Numerous influential people arrested for money laundering

LAHORE: Numerous globally-famous rulers like Nigeria’s dictator Sani Abacha, former Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos, Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian, former Ukrainian Premier Pavlo Lazarenko, former Guatemala President Alfonso Portillo, Congo’s former head of state Mobutu Sese Seko and Indonesia’s ex-President Suharto etc have been convicted in money-laundering cases during the past few decades.
The above-named presidents, premiers and military dictators were found guilty of hiding or disguising the financial trail of the dirty money in their possession.Top Pakistani politicians also faced conviction in money laundering cases.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was sentenced to 97 months in prison with a fine of $9 million for his role in laundering $30 million of extortion proceeds. (Reference: The November 19, 2009 post of the American FBI on its website)
An amount of $22,851,000 was also forfeited from the Ukrainian ruler. After a trial that lasted 10 weeks and a half, Lazarenko was convicted in the United States by a jury on June 3, 2004, on 29 counts of money laundering, wire fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property.
By apprehending all the above-named rulers in money-laundering cases, the world authorities have basically sent a message that no one is immune from criminal charges.
Just over a month ago, as the “Chicago Tribune” revealed in its February 23, 2015 edition, the daughter of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of President Barack Obama, was sent to jail by a federal judge who had revoked her bond in a money laundering case.
The woman Jeri Wright was convicted last March of 11 corruption counts, including money laundering and lying to a grand jury, in a case tied to a state grant. Her father, a lightning rod in Obama’s 2008 campaign, was not involved in the case.
In September 2014, the incumbent Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif were cleared by a Justice Anwar Ahmed-led Accountability Court in Rawalpindi of all charges pertaining to a money laundering reference filed 14 years ago during General Pervez Musharraf’s rule.
Along with other family members, Premier Sharif was acquitted of all corruption charges in relation to the Raiwind palace, Hudaibya Paper Mills and possession of other illegal assets. Justice Anwar Ahmed had said that the cases had been pending for 14 years and not a single witness had appeared in court.
In May 2014, the son of president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, Teodorin Obiang, was also charged with money laundering.In 2008, former Israeli Finance Minister, Avraham Hirschson, was sentenced to five years in prison for theft and money laundering.
In February 2014, as the Associated Press had reported, A Paris court had convicted the spokesman for former French President Jacques Chirac’s party in a money-laundering scandal eight years ago.
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was locked down in July 1991 after it had come under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated. This bank was created with capital from a Middle Eastern ruler and Bank of America.
Founded by a prolific Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi in 1972, the BCCI had operated in 78 countries; it had over 400 branches, 30,000 employees and assets in excess of US$20 billion, making it the 7th largest private bank in the world by assets before its closure. Abedi had previously set up the United Bank of Pakistan in 1959.
Joseph Trento ‘s book “ Prelude to Terror: Edwin P. Wilson and the legacy of America’s private intelligence network” states: “The liquidators, Deloitte & Touche, filed a lawsuit against Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young - the bank’s auditors - which was settled for $175 million in 1998. A further lawsuit against the Middle Eastern rulers, a major shareholder, was launched in 1999 for approximately $400 million. BCCI creditors also instituted a $1 billion suit against the Bank of England as a regulatory body. After a nine-year struggle, due to the Bank’s statutory immunity, the case went to trial in January 2004.”
The book adds: “However, in November 2005, Deloitte persuaded creditor Abu Dhabi to drop its claims against the Bank of England, except for a claim for return of its deposits, in that Abu Dhabi owned 77% of the bank shares at closing, and was therefore also facing a major lawsuit. To date, liquidators have recovered about 75 per cent of the creditors’ lost money. A decade after its liquidation, its activities were still not completely understood.”
The Bank of New York was accused of being involved in laundering the Russian capital flight to the tune of $7 billion. It was blamed of having laundered this amount through accounts controlled by bank executives in the late 1990s.
In November 2005, the Bank of New York had agreed to pay $38 million in penalties and victim compensation in a deal stemming from a six-year investigation of fraud and money laundering involving suspect Russian and American bank accounts and other fraudulent transactions.
(Reference: The November 9, 2005 edition of the New York Times)
The Standard Chartered Bank of Britain had once paid $330 million in fines for money-laundering hundreds of billions of dollars for Iran. The money laundering took place in the 2000s and occurred for “nearly a decade to hide 60,000 transactions worth $250 billion.
In December 2012, the HSBC bank had paid a record $1.9 billion fines for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for drug traffickers, terrorists and sanctioned governments such as Iran.
(References: The December 6, 2012 and December 11, 2012 editions of the New York Times)
In May 2013, Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica-based centralised digital currency service, was seized by the United States federal authorities for laundering $6 billion.
The London branch of South Africa’s Standard Bank was fined £7,640,400 by the British Financial Conduct Authority for failings relating to its anti-money laundering policies and procedures over corporate and private bank customers connected to politically exposed persons.
A French bank BNP Paribas was found guilty of falsifying business records and conspiracy. This Paris-based financial institution had allegedly violated US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. It agreed to pay an $8.9 billion fine, the largest ever for violating American sanctions.
BNP had hid the names of Sudanese and Iranian clients when sending transactions through its New York operations and the broader American financial system.
(Reference: The June 30, 2014 edition of the New York Times)
Last but not least, in June 2014, the son of the all-time great Brazilian football legend Pele had been sentenced to 33 years in prison after he was found guilty of laundering money for an alleged drugs cartel.
Pele’s son Naldinho was accused of controlling a large proportion of the drugs moving through the country’s south-east region, including the supply of cocaine to the slums of Rio de Janeiro, but has been on the run from police for more than five years.
(Reference: The June 1, 2014 edition of the Independent)
The term “money laundering” was first known to the world about 85 years ago when a top-ranking American mobster Al-Capone (1899-1947) used to whiten his ill-gotten money through a cash-operated laundry trade, though he was indicted in 1931 for tax evasion and was convicted and sentenced to a then-record-breaking 11 years in prison.
Believed to be in the forefront of the birth of modern money laundering schemes, Alphonse Gabriel Al-Capone is believed to have laundered at least $1 billion through various businesses, which proved very helpful in hiding and disguising his illegal gains from gambling dens, bootlegging business and prostitution rackets with political and law-enforcement protection.
Although Al-Capone’s 7-year reign as crime boss had ended when he was just 33 years old, this son of Italian immigrant parents was so affluent that President Franklin D Roosevelt had to use his armoured 1928 model Cadillac car equipped with 3,000 pounds of armour and inch-thick bullet-proof windows on December 7, 1941 or just hours after Pearl Harbour attack because the US spy agents were worried about his security.
The White House did already have a specially built limousine for the president that he regularly used, it wasn’t bulletproof, and the Secret Service realised this could be a major problem now that the country was at war.
Remember, US government rules at the time restricted the purchase of any vehicle that cost more than $750 or $10,455 in today’s dollars.
[The Pearl Harbour attack of December 7, 1941 was conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Hawaii.
The base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers.
Of the 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, while 155 of them were on the ground. Some 2,403 American soldiers were killed and 1,178 had sustained injuries in this Japanese offensive.
On the other hand, 55 Japanese airmen and nine submariners were killed in the action, and one was captured.
Of Japan’s 414 available planes, 29 were lost during the battle with another 74 damaged by antiaircraft fire from the ground. The civilian deaths had stood at 68.]