money laundering worldwide

Iran tops in money laundering worldwide, for 3rd straight year    http://www.arabnews.com/node/1160786/middle-east

But is the above account true?  E. g., the following:  
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4-2-11     More shocking, and more important, Wachovia Bank (now part of Wells Fargo) was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor.  Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009.   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

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5-23-17        A subsidiary of one of the largest banking corporations in the United States has admitted to engaging in criminal behavior by failing to properly investigate tens of millions of dollars in suspicious money transfers to Mexico, highlighting the important role US financial institutions play in laundering money for Latin American criminal organizations.

Banamex USA, a subsidiary of the US banking conglomerate Citigroup, accepted responsibility for "criminal violations by willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) compliance program ... and willfully failing to file Suspicious Activity Reports," according to a May 22 press release from the US Department of Justice.

In exchange for cooperating with the government's investigation, paying a $97 million fine and admitting wrongdoing, the bank will not be formally prosecuted for breaking the law....

 In arguably the most famous incident, the British multinational bank HSBC was fined $1.9 billion in 2012, in part for allowing Mexican and Colombian cartels to launder nearly $900 million worth of criminal proceeds using the bank's US subsidiaries....

The fact that so many banking companies have been and continue to be implicated in allowing money laundering to take place through their institutions suggests that the deterrant effect of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements is minimal. Thus, there is little incentive for financial institutions -- whose main purpose is maximizing profit -- to spend resources on oversight mechanisms, if they lose little when they are caught and stand to gain if they are not.    http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/us-bank-admits-criminal-failure-stop-money-laundering-mexico

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5-29-17   Jose Manuel Saiz-Pineda - the ex-Secretary of Finance for Tabasco, Mexico - was indicted by a Corpus Christi federal grand jury back in April. But it wasn't till authorities collared his wife, 49-year-old Silvia Beatriz Perez-Ceballos, that the charges were unsealed....Prosecutors are planning to seek a $50 million personal money judgment, according to the indictment.   http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Ex-Mexican-official-Houston-area-wife-charged-in-11181265.php

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2-16-17   

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

America's largest banks are to propose a complete overhaul of how financial institutions investigate and report potential criminal activity, arguing that money laundering rules imposed in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and strengthened during the Obama administration are onerous and ineffective, sources said. 

The Clearing House, a trade association representing the largest U.S.
banks including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America and Citigroup, has
long raised concerns about the effectiveness of the current rules, but
this will be the first time the group has publicly called for them to
be revamped.   https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/big-us-banks-to-push-for-easing-of-money-laundering-rules.html'

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3-24-17    

Some of the world's biggest banks processed hundreds of millions of dollars reportedly from a vast Russian money-laundering scheme, data from leaked documents show.

The data show that major U.S. banks including Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citi (C) all processed money from the scheme.  Global banks HSBC (HSBC), Deutsche Bank (DB), Standard Chartered (SCBFF) and Barclays (BCS) also appear to have executed transactions. 

The internal bank documents were obtained from anonymous sources by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. 

OCCRP has shared data gleaned from the documents with CNNMoney and other media companies.  The Guardian reported on Monday that $740 million was processed by British banksas part of the scheme.    http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/24/news/russia-money-laundering-global-banks/index.html

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9-1-02    

There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: "Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States".   Over a decade then, between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds have been laundered by U.S. banks and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits. Senator Levin's statement however, only covers criminal proceeds, according to U.S. laws. It does not include illegal transfers and capital flows from corrupt political leaders, or tax evasion by overseas businesses. A leading U.S. scholar who is an expert on international finance associated with the prestigious Brookings Institute estimates "the flow of corrupt money out of developing (Third World) and transitional (ex-Communist) economies into Western coffers at $20 to $40 billion a year and the flow stemming from mis-priced trade at $80 billion a year or more. My lowest estimate is $100 billion per year by these two means by which we facilitated a trillion dollars in the decade, at least half to the United States. Including the other elements of illegal flight capital would produce much higher figures. The Brookings expert also did not include illegal shifts of real estate and securities titles, wire fraud, etc.   In other words, an incomplete figure of dirty money (laundered criminal and corrupt money) flowing into U.S. coffers during the 1990s amounted to $3-$5.5 trillion. This is not the complete picture but it gives us a basis to estimate the significance of the "dirty money factor" in evaluating the U.S. economy. In the first place, it is clear that the combined laundered and dirty money flows cover part of the U.S. deficit in its balance of merchandise trade which ranges in the hundreds of billions annually. As it stands, the U.S. trade deficit is close to $300 billion. Without the "dirty money" the U.S. economy external accounts would be totally unsustainable, living standards would plummet, the dollar would weaken, the available investment and loan capital would shrink and Washington would not be able to sustain its global empire. And the importance of laundered money is forecast to increase. Former private banker Antonio Geraldi, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee projects significant growth in U.S. bank laundering.   http://rense.com/general28/money.htm ................................................................................................................................... 1-17-14     the illegal drug trade accounts for around 8 percent of all international trade.  One of the primary reasons that cartels retain their enormous power is that well-known and popular banks are supporting their finances.  Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avinash-tharoor/banks-cartel-money-laundering_b_4619464.html .......................................................................................... 5-30-17    bankers purchased Russian stocks in rubles while selling the same amount of shares in London.  The trades effectively converted rubles to dollars, and the cash flowed from the U.K. through Cyprus, Estonia and the U.S., investigators say.      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-30/deutsche-bank-pays-41-million-fine-for-money-laundering-faults ................................................................................................................. 3-21-17   The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (£65bn).  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-banks-russia-money-laundering-hsbc-barclays-coutts-65-billion-rbs-royal-bank-of-scotland-queen-a7640861.html ..................................................................................................................... 4-17-17   The U.S. agency specifically found that FBME (Tanzania-based bank) had maintained accounts for the head of an international drug trafficking network and a designated Syrian proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, and had facilitated transactions for Hezbollah. The agency reported at least 4,500 suspicious wire transfers to FBME through U.S. accounts exhibiting indications of money laundering that totaled $875 million between 2006 and 2013.  https://www.courthousenews.com/foreign-bank-locked-u-s-financial-system/ ......................................................................................... 8-7-17   In great detail, the Reuters article addresses allegations that (1) the bank was a conduit for vast sums of euros illegally laundered from Spain to China; (2) bank employees made incriminating statements intercepted by wiretap; and (3) the bank used customers’ accounts to make transfers to China without their permission. Spanish officials allege that between 2011 and 2013, ICBC’s Madrid branch transferred approximately 225 million euros to China, with “most of it for suspected criminal networks.”  Spanish prosecutors have said that the sums are so immense, “the damage to the socio-economic order and the national economy is clear.” They claim that wiretap transcripts show ICBC bankers “accepted forged documents to conceal the source of the funds, failed to report suspicious transactions and even tipped off the smuggling groups ahead of inspections at the bank.”  ICBC staff also allegedly “discussed how to avoid detection when moving money to China” and “warned of transfers that might attract unwanted attention.”... Elsewhere in Europe, a once high-profile Italian money laundering investigation into another Chinese bank, Bank of China (“BOC”), ended earlier this year with relatively little publicity. What began with allegations of more than 4.5 billion euros having been smuggled from Italy to China, with roughly half of that money sent to China through BOC, concluded last February with settlements in which BOC did not admit guilt or wrongdoing, but paid a 600,000 euro fine in the criminal case and paid 20,000,000 euros to settle a related tax dispute.   https://www.moneylaunderingwatchblog.com/2017/08/high-profile-spanish-money-laundering-investigation-of-chinese-bank-raises-questions-about-future-of-similar-u-s-enforcement/ ........................................................................................................................... 8-9-17    SAN DIEGO – A federal grand jury has indicted Raul Flores Hernandez, the suspected leader of a Guadalajara-based drug trafficking organization, for moving large quantities of cocaine from South America to Mexico for distribution and further transportation into the United States. In a related move, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated Flores Hernandez, plus 21 of his alleged criminal associates and 42 businesses and other entities affiliated with the trafficking organization as Significant Foreign Narcotics traffickers under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.  As a result of today’s action, all assets of the individuals and entities designated that are under U.S. jurisdiction or are in the control of U.S. persons are frozen.   https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/suspected-guadalajara-drug-kingpin-indicted-san-diego-us-assets-are-frozen-us-treasury     --naturally money laundering has been part of his operations ................................................................................................................... 7-18-17      The California businessman who took part in a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was the focus of a congressional inquiry into possible Russian money laundering in November 2000. Irakly (Ike) Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the early 1990s, set up 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers, according to the report by an arm of Congress that is now known as the Government Accountability Office. Some of the corporations operated as shell companies and were used to move about $1.4 billion through more than 100 accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco, the GAO report said.http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-eighth-man-at-trump-tower-meeting-also-1500404743-htmlstory.html