, May 11, 1998: Elite Gobble Your Tax Dollars ! —

The House and the Clinton administration are eye-ball to eye-ball on billions for the IMF. The key question is, who benefits?...

The Clinton administration is pressing Congress to vote a hefty new handout — some $18 billion — to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this year...

These stories have been well covered in the mainstream media. But what has been missing from the White House press releases — and mainstream media reports — is where the money really goes....

To make up for such lack of candor, this populist newspaper has launched its own inquiry to find out just who gets the dough rolled out for this conspiratorial one-world financial bureaucracy The answers turned out to be revealing....

First rakeoff rights off the top go to Goldman Sachs, the giant Wall Street investment bank where Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin made his first billion in the anything goes 1980's...

Goldman Sachs has been retained as a lavishly-paid financial adviser, underwriter and syndicator both by the governments of South Korea and Indonesia, as well as some of the largest banks and corporations in these sorely squeezed countries....

BILLIONS INVOLVED . . . Under current arrangements, stage-managed by Rubin and his faithful sidekick, Undersecretary of the Treasury Laurence Summers, Indonesia and South Korea are slated to share an eye-popping $100 billion in IMF bailout funds during the next 16 months or so....

“You’d think most of the loot would go to help ease some of the crushing dollar-denominated debt of these hard-hammered Asian economies — at least, that’s what Rubin and Larry Summers claim,” commented Fred Ackerman, a veteran Wall Street trader in international debentures...

Nothing like it, warned this veteran money manager. “In reality, the IMF’s bailout is being used mainly as loan insurance to enable Indonesia’s and Korea’s tapped-out state agencies and corporations to borrow even more in the global markets.”...

Goldman Sachs, chosen as the lead underwriter and syndicator of new bond issues for some of the largest Southeast Asian borrowers, is already collecting millions — and is expected to collect tens of millions — of dollars in fees and royalties for helping to pile more debt on the stumbling Indonesian and Korean economies....

“It’s like one of Mike Milken’s daisy chains, isn’t it?” asked Ackerman sarcastically, referring to the fraudulent syndicates set up in the ‘80's by convicted swindler Michael “Junk King” Milken to rig the bond markets....

In much the same fashion, there is just a thinly veiled linkup between the official acts of Treasury Chief Rubin — known to insiders as the most powerful man in Washington as well as the main back-channel promoter of the IMF — and the huge profits skimmed by his once-and-future firm, Goldman Sachs, from such international bailouts, Wall Street sources say...

The second kickback from the IMF bailout goes to what even the Wall Street Journal calls “vulture capitalists” — that is, international financiers who pounce on distressed corporations, buy them out at knockdown prices, and then use “special connections” to make a killing on the deal. This is what happened in Mexico in 1994-95, and it’s happening now in Southeast Asia, Wall Street sources say....

For an example, they cite the case of Daewoo, a major Korean car manufacturer, crushed by a back-breaking $3 billion debt it could no longer service after international speculators, led by George Soros, raided Korea’s currency and devalued it by more that a third last year...

An international syndicate headed by General Motors and advised by Goldman Sachs is now negotiating to buy a controlling interest in Daewoo at a time when they can acquire the huge bankrupt manufacturing complex at a steep discount, something like “15 cents on the dollar,” these sources averred...

“That’s a real sweet deal for the vulture investors grabbing Daewoo, but will they also get stuck with its $3 billion in outstanding debt,” asked Dr. Gottfried Sieberth, the dean of European financial writers based in the U.S....

Not if the IMF cash is divided up the way it was in Mexico, where it was used to buy up the defaulted loans of the biggest banks and corporations, explained this knowledgeable observer.

* * *

"Daddy Warbucks" of Drugs and Death -
CFR member George Soros

In April 1998 Reader's Digest printed an article by Senior Editor Daniel Levine, titled "HIGH ON A LIE." The article is about the "medical marijuana" movement and explains how the movement is a hoax and a fraud. Levine fails to point out the Council on Foreign Relations links to sponsorship of the movement.

In November of 1996 the California voters passed Proposition 215 - the Compassionate Use Act. It allows the marijuana to be grown and used for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief." The Campaign for the "Compassionate Use Act" to legalize medical marijuana would not have been successful without the funding of billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling....

Council on Foreign Relations member George Soros is one of the world's richest men (estimated worth: $10 billion) and probably the biggest international investor of all time. This guy lost $600 million in one day speculating on which way the yen would jump and never flinched.

Soros doesn't flinch because he and his fellow Council on Foreign Relations members can always steal more money. In 1995, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, as head of the Senate Banking Committee, issued a report about the Clinton Administration's $20 billion loan to Mexico. The reason given for the loan was to prop up a staggering Mexico because any default on loans would end foreign investment in all developing countries.

The real reason was to rescue American and Mexican investors who had thrown their money into the craps game of high-interest Mexican Government bonds. For a year before the loan was ordered, on January 31, 1995, top Treasury officials and President Clinton were telling us how great things were going economically in Mexico. It was a cover-up to prevent Congressional defeat of the North American Free Trade Agreement, to bolster the Mexican and US administrations in upcoming elections in both countries, and to protect the major speculators.

An article from Newsday, "Peso Hits Record Low As Bailout Is Debated" ( Karen Rothmyer - 1/31/,95) identifies some of the Council on Foreign Relations members involved in the cover-up. They were "Former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford [who] signed a declaration of support for the [bailout] plan. Also endorsing the plan was George Soros, probably the world's most influential international investor."

George Soros is also a member of the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is an investor team led by Ronald Reagan's Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci III and funded in part by the Mellon family....

Soros uses some of the money he steals to fund a group of international foundations. Foundations are used by The Council on Foreign Relations to funnel corporate and personal wealth into the policy-making process. Foundations are tax-free. Contributions to foundations are deductible from federal corporate and individual income taxes.

The Foundations themselves are not subject to federal income taxation. Foundations control hundreds of Billions of dollars of money that would normally go to pay federal and individual income taxes.

In 1970 there were 7000 foundations that controlled $20 Billion in assets. Nearly 40% of these foundation assets were controlled by the top 12 foundations [Ford Foundation, Lilly Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Duke Endowment, Kresge Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Mott Foundation, Pew Mutual Trust, Hartford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Carnegie Foundation].

The top twelve foundations were controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations

Foundations can he created by corporations or individuals. These corporations or individuals can name themselves and their friends as directors or trustees of the foundations they create. Large blocks of corporate stock or large amounts of personal wealth can be donated as tax-exempt contributions to the foundations.

The foundations can receive interest, dividends, profit shares, and capital gains from these assets without paying any taxes on them.

The directors or trustees, of course, are not allowed to use foundation income or assets for their personal expenses, as they would their own taxable income, but otherwise they have great latitude in directing the use of foundation monies-to underwrite research, investigate social problems, create or assist universities, write research, investigate social problems, establish "think tanks," endow museums, etc.

At the Soros foundation Web Site (http://www.soros.org) we learn that the:

"National foundations are autonomous institutions established by Mr. Soros in particular countries to initiate and support projects. National foundations are located primarily in the previously communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in Guatemala, Haiti, Mongolia, and South Africa. Each national foundation has a board of directors and staff who set the priorities for the foundation's work. The national foundations are, in most cases, autonomous nongovernmental organizations registered in their own countries and staffed by local professionals...."

One of the Foundations, the Open Society Institute, is issuing grants to promote abortion. Among the programs those that use abortion as a method for family planning.

Is the Soros foundation a way for the Council on Foreign Relations to use tax payer money to promote abortion and population control?

Are the Soros foundations part of the Council on Foreign Relations "Secret Team" ?

Do Soros Foundation employees double as covert operators who carry out well planned psycho-political operations in the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union?

Are any Soros' Foundation employees also CIA agents?...

The Council on Foreign Relations controls the US Banking industry, and has controlled the Federal Reserve since it's inception.

Council on Foreign Relations member Robert Edward Rubin was sworn in as the 70th Secretary of the Treasury on January 10, 1995. On May 18, 1998 Reuter's reported "Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Attorney General Janet Reno, at a joint news conference, said a three-year undercover operation had resulted in the indictment of officials from 12 of Mexico's 19 largest banks. They said it was the first time that Mexican banks were "directly linked to laundering the Cali and Juarez cartels' U.S drug profits."

Are any drug profits laundered by Council on Foreign Relations controlled US banks?

CFR member Congressman Richard Gephardt (D-MO), recently informed the TV audience America will soon have to relinquish control to a "International Regime." Are we approaching the day when students and workers marching in the United States will be crushed by UN Peacekeeping Forces under the control of this International Regime? Who will control the Regime? The Council on Foreign Relations?

Should a major political party consider someone willing to turn our country over to a "International Regime" a possible presidential candidate?...

* * *

From When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten:

PREDATORY FINANCE

CREATING UNCERTAINTY AND RISK

For global corporations engaged in producing and trading real goods and services, the sometimes considerable swings in the exchange relationships among different currencies can be a serious problem ... Speculators, by contrast, thrive of volatility, as it is their source of extractive gain...

There would be little opportunity for speculative profit in a stable financial market. In most instances, the extractive investor is taking advantage of price fluctuations to claim a portion of the value created by productive investors and by people doing real work – a private tax on the productive output of others....

The riskier and more destabilizing forms of extractive investments have received a major boost from the formation of a new breed of mutual funds – called hedge funds – that specialize in high-risk, short-term speculations and require a minimum initial investment of $1 million.

The biggest of these, Quantum Fund headed by George Soros, controls more than $11 billion of investor money. Since aggressive hedge funds may leverage investor money to borrow $25 or more for every investor dollar, this would give a fund with $10 billion in equity potential control over as much as $250 billion.

Many of the largest hedge funds produced a return of more than 50 p