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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsheet who wrote (63376)	2/5/2001 1:13:59 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116753

yeah, samller, but not smallest, that too was my read.

To: goldsheet who wrote (63376)	2/5/2001 10:31:15 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116753

And many would have us believe the banks which do this would not manipulate the price of gold outside the law? Monday February 5, 4:47 pm Eastern Time Offshore Banks Rife With Laundering By MARCY GORDON AP Business Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many large American banks, including Bank of America and Citibank, have become conduits for illicit money coming into the U.S. financial system and thereby have unwittingly aided drug trafficking, fraud and other crimes, a yearlong inquiry by Senate investigators has found. Correspondent banking, a lucrative activity in which banks provide each other services such as moving funds or exchanging currencies, allows banks to conduct business in countries in which they have no physical presence. As of mid-1999, correspondent account balances at the 75 largest U.S. banks that maintained them totaled $34.9 billion, according to a report released Monday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. ``The failure of U.S. banks to take adequate steps to prevent money laundering through their correspondent bank accounts ... is long-standing, widespread and ongoing,'' the report says. ``The result of these due-diligence failures has made the U.S. correspondent banking system a conduit for criminal proceeds and money laundering for both high-risk foreign banks and their criminal clients.'' Many of the U.S. banks named in the 305-page report, ``Correspondent Banking: A Gateway for Money Laundering,'' are large institutions that are household names in this country's banking industry. The investigators sent questionnaires to 20 big banks that provide correspondent services, including Bank of America Corp. [NYSE:BAC - news], Bank of New York Co., Bank One Corp., Chase Manhattan (now part of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.), Citibank (part of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C - news)), First Union Corp., FleetBoston Financial Corp. [NYSE:FBF - news] and Wells Fargo & Co. ``Virtually every U.S. bank we examined had opened accounts for offshore banks or banks in suspect jurisdictions, yet few were paying attention or taking the steps needed to make sure these banks weren't misusing their accounts,'' said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the investigative subcommittee, who led the inquiry. ``It's time for U.S. banks to shut that door and put an end to the money laundering that goes on through high-risk foreign banks.'' Spokesmen for several of the banks mentioned said Monday they had previously tightened controls against use of their correspondent accounts for moving dirty money. And a representative of the banking industry maintained that no new laws or regulations are needed. ``We have taken and continue to take aggressive actions to ensure we have the strongest deterrence program possible,'' said Mary Eshet, a spokeswoman for First Union Corp. in Charlotte, N.C. In a case cited by the new report involving Bank of America and an offshore bank named American International Bank that was licensed by the government of Antigua in the Caribbean, Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton said the accounts were closed immediately after a problem was discovered. U.S. banks should be barred from opening correspondent accounts with foreign banks that are shell operations without any physical presence, Levin and the Democratic staffers recommended. In addition, they said, American banks should be required to identify a foreign bank's correspondent banking clients and to refuse to open accounts for banks that allow shell foreign banks or dummy corporations to use their U.S. accounts. But John Byrne, senior counsel for the American Bankers Association, said the U.S. industry has ``an excellent track record'' of detecting and preventing money laundering, and no new laws or rules are needed. ``Correspondent banking is a legitimate form of commerce,'' Byrne said, adding that ``anytime you do business internationally, there's a vulnerability.'' The banking industry lobbied heavily last fall against legislation supported by the Clinton administration and key Republican lawmakers that would have allowed the Treasury Department to ban some transactions between U.S. banks and offshore havens in an effort to combat money laundering. Money laundering, in which profits from drug trafficking, prostitution, corruption and other crimes are moved through a series of bank or brokerage accounts to disguise them as proceeds of legitimate business activity, is estimated to absorb close to $600 billion a year. That equates to 5 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Money laundering has received increased notice and scrutiny since it was revealed in August 1999 that the Bank of New York, one of the nation's largest, had served as a conduit for $7 billion in Russian money, some of it believed to be from criminal activity. On the Net: Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: senate.gov U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: ustreas.gov biz.yahoo.com