Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort sentenced to 47 months in prison on five counts of tax fraud, one count of hiding his foreign bank accounts and two counts of bank fraud, far below the minimum sentencing guidelines of 19 to 24 years. “I think the sentencing range is excessive,” U.S. District Judge T.S. …
Tag: Money Laundering
May 09 2018
The Russian Connection: Where Did $4 Million Go?
Tuesday evening, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti dropped a bombshell revealing that Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen received $500,000 from Russia oligarch Viktor Vekselberg after the 2016 presidential election. The story was corroborated by The New York Times and The Washington Post Today it was reported that there were also payments …
Mar 07 2018
The Russian Connection: The Seychelles – Russia and The UAE
Back in January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s team during the presidential transition, had a clandestine meeting in the Seychelles with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emerites (UAE). It was revealed in April that the purpose of that meeting …
Jan 19 2018
The Russian Connection: From Russia With Love To The NRA
Early on in a story by McClatchy reporters, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, it was revealed that the FBI was investigating whether Russian money went to the National Rifle Association to help the Trump campaign, The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National …
Dec 06 2017
The Russian Connection: Money Laundering 101
It was reported yesterday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed the bank records of the Trump family from Deutsche Bank. Duetsche Bank has a rather dubious history of laundering money for everyone from drug lords to arms dealers to oligarchs. Just this psst January, the bank was fined $620 million for its part in …
Dec 05 2017
The Russian Connection: Shoes are Dropping Fast
The Special Counsel Robert Mueller is moving right along. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Maanfort had come to a bail deal that acceptable to the court and Mueller’s office. Problem is that these guys have such huge egos they think they can flout the rules: Former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was, as recently …
Aug 31 2017
The Russian Connection: Teaming Up
Last night Politico reported Special Counsel Robert Mueller has teamed up with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on the case of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Part of the reason for the duel investigation is the possibility that Trump will pardon Manafort and others of federal charges involving the Trump campaign’s conspiring …
Jul 21 2017
The Russian Connection: Desperation
In his interview with New York Times reporters Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman Donald Trump said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating his family’s finances would be a “red line.” SCHMIDT: Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia — is that a red …
May 12 2017
The Russian Connection: Following The Money
More and more the Russian investigation is becoming about the money. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), member of the Senate Finance and Intelligence Committees, spoke with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about why he thinks the Trump-Russia investigation should focus on Donald Trump’s business ties. From Steve Benen at Maddow Blog: In his interview yesterday with …
Mar 12 2013
Why Wasn’t the Death Penalty Warranted?
Once again Sen. Elizabeth Warren demonstrated why the voters of Massachusetts sent her to the Senate when in a Senate Banking Committee hearing about money laundering, she questioned why British bank HSBC is still doing business in the U.S., with no criminal charges filed against it, despite confessing to what one regulator called “egregious” money laundering violations
Her comments came just a day after the attorney general of the United States confessed that some banks are so big and important that they are essentially above the law. His Justice Department’s failure to bring any criminal charges against HSBC or its employees is Exhibit A of that problem.
(..) Warren grilled officials from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about why HSBC, which recently paid $1.9 billion to settle money laundering charges, wasn’t criminally prosecuted and shut down in the U.S. Nor were any individuals from HSBC charged with any crimes, despite the bank confessing to laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and rogue regimes like Iran and Libya over several years.
Defenders of the Justice Department say that a criminal conviction could have been a death penalty for the bank, causing widespread damage to the economy. Warren wanted to know why the death penalty wasn’t warranted in this case.
“They did it over and over and over again across a period of years. And they were caught doing it, warned not to do it and kept right on doing it, and evidently making profits doing it,”
“How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?”
“You sit in Treasury and you try to enforce these laws, and I’ve read all of your testimony and you tell me how vigorously you want to enforce these laws, but you have no opinion on when it is that a bank should be shut down for money laundering?”
“If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re gonna go to jail. If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life,” Warren said. “But evidently if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your bed at night — every single individual associated with this. And I think that’s fundamentally wrong.”
As staunch an opponent of the death penalty as I am, I would have voted for it and watched the “execution” of HSBC with glee.
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