Wachovia fines encourage drug trafficking
In March 2010, Wachovia Bank settled with federal authorities to avoid prosecution for money laundering. It’s pretty clear that the bank knew money laundering was happening, but the money itself was so huge that it was worth it to look the other way as billions made its way through their offices.
The settlement included paying $110 million in forfeiture to the Justice Department, and $50 million to the United States Treasury.
But the settlement leaves a sour taste in many mouths—and certainly in Woods’s. The deferred prosecution is part of this “cop-out all round”, he says. “The regulatory authorities do not have to spend any more time on it, and they don’t have to push it as far as a criminal trial. They just issue criminal proceedings, and settle. The law enforcement people do what they are supposed to do, but what’s the point? All those people dealing with all that money from drug-trafficking and murder, and no one goes to jail?”
If they actually put bank executives in jail, future bank executives would make sure the bank never had to pay those fines, and the authorities would be multiple future fines poorer for it. Who would want to change this system? A hundred and sixty million dollars shared between two cabinet-level departments. With the two major law enforcement departments—Justice and Treasury—gaining tens of millions from just this one incident alone, who is going to want to end the fines by putting the people who pay them in jail?
This is legalized bribery. The bank gets off, the authorities are paid, and the trafficking continues to generate more bribery in the future.
Mazur warns: “If you look at the career ladders of law enforcement, there’s no incentive to go after the big money. People move every two to three years. The DEA is focused on drug trafficking rather than money laundering. You get a quicker result that way—they want to get the traffickers and seize their assets. But this is like treating a sick plant by cutting off a few branches—it just grows new ones. Going after the big money is cutting down the plant—it’s a harder door to knock on, it’s a longer haul, and it won’t get you the short-term riches.”
There’s another way of reading that than how Mazur puts it: the DEA has no incentive to stop drug trafficking and stop money laundering, because they want assets to seize. That’s where the money is in prohibition enforcement. Under the current system, there is no profit in winning the drug war.
- How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs: Ed Vulliamy
- “As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored.”
- Money laundering to cost Wachovia $160M
- “Wachovia Bank agreed to settle a money laundering case with a $160 million settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.”
More forfeiture
- Turning crime into a profit center
- Asset forfeiture and traffic laws have one dangerous thing in common: they turn danger into a profit center for government.
- Forfeiture: legalized bribery
- Forfeiture is good for criminals, bad for the innocent. And big money for corrupt governments and law enforcement organizations.
- Presumed Guilty: The Law’s Victims in the War on Drugs
- ”It’s a strange twist of justice in the land of freedom. A law designed to give cops the right to confiscate and keep the luxurious possessions of major drug dealers mostly ensnares the modest homes, cars and cash of ordinary, law-abiding people. They step off a plane or answer their front door and suddenly lose everything they've worked for. They are not arrested or tried for any crime.”
More money laundering
- Proposition 75 and the California prison system
- Public-employee unions today are a money-laundering service for the state government and for perpetuating government programs.
More reigning in bad laws
- A one-hundred-percent rule for traffic laws
- Laws should be set at the point at which we are willing and able to jail 100% of offenders. We should not make laws we are unwilling to enforce, nor where we encourage lawbreaking.
- A free market in union representation
- Every monopoly is said to be special, that this monopoly is necessary. And yet every time, getting rid of the monopoly improves service, quality, and price. There is no reason for unions to be any different.
- Bipartisanship in the defense of big government
- We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs. Despite their complaints about Trump’s overreach, Democrats have introduced legislation to make it harder for them to block his administration’s regulations.
- The Last Defense against Donald Trump?
- When you’ve dismantled every other defense, what’s left except the whining? The fact is, Democrats can easily defend against Trump over-using the power of the presidency. They don’t want to, because they want that power intact when they get someone in.
- The Sunset of the Vice President
- Rather than automatically sunsetting all laws (which I still support), perhaps the choice of which laws have not fulfilled their purpose should go to an elected official who otherwise has little in the way of official duties.
- 20 more pages with the topic reigning in bad laws, and other related pages