Obama’s Fingers in the Cookie Jar?

by Paul R. Hollrah  February 14, 2015

In an October 21, 2008 column, titled “Obama is Bought, but Who Owns Him?” I quoted the Obama campaign’s last pre-election financial report which showed that their contributor base had grown from 1.5 million to 2.5 million, and that the total amount raised was approximately $600 million… 25% of it ($150 million) from those contributing from $2,000-2,300.  If that was to be believed, that segment of his contributor base had grown from 37,000 to 71,400 in just over three months, leaving the remaining $450 million to be contributed by some 2.43 million people, each giving $5, $10, $20… or, as Obama assured us, “whatever they could afford.” 

Of course, no one but a product of our public education system would be unable to calculate that $450 million cannot be contributed by 2.43 million people in $5, $10, or $20 amounts.  To create a pool of that magnitude, each of those 2.43 million people would have to contribute, on average, just over $185.  That simply does not happen.  It has never happened before, and anyone who believed that actually happened will believe almost anything.  So how were they doing it? 

In a July 25, 2008 column we pointed out that UBS Americas, headed by Robert Wolf… along with George Soros, one of Obama’s top two money men… had been accused of highly unethical and illegal banking practices in six months of hearings by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, headed by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).  According to an article in The Nation magazine, UBS Americas, a subsidiary of UBS, of Zurich, Switzerland, “had advised wealthy Americans, including many of our worst villains, how to shelter funds from the IRS, as well as from prosecutors, creditors, disgruntled business associates, family members, etc.”    

In a Statement of Facts in the criminal trial of former UBS executive Bradley Birkenfeld, it was alleged that UBS took extraordinary steps to help American clients manage their Swiss accounts without alerting federal authorities.   For example, UBS advised clients to avoid detection by using Swiss credit cards to withdraw funds, to destroy all existing off-shore banking records, and to misrepresent the receipt of funds from their Swiss accounts as loans from the Swiss bank.  According to The Nation, UBS established an elaborate training program which taught bank employees how to avoid surveillance by U.S. law enforcement, how to falsify visas, how to encrypt communications, and how to secretly move money into and out of the country… 
It was the perfect instrument for funneling large sums of illegal campaign contributions into the coffers of an unscrupulous American politician.  Putting two and two together, I concluded that any number of foreign contributors, wishing to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections, could transfer unlimited sums of money through this device, using the Swiss bank accounts of unsuspecting American depositors as vehicles.  The owners of the Swiss accounts would receive periodic statements indicating: a) debits of varying amounts, up to $2,300 each, and b) offsetting credits provided by the cartel, or by a wealthy “international financier.”   
For most of the super wealthy, especially those attempting to hide income and assets from U.S. authorities, an unexplained debit of $2,300, followed by a credit of the same amount, would not even raise an eyebrow.  So who would ever know the source of such contributions?  No one.   
On the receiving end of the transactions, a U.S. recipient, such as the Obama campaign, could receive thousands of individual contributions via Swiss credit card transfers, with unsuspecting fictitious contributors… their names, addresses, and occupations “borrowed” from Obama’s extensive list of $10 and $20 contributors… being entered by teams of staffers working in a “boiler room” setting, preparing falsified reports for the Federal Election Commission. 
A subsequent report by Newsmax, having studied thousands of pages of Obama’s FEC filings, found some 66,383 highly suspicious contributions, not rounded to even dollar amounts, from 37,265 donors.  For example, an insurance agent from Burr Ridge, Illinois, reportedly gave a total of $8,724.26, more than $4,400 over his legal limit.  He gave in odd amounts such as $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, $282.20, $195.66, $118.15, and one of $2,300. 
A self-employed caregiver in Los Angeles made 36 separate contributions totaling $7,051.12… more than $2,450 over her legal limit.  Thirteen of those contributions were later refunded.  However, in an odd coincidence, those 13 refunds, in amounts such as $233.88 and $201.44, came to an even $2,300, the maximum allowable in any one election.  Another contributor, a retired schoolteacher from Rockledge, Florida, is reported to have given $13,800… $9,200 over his limit.  However, when interviewed by Newsmax, that contributor could not remember giving that much money to Obama.
Lest anyone suggest that those 37,265 donors either emptied their piggy banks or emptied their pockets and purses periodically and just sent it all to Obama, pennies and all, allow me to suggest something a bit more sinister.  Those 66,383 contributions were the proceeds of foreign currency conversions, smuggled into the country in foreign credit card receipts, and deposited in Obama’s campaign coffers using the forged names of some of Obama’s $10 or $20 contributors. 

But now it is alleged that Loretta Lynch, Obama’s choice to succeed Eric Holder, is up to her eyeballs in yet another Obama administration criminal enterprise in which the banking system was misused in much the same way as in the 2008 foreign currency smuggling operation.  According to a February 7, 2015 report in WorldNetDaily (WND), the Obama Department of Justice appears to be stonewalling the release of documents that could implicate Ms. Lynch in a massive cover-up of Obama administration involvement in the international money-laundering of Mexican drug cartel money.

WND reports that Lynch, while serving as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, “oversaw the investigation of drug-related international money-laundering allegations against London-based HSBC Holdings, LLC.”  WND had previously published a series of articles documenting charges that HSBC laundered billions of dollars that were traced back to Mexican drug cartels.  That investigation resulted in a $1.256 billion fine paid to the U.S. government, ending the investigation and avoiding the filing of criminal charges.

According to the WND report, the federal government’s unwillingness to prosecute HSBC was exposed by whistleblower John Cruz, a former HSBC vice president in New York, who called the bank a “criminal enterprise,” saying that the fine imposed by the Department of Justice was “a joke.”  After being forced out of HSBC, Cruz filed a $10 million lawsuit against HSBC, charging “retaliation and wrongful termination.”  At that point, whistleblowers in India and London joined Cruz in charging that the HSBC settlement amounted to a “massive cover-up.”

 

WND charged that, in retaliation for their reporting of Cruz’s evidence, “HSBC lodged a complaint that blocked Internet access to one of the WND stories, and WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi was fired by Gilford Securities, the New York City investment firm he had worked with for two years as a senior managing director.  However, the plot thickened when WND uncovered evidence suggesting that the Obama Justice Department failed to proceed with the investigation of money-laundering charges in deference to bank clients of the Washington-based law firm where Eric Holder served as a partner prior to becoming attorney general. 

In a telephone interview on February 6^th, Cruz told WND that the Obama administration “is continuing to cover up its role in the HSBC money laundering scandal.”  He went on to say that “the IRS has blocked every legal effort he has made to be credited as a whistleblower in the HSBC billion-dollar settlement.”  He said, “It is impossible that the Obama administration did not know HSBC was laundering drug money for the Mexican cartels, because the documentation I had showed the laundered money passed through the federal wire-transfer services.”

Cruz charged that the 1,000 pages of customer account information he provided show that HSBC’s money-laundering activities relied heavily on identity theft and purloined Social Security numbers that were “then used to create bogus retail and commercial bank accounts.”  Through those bogus accounts, HSBC employees systematically deposited and withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars on a daily basis, apparently without the knowledge of the identity-theft victims.  He explained that when a bogus bank loan was established under a stolen identity… causing much consternation among individuals who found they were the recipients of loans they knew nothing about… five percent of the loan proceeds went to the accounting firm that prepared the phony tax returns and the other 95 percent went to the HSBC managers.

Cruz explained that one manager was involved in the transaction, another manager was involved in notarizing the transaction, and senior management was involved when they approved the loans, even loans that had been rejected by underwriters.  In order to avoid prosecution for violation of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act, HSBC agreed to pay the $1.256 billion fine in a deferred prosecution agreement with Obama’s Justice Department.

With Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch having major roles in the cover-up, Ms. Lynch will have a great deal of explaining to do as her confirmation hearings continue. 

 

In the meantime, it would be most interesting to study FEC contribution reports to learn how much HSBC money found its way into the hands of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and numerous Democratic candidates.