NEW YORK – Attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch could be
facing new confirmation problems in the U.S. Senate after being tied to the
world’s biggest banking scandal, involving HSBC, which used its power to
temporarily shut down WND.com as the news site was breaking a series of stories
on the mega-bank’s money-laundering practices – practices that resulted in more
than $1.2 billion in fines
According to court papers filed Wednesday, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice appears to be
stonewalling the release of documents that could implicate Lynch in a massive
cover-up of Obama administration involvement in international money-laundering
of Mexican cartel drug money.
In 2012, Lynch, as the 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 published a series articles documenting charges HSBC
laundered billions of dollars that traced back to the Mexican drug cartels,
culminating with a $1.256 billion fine paid to the U.S. government to end the
investigation and avoid the filing of criminal charges.
The federal government’s
unwillingness to prosecute HSBC was exposed by a former HSBC vice president and
relationship manager in New York, John Cruz, who called the bank a “criminal enterprise.” Cruz was ignored by law enforcement authorities until he brought to WND 1,000 pages of customer
account records that document his claims.
Cruz called the $1.92 billion fine the U.S.
government imposed on HSBC “a joke”
and filed a $10 million lawsuit for “retaliation and
wrongful termination.” Whistleblowers
in India and London joined Cruz in charging the HSBC settlement amounted to a
massive cover-up.
In response to WND’s reporting of
Cruz’s evidence, HSBC lodged a complaint that blocked
Internet access to one of the WND stories,
and senior reporter Jerome Corsi was fired by the New York City investment firm he had worked with for
two years as a senior managing director, Gilford Securities.
WND also reported on evidence Holder’s Justice Department did not investigate
money-laundering charges in deference to bank clients of his Washington-based
law firm, where he was a partner prior to joining the Obama administration.
In addition, WND reported HSBC was engaged in a systematic scheme to defraud citizens
of India who live abroad out of billions of dollars in investment accounts.
‘Continuing to cover up’
In a telephone interview Friday, Cruz said the Obama
administration “is continuing to cover up its role in the HSBC money laundering
scandal.”
“The IRS has blocked every legal effort I have made to be
credited as a whistleblower in the HSBC billion-dollar settlement,” Cruz 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 the 1,000 pages of customer account records
show HSBC relied on identity theft, capturing legitimate Social Security
numbers that were then used to create bogus retail and commercial bank
accounts. Through the 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.
“When an individual finds out they got a loan they never
knew about, 5 percent of that loan went to the accounting firm that made up the
phony tax returns and the other 95 percent of that loan went to the manager,”
he explained.
“One manager was involved in the transaction, another
manager was involved in notarizing the transaction, and senior management was
involved where they signed off permission to give the loans even when the loans
get rejected by underwriting.”
In an attempt to make his charges
public, Cruz in 2011 published a book titled, “World Banking World Fraud: Using Your
Identity.”
On July 17, 2012, the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released a majority and minority 330-page
staff report titled, “U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and
Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History.” It
documented HSBC’s role in illegally laundering hundreds of billions of dollars
of drug money for the Mexican cartels and for terrorist-affiliated Middle
Eastern groups.
“In an age of international terrorism, drug violence in our
streets and on our borders, and organized crime, stopping illicit money flows
that support those atrocities is a national security imperative,” said the
committee’s chairman at the time, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
Levin said HSBC “used its U.S. bank as a gateway into the
U.S. financial system for some HSBC affiliates around the world to provide U.S.
dollar services to clients while playing fast and loose with U.S. banking
rules.”
HSBC paid the $1.256 billion fine in
December 2012 in an deferred prosecution
agreement with the Justice Department for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act,
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy
Act.
Source:http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/ag-nominee-eyed-in-massive-obama-cover-up/
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