THE OBAMA-HOLDER ASSAULT ON AMERICA, OUR LAWS, INSTITUTIONS, BORDERS, VOTING AND JOBS WAS TO FINISH OFF MIDDLE AMERICA AND LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR AN OBAMA THIRD TERM FOR LIFE.

“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing.”

Katie Pavlich's Latest Books, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up are available on Amazon

FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND ERIC HOLDER SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO EASE MORE MEXICANS OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO OUR JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS.

OBAMA NEEDED THESE ILLEGALS TO FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, WHAT WAS LEFT OF THEM AFTER OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS' PLUNDER.

“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times

“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG

During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”

In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.

The Republican staff of the US House Committee on Financial Services released a report Monday presenting its findings on why the Obama Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder chose not to prosecute the British-based HSBC bank for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”

“Judicial Watch’s records request is designed to expose how California state legislators are wasting tax dollars to take care of another corrupt politician – Eric Holder – under the guise of resisting the rule of law on immigration and other matters,” stated Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “His record at the Clinton and Obama Justice Departments demonstrates a willingness to bend the law in order to protect his political patrons.”

FNC’s Pirro: ‘Obama Was in the Middle of the Plot to Take Down Flynn and Trump’

563

JEFF POOR

10 May 2020222

7:45

On Saturday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Justice,” host Jeanine Pirro reacted to the week’s news that the Department of Justice was dropping its case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Pirro used her “Opening Statement” segment to criticize all the actions that had led up to Flynn’s prosecution, and tied former President Barack Obama and his administration to it.

Transcript as follows:

PIRRO: The release this week of long-hidden transcripts fully exposed the left’s attempt at a coup d’etat albeit bloodless, but a coup nonetheless where a faction of the government tries to take down the leader of the country.

The evidence shows former President Barack Obama and the Obama-Biden administration were the hub of the bloodless coup.

Four spokes emanated from that hub, each with a man’s name on it — Rod Rosenstein in his scope memo gave his friend he appointed Special Counsel, Bob Mueller in the Russia investigation the names of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

Each spoke was an effort to get that person to flip on the President. The primary objective, reverse the election of 2016.

The horror was not just in the treatment of these men, but the fact that Michael Flynn under the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation had already been ruled out as committing no crime, and that no derogatory information against him was unearthed.

But FBI agent Peter Strzok couldn’t have that. Flynn had to be destroyed. We know from the text messages between him and his lover, Lisa Page that POTUS — the President of the United States, then Obama — wants to know everything we’re doing. In other words, Obama was keeping tabs on the investigation.

So why? He was leaving the White House. Wasn’t his term over?

Yet the lives of these four men were ruined. General Michael Flynn, a decorated war hero, railroaded by a smug, arrogant FBI Director James Comey, wearing his Cardinal Comey mask, all giggly that he violated White House protocol and policy and that his Deputy, Andy McCabe told the three-star general he didn’t need a lawyer when Flynn was actually a target, and when he was denied his constitutional Miranda Rights.

And just as egregious, the FBI had already determined there was no basis and no predicate for the inquiry, let alone and investigation of General Flynn.

Now damning evidence against the FBI indicating they tried to get Flynn to lie to prosecute him or to get him fired was hidden or lost in the law firm of Flynn’s first attorneys who kept trying to get him to plead guilty.

The same law firm folks where Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s self-described wingman, was partner. Those records finally released this week.

So why the Flynn hatred? Barack Obama had been touting the killing of that old geezer, Osama bin Laden, and that Barack had al Qaeda on the run.

Flynn, under oath, said the opposite — that al Qaeda was making inroads in North Africa and training in the Middle East, after which the Obama administration actually fired him as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Flynn also contradicted that good old Susan Rice’s claim that Benghazi was a peaceful protest gone awry.

Obama hated Flynn so much that he warned incoming President Trump of two dangerous men: Kim Jong-un of North Korea and a three-star general named Michael Flynn.

He was afraid of Flynn as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who knew where the bodies in the Obama-Brennan-Clapper swamp were buried.

Flynn also made it known that as Trump’s incoming National Security adviser, he would be streamlining those 17 Intelligence Agencies.

And consider this. When Flynn was to be sentenced, Judge Emmet Sullivan actually asked if Mueller ever contemplated charging Flynn with treason.

Imagine the judge in sentencing Flynn for lying to an FBI agent, even when those FBI agents didn’t think he lied, suggesting the prosecutor consider a death penalty eligible crime when Flynn was facing five years only.

But the most damning evidence implicating Barack Obama is the reveal from the January 5, 2017 meeting in declassified FBI notes that Barack Obama met with James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, just after Brennan and Clapper had left the Oval Office.

Obama stated in front of Yates and Comey that he learned of the information about Flynn and the conversation with Kislyak about sanctions.

Clearly, the FBI coordinated very closely with Obama on the investigation of Michael Flynn, and according to Andy McCarthy in the National Review, Obama was surprised that Putin did not retaliate when he imposed sanctions on Russia.

And so Obama officials and the FBI collaborated to invent a Russia collusion narrative.

Sally Yates says that in that meeting, she recalled Comey previously mentioning the Logan Act. So, now we know just two weeks before incoming President Trump was to take office, Obama was discussing Flynn about Russia, an issue already determined by the FBI to be groundless.

Obama was in the middle of the plot to take down Flynn and Trump.

Now, there was a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn and Trump — counterintelligence investigations are done for Presidents so that they can protect the country versus criminal investigations, which are done to vindicate the rule of law.

The information of a counterintelligence investigation that Peter Strzok started against Michael Flynn and the Trump campaign were included every day in the President’s daily briefings of President Obama.

Susan Rice was the National Security adviser who would have been briefed by the FBI on the counterintelligence, and we assume that Obama knew, but now we know Obama actually knew of the takedown by the corrupt and dirty FBI agents.

Look, they lied to us. They did it on television, to the press and under oath. Truth plays no part in the taking down of a legitimately elected President. I’ve told you this before.

The Star Chamber in the sub-basement of the Capitol is just another place where lies were cultivated. These people lie wherever they go, all of them. Clapper not only lied when he testified about not spying on us, not wittingly. He lied about Russia.

Susan Rice not only lied about Benghazi and Rwanda and unmasking — she lied about Russia.

Adam Schiff, not only lies about having proof of Russia collusion, and lying to Congress about the Ukraine call. He had nothing on Russia, and he fought hard to prevent us from getting any of this information.

But that’s because what they said under oath was totally different.

And as for President Obama’s hatred of Donald Trump, when was the last time you recall a sitting President campaigning vigorously against the candidate of the opposing party for President?

When was the last time in American history that a sitting President said with venom on his lips that a candidate of the opposing party will never be President?

When was the last time you heard an ex-President actively campaign against a sitting President? Fundraisers are one thing, but Barack Obama is all in. He never stopped in his community activism against Trump.

Obama went after Trump harder than Bill Clinton. Obama rallied the Justice Department and the FBI Intelligence Communities. A sitting President saying a candidate of the opposing party is uniquely unqualified to be President and is helping terrorists is the epitome of Obama’s hatred against Trump.

Stay tuned. There’s a lot more to come.

JAMES WALSH

THE OBAMA-BIDEN-HOLDER HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our borders and into our voting booths!

How the Democrat party surrendered America to Mexico:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/07/james-walsh-hispanicazation-of-america.html

"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!

The “zero tolerance” program was dismantled by Attorney General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the transit of migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made 140,000 arrests per year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so much that officials only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to a 2014 letter by two pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.

“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”

Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)

Article Link:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240045

WIKILEAKS EXPOSES THE OBAMA CONSPIRACY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html

Obama Funds the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA “The Race”… now calling itself UNIDOSus.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/11/23/omalley-obama-devastated-democratic-party-like-bad-forest-fire/

Previous generations of immigrants did not believe they were racially superior to Americans. That is the view of La Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s former education minister and a presidential candidate. According to this book, republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA, students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards, blacks are ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack enterprise. The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is replacing them, and all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag

HSBC laundered hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars for drug cartels responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people over the past two decades. The bank transferred at least $881 million of known drug trafficking proceeds, including money from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE AS PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA HAD ALREADY SUCKED OFF MORE BANKSTER BRIBES THAN ANY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW THAT THE REST OF US DID NOT?

Last June, when JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified before the Senate on unreported losses of at least $5 billion, sitting behind him was the bank’s chief counsel, Stephen Cutler, who had graduated to that post after serving as SEC enforcement chief.

A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least $400,000 a clip.

“Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of these people in crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.’”

BLOG EDITOR: JP MORGAN IS BARACK OBAMA’S FAVE CRIMINAL BANKSTER. THEY HAVE BEEN VERY GENEROU$ TO OBOMB AND HIS BIDENBOY.

“The other banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase (whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once known as Obama's "favorite banker"), New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.”

HSBC HAS LONG HAD A HISTORY AS THE CHOICE BANKSTER FOR THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. OBAMA’S BANKSTER REGIME MADE SURE THAT NO ONE WENT TO PRISON AT HSBC. DURING HIS 8 YEARS BANKSTER-OWNED ERIC HOLDER, A SOCIOPATH LAWYER, MADE SURE THAT NO BANKSTER PERIOD SAW PRISON TIME. NOT THEY’RE BACK AT IT. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!?

The report goes on to explain that “even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected criminals.”

In 2012, the Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG

And it all got much, much worse after 2008, when the schemes collapsed and, as Lemann points out, Barack Obama did not aggressively rein in Wall Street as Roosevelt had done, instead restoring the status quo ante even when it meant ignoring a staggering white-collar crime spree. RYAN COOPER

“The Obama/Biden was the most corrupt, criminal

administration any of us has ever seen, yet the

media cheered or covered up all the abuse of

power, obstruction of Justice and other crimes. “ JACK HELLNER

During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”

Report documents criminality and corruption at heart of global banking system

22 September 2020

An explosive report published Sunday by BuzzFeed News documents the role that major US and international banks knowingly play in laundering and circulating trillions of dollars in dirty money from terrorist organizations, drug cartels and assorted international financial criminals.

The report is an unanswerable indictment not only of the banks, but also of Western governments and regulatory agencies, which are fully aware of the banks’ illegal but highly lucrative activities and tacitly sanction them.

BuzzFeed writes that its investigation demonstrates “an underlying truth of the modern era: The networks through which dirty money traverses the world have become vital arteries of the global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it so.”

The report continues: “Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

The extensive report is based on more than 21,000 “suspicious activity reports” (SARs) filed by some of the world’s biggest banks with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, between 1999 and 2017. FinCEN makes its database of SARs available to more than 450 law enforcement and regulatory agencies across the United States.

What BuzzFeed calls the “FinCEN Files” were leaked to the news outlet more than a year ago. It has since been combing through them, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coauthored the report.

BuzzFeed News notes that it also shared the SARs with more than 100 other news organizations in 88 countries. The report, titled “Dirty Money Pours into the World’s Most Powerful Banks,” includes only a small and redacted sample of the news outlet’s hoard of suspicious activity reports.

The US government maintains a policy of total secrecy in relation to the SARs, refusing to release them even in response to Freedom of Information requests. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department issued a statement declaring that the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime. In an obvious attempt at intimidation and threat of prosecution, the statement added that the matter was being referred to the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

The initial response of the American corporate media has been to bury or entirely ignore the BuzzFeed revelations. Monday’s print edition of the New York Times carried a report on page eight of its business section. The print editions of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal made no mention of the exposé.

The report is based on more than 22,000 pages of documents concerning over 10,000 subjects and involving more than 170 countries and territories. Nearly 90 banks and other financial institutions are included in the institutions that submitted the SARs.

Deutsche Bank recorded the highest total value of transactions listed in the FinCEN Files: $1.3 trillion, based on 982 suspicious activity reports.

BLOG EDITOR: THE CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION OF WELLS FARGO HAS LONG OWNED THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN AND NOW KAMALA HARRIS. AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CA, HARRIS MADE SURE NO WELLS FARGO EXECS WENT TO PRISON DESPITE THE MASSIVE ECONOMIC DEVASTATION THIS BANK CAUSED. WELLS FARGO HAS CONTINUE TO BE A CRIME TIDAL WAVE EVER SINCE. AFTER ALL, IT’S EASY AND CHEAP TO BUY A POLITICIAN.

The other banks on the top 10 list are JPMorgan Chase (whose CEO Jamie Dimon was once known as Obama's "favorite banker"), New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.

One report, filed by JPMorgan in August, 2014, lists over $355 billion in suspicious activity relating to more than 100,000 wire transfers “sent, received or transferred” over the course of a decade by MKS, a Swiss-based company that trades in precious metals.

At least 25 of the people named as subjects in the SARs have appeared on Forbes ’ list of billionaires in 2018, 2019 or 2020.

The findings featured in the BuzzFeed report include:

● Standard Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni Exchange, a Dubai-based business that was later accused of laundering cash on behalf of the Taliban.

● HSBC’s Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme, to move more than $15 million even as the business was being barred from operating in three states. Authorities say the scheme stole some $80 million from investors, mainly Latino and Asian immigrants. The firm’s owner used the funds to buy two golf courses, a mansion, a 39.8-carat diamond and mining rights in Sierra Leone.

● Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express and other financial firms processed millions of dollars in transactions for Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even after Interpol issued an order for his arrest. Khrapunov fled to Switzerland and was later convicted in absentia on charges including bribe-taking and defrauding the city.

A separate piece by NBC News presents evidence that JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon and other banks helped move more than $150 million for companies tied to the North Korean regime.

In other words, the biggest US and international banks have made countless millions in profits serving as money-launderers for organizations labeled "terrorist" such as the Taliban and governments of so-called “rogue states” such as North Korea—with the knowledge and tacit approval of the governments of the US and other major powers—even as these same governments were waging or threatening war against the targeted organizations and overseas regimes.

The BuzzFeed report describes the cynical rationale behind the formality of banks filing SARs, which, for the most part, are never even read by the staff of FinCEN. Over the past decade, the number of SARs filed by major banks has sharply increased, indicating a growth of money laundering and other illegal activities on behalf of criminal clients. Over the same period, the staff of FinCEN has shrunk by 10 percent.

Banks are legally required to file a SAR with FinCEN if they suspect a transaction might be linked to illegal activity. Large banks file tens of thousands of such reports every year. In 2017, 19 large banks filed a total of 640,000 suspicious activity reports, according to a study by the Bank Policy Institute, a lobbying group.

But as the BuzzFeed report explains: “So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.”

In its article on the FinCEN Files report, the New York Times noted that JPMorgan wired money to banks in Switzerland, Lebanon and Nigeria on behalf of a convicted money launderer, reported the transactions to British and American authorities, and continued doing business with the client. The Nigerian government is now suing the bank in British court.

This collusion between gangster bankers and capitalist government regulators is a continuation of longstanding policy. In 2012, the Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

That was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities, including those that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in what at that time was the deepest slump since the Great Depression. To this day, not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that led to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working class living standards in the US and around the world.

Here, in a nutshell, is the modern-day aristocratic principle that prevails behind the threadbare trappings of “democracy.” The financial robber barons of today are a law unto themselves. They can steal, plunder, even murder at will, without fear of being called to account. They devote a portion of their fabulous wealth to bribing politicians, regulators, judges and police—from the heights of power in Washington down to the local police precinct—to make sure their wealth is protected and they remain immune from criminal prosecution.

Above the law

BARACK OBAMA, THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS AND HSBC BANKSTERS

In the latest scandal involving the criminal activities of major banks, the US Justice Department on Tuesday announced a $1.9 billion settlement with British-based HSBC on charges of money laundering on a massive scale for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

The deal was specifically designed to avert criminal prosecution of either the bank, the largest in Europe and third largest in the world, or any of its top executives. Even though the bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars for drug lords, as well as violating US financial sanctions against Iran, Libya, Burma and Cuba, the Obama administration avoided an indictment by means of a “deferred prosecution agreement.”

The agreement was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in the global recession. Not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that triggered the present crisis, leading to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working-class living standards in the US and around the world.

Under the protection of the state, the frenzied speculation and swindling continue unabated, underpinning record profits for the banks and bigger-than-ever multi-million-dollar compensation packages for top bankers.

In a front-page article on Tuesday, the New York Times outlined internal discussions within the Obama administration that led to the decision not to indict HSBC. The Times reported that prosecutors at the Justice Department and the New York District Attorney’s office pushed for a compromise in which the bank would be indicted not for money laundering, but for the lesser charge of violating the Bank Secrecy Act.

BLOG EDITOR: WHY DO THESE BANKSTER POLS THINK WE’RE ALL STUPID? JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY… RIGHT INTO OBOMB’S POCKETS!

Even this, however, was too much for the Obama administration. The Treasury Department, headed by former New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal regulatory agency charged with policing major banks including HSBC, vetoed any prosecution on the grounds that a serious legal blow to HSBC would jeopardize the financial system.

What does this mean? HSBC, in its pursuit of profit, facilitated the activities of drug cartels that have been the target of the so-called “drug war”—a war prosecuted by the Mexican military at the behest of and with the collaboration of Washington—in which over 60,000 people have died. This is in addition to the human suffering caused by the narcotics trade in the US and around the world.

It was allowed to pay a token fine—less than 10 percent of its profits for 2011 and a fraction of the money it made laundering the drug bosses’ blood money. Meanwhile, small-time drug dealers and users, often among the most impoverished and oppressed sections of the population, are routinely arrested and locked up for years in the American prison gulag.

The financial parasites who keep the global drug trade churning and make the lion’s share of money from the social devastation it wreaks are above the law. As the Times put it, “certain financial institutions, having grown so large and so interconnected, are too big to indict.”

Here, in a nutshell, is the modern-day aristocratic principle that prevails behind the threadbare trappings of “democracy.” The financial robber barons of today are a law unto themselves. They can steal, plunder, even murder at will, without fear of being called to account. They devote a portion of their fabulous wealth to bribing politicians, regulators, judges and police—from the heights of power in Washington down to the local police precinct—to make sure their wealth is protected and they remain immune from criminal prosecution.

The role of so-called “regulators” such as the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is to run interference for the bankers. They are well aware that crimes are being committed on a daily basis, but turn a blind eye because criminality is intrinsic to the operations of Wall Street and the profits it takes in.

There is evidence that HSBC and other major banks stepped up their money laundering for drug cartels and other criminal outfits in response to the financial crisis that began to emerge in earnest in 2007 and exploded in September of 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Following a similar “deferred prosecution” deal with Wachovia Bank in 2010 for its drug money laundering operations, Antonio Maria Costa, who then headed the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said that the flow of crime syndicate money represented the only “liquid investment capital” available to the banks at the height of the crisis. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade,” he said.

There can be little doubt that US regulators and political leaders gave their tacit consent to these operations as part of their rush to rescue Wall Street from the consequences of its own money-mad speculative binge.

The incestuous relationship between bank regulators and the banks comes into full view in the case of another recent bank scandal. Last week, Deutsche Bank was named by three ex-employees in a complaint to the SEC alleging that it fraudulently concealed $12 billion in losses between 2007 and 2009.

The Financial Times noted in passing that Robert Khuzami, the head of enforcement at the SEC, has recused himself from the probe because, before taking his post at the federal agency, he was Deutsche Bank’s general counsel for the Americas from 2004 to 2009. In other words, he was in charge of legally defending the bank at the very time it was, according to whistle blowers, engaging in accounting fraud.

This was also the period when Deutsche Bank and other major banks were making billions by poisoning the world financial system with toxic mortgage-backed securities. Last year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations devoted 45 pages of a voluminous report on the financial crash to the fraudulent activities of Deutsche Bank.

The report noted that the bank’s top trader in collateralized debt obligations had referred to securities the bank was selling as “crap” and “pigs,” and called the banking industry’s CDO operations a “Ponzi scheme.”

That such a man should be put in charge of policing the banks is, in fact, par for the course. The man who recommended that the Obama administration give Khuzami the job, Richard Walker, the current chief counsel at Deutsche Bank, was himself a former head of enforcement at the SEC.

This Augean stable of crime and corruption, which involves every official institution of American capitalism, cannot be reformed. The stranglehold of the financial aristocracy over economic life can be ended only through the mass mobilization of the working class to expropriate the bankers and place the major banks and financial institutions under public ownership and democratic control.

US Justice Department blocked prosecution of HSBC bank for drug cartel money laundering

The report, titled “Too Big to Jail,” reveals that in 2012 Holder and other senior Justice Department officials ignored an internal department recommendation to criminally prosecute key bankers at HSBC. The report also documents the fact that George Osborne, then Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, warned the Obama administration that prosecution of the world’s fourth-largest bank could precipitate a new global financial crisis.

The report states: “Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBC’s criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ [Department of Justice] leadership declined to pursue AFMLS’s [Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering] recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank ‘could result in a global financial disaster’—as [Britain’s Financial Services Authority] repeatedly warned.”

In a lawsuit filed against HSBC by the families of Americans killed by Mexican cartels, prosecutors presented evidence that Mexican drug lords were such frequent customers at HSBC that the bank specifically designed deposit boxes for their use that would fit in HSBC bank teller windows.

The report documents the criminal role of the Obama administration in shielding the gangsters who run the major banks in the US and internationally from prosecution for their illegal and socially destructive deeds. It makes clear that the failure of the US government to hold criminally liable a single leading Wall Street figure in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, which was triggered by rampant fraud and swindling, is the result of a highly conscious and systematic policy.

Holder himself all but admitted as much in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March of 2013, when he declared: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them, when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute—if we do bring a criminal charge—it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”

Instead of jailing the banksters, the administration and the Federal Reserve plowed trillions of dollars in public funds into the financial system to drive up stock prices and the already obscene wealth of the financial aristocracy, while making the working class pay the cost in the form of savage social cuts, the destruction of pension and health care benefits, layoffs and wage reductions.

A separate US Senate report released in 2012 already concluded that HSBC had a “pervasively polluted” culture that permitted its top officials to look the other way and allow $7 billion in drug money to flow from Mexico to the US. That year, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen stated, “HSBC absolutely knew the risks of the business it pursued, yet it ignored specific, obvious warnings.”

The House report issued Monday states that Holder “misled” Congress as to why the DOJ did not prosecute the bank. After being criticized for his “too big to jail” comments before the Senate in March 2013, Holder sought to walk them back in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2013. He denied at that time that he was unwilling to prosecute a major bank because of its size and claimed HSBC’s size was not a significant factor in the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute. The reason, he said, was “lack of evidence.”

The House committee found, on the contrary, that the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering section of the DOJ wanted to criminally prosecute bankers at HSBC precisely because their violations of law were so blatant and so well documented.

The report cites a letter sent by Osborne to then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in which Osborne warned that prosecuting a “systemically important financial institution” such as HSBC “could lead to [financial] contagion” and pose “very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia.” Later, Osborne underscored this point in a face-to-face meeting with Bernanke in which they discussed the possible prosecution of HSBC bankers.

Instead of prosecuting, Holder oversaw a “deferred prosecution” sweetheart deal in which the bank was required to pay $1.9 billion in penalties.

Families of Americans killed by Mexican drug cartels sue banking giant HSBC

16 February 2016

On February 9, four US families who lost loved ones to Mexican drug cartel violence in 2010 and 2011 filed an unprecedented lawsuit against HSBC Holdings, HSBC Bank USA, and HSBC México S.A. The suit charges that the banking giant knowingly supplied terrorist organizations, namely four major drug cartels, with “material support” by laundering billions of dollars in the years leading up to the murders.

Among the victims cited in the case is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime J. Zapata who was ambushed and murdered by the infamous drug cartel, Los Zetas, while on temporary assignment in central Mexico in 2011. The case received national attention after confirmed reports that at least one of the weapons used to kill him was linked back to the US government. The AK-47 was one of the many weapons essentially funneled to the drug cartels as part of the federal operation known as “Fast and Furious,” in which the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms deliberately allowed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers in hopes of tracing them back to the cartels.

Other victims included in the lawsuit are Rafael Morales Jr., who was abducted just outside a church on his wedding day, along with his brother and uncle, by members of the Sinaloa cartel with the collaboration of the local police force. All three were later found dead of asphyxiation, their heads wrapped in plastic and duct tape.

Also included in the lawsuit are Lesley and Arthur Redelfs, who were both shot to death in Ciudad Juarez on their way home from a children's birthday party hosted by the US Consulate where Lesley was employed. Lesley Redelfs was four months pregnant.

The basis of the case rests on the US Anti-Terrorism Act, which was modified in the aftermath of 9/11 to allow victims to seek compensation from any organization that supplies terrorist groups with material support or resources. While the US government has not officially labeled them as terrorist organizations, the suit cites the more than 100,000 murders and tens of thousands of disappearances since 2006 in arguing for the right to victims’ compensation.

HSBC’s guilt in laundering billions of dollars for drug cartels is irrefutable. The details of the many, well documented occurrences of the bank’s sidestepping, and in most instances outright disregard for banking laws exposed in the legal proceedings of this case and a related 2012 case are overwhelming. The complaint filed by the plaintiffs’ in Brownsville, Texas on February 9, reveals that HSBC’s Mexican branches routinely accepted and processed exorbitant amounts, hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of US dollars from clients with no identifiable source of income.

The complaint reads, “HSBC intentionally implemented criminally deficient anti-money laundering programs, processes, and controls, which were designed to guarantee that billions of dollars of illicit proceeds would go through its banks undetected or unreported.” It goes on to explain that in many cases these funds were even delivered in custom designed boxes made to fit the dimensions of the teller windows.

In spite of the deliberately lax, and during certain periods nonexistent, regulatory system, the compliance function at HSBC Mexico was still able to catch suspicious activity. In December 2008, there were 675 accounts pending closure based on suspicion of money laundering activity. Closures were ordered on 16 of those accounts in 2005, 130 in 2006, 172 in 2007, and 309 in 2008, yet all 675 of these accounts remained open well into 2009, continuing to allow money launderers to make bulk cash deposits.

HSBC Mexico’s former director of money laundering deterrence, in an exit interview following his resignation, was quoted as saying that he believed senior management had “absolutely no respect for AML [Anti-money laundering] controls and the risks to which the Group was exposed and had no intention of applying sensible or appropriate approaches.” The report goes on to explain that the former director attributed the behavior to what he characterized as “a culture [of] pursuing profit and targets at all costs.”

HSBC executives received repeated and explicit warnings about the large scale money laundering schemes from outside sources such as the US State Department as early as 2006, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—a bureau of the US Treasury Department—as well as several internal warnings throughout 2007 and 2008. Despite this, HSBC Mexico still accepted over $4.1 billion in US dollar cash deposits in 2008, a record amount for the branch. It is widely believed that many banks, including HSBC, only managed to stay afloat through the 2008 financial crisis by catering to these international drug cartels.

The money laundering that is the basis of this new lawsuit was proven in a 2012 prosecution by the US Justice Department. The case ended in a “preferred prosecution agreement” in which the court gave the multinational bank what amounted to a free pass for the largest drug money laundering case in history. Under the conditions of this agreement the bank agreed not to contest the charges of failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, and violating the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

What made this case unique, aside from the huge amount of funds proven to have been laundered (at least $881 million), was the Justice Department's brazen acknowledgement of the motives behind its failure to pursue a more aggressive prosecution, namely, the protection of the global capitalist financial markets.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference justifying why criminal charges were not brought against the bank explained, “HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized.” Meaning, the big banks and other multibillion-dollar corporations are exempt from the law so long as they continue lining the pockets of the ruling aristocracy. This decision exposed decisively, once again, the inextricable and corrupt relationship between the various branches of the government and the global financial oligarchs.

The 2012 decision brought down by a Brooklyn federal judge was admittedly not based on any principled fulfillment of the law. Rather, it served to establish a more tangible basis for the legal shielding that had been regularly taking place for this type of giant corporation deemed “too big to jail.”

In lieu of any criminal charge against the responsible parties, the bank was instead fined $1.9 billion, an amount equal to barely five weeks worth of profits for HSBC and far less than it accrued through its laundering of drug money. It constituted a fairly minor cost of doing business. Not a single day of jail time was demanded for the bank executives, who had essentially functioned as the financial arm of the drug cartels.

The relationship between massive international banks such as HSBC and the Mexican drug cartels like Los Zetas and Sinaloa has been one of mutual benefit. Both organizations are driven by an insatiable need for profit demanded by the capitalist system and both are indifferent to the criminal methods by which it is gained.

However, as this case so clearly shows, it is not simply the banks who are complicit in the massive growth and influence of these drug cartels. The banks play an important role in providing a financial system to manage their money, but it is the US Justice Department that has sanctioned such criminal behavior, and the US government as a whole that has created and perpetuated the conditions under which such corrupt and violent drug cartels could thrive.

The US government’s support for Mexico’s “drug war” begun in 2006 has done nothing to curb the growth of the drug cartels and instead has arguably served to intensify it. The Merida Initiative implemented by the US government in 2008, supplied Mexico with over $2 billion in arms aid, provided military training of security forces and sent “advisers” across the border. With large sections of Mexico’s officials and law enforcement officers working in collaboration with the drug cartels, much of these funds and resources have aided the very groups they were meant to combat. One report estimates that the cartels spend more than a billion dollars each year just bribing the Mexican municipal police.

In the case of Rafael Morales, it was in fact the local police force who accompanied the Sinaloa cartel and barricaded the road to the church and it was arms provided by the US government that were used against Zapata in 2011.

On closer examination, the origins of these drug cartels themselves lie in the relations between the US and Mexican governments. Before becoming Los Zetas, the original members of the violent drug cartel were a special forces unit of the Mexican Army trained in the United States at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. If HSBC is found guilty of providing material “means and resources” to these terrorist organizations then it seems there should be ample evidence and grounds to also indict the US government as well.

Whatever the outcome of the recent lawsuit, the case has exposed once more the fraudulent character of the “war on drugs,” as well as the staggering levels of criminality of the highest reaches of the financial aristocracy and of the political institutions that represent it.

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: AN AMERICAN TRAITOR

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

THE CASE AGAINST ERIC HOLDER AND THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS