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Post by MMM on Jul 9, 2012 23:18:35 GMT 4
Drug money has a way of sprawling. And some of it may have reached Bank of America.
A federal probe into Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel, claims that the group has been laundering money through accounts at BofA, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.
An FBI affidavit filed in Texas last month says that the Mexican drug cartel has been reportedly funneling cash through a Texas-based racehorse business with BofA accounts. The U.S. government has described Los Zetas in the past as “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.” Tremor Enterprises LLC, the horse business, was for its part allegedly run by Jose Trevino Morales, a U.S. citizen with two brothers in Los Zetas.
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Post by Noel Brinkerhoff on Jul 12, 2012 1:52:59 GMT 4
Despite its “strong” efforts to counter money laundering, Bank of America allowed the largest drug cartel in Mexico to use its accounts to invest in U.S. horse racing.
José Treviño Morales, the older brother of the No. 2 man in the notorious Los Zetas cartel, Miguel Treviño Morales, has been indicted along with 14 other people by the U.S. government for using personal and business BofA accounts under the name of Tremor Enterprises LLC. The company bought and sold quarter horses using money generated from cocaine trafficking, extortion and bribery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They even brazenly named one of their horses “Number One Cartel.”
Apparently the purchases were also good investments. One of the horses, Mr. Piloto, earned a million dollars by winning a single race, the 2010 All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs Race Track in New Mexico, although the FBI suspects that Treviño bribed “gatekeepers to hold back the horses competing against Mr. Piloto.”
Larry Di Rita, a BofA spokesman, refused to address the pending criminal case. But he did say: “We have strong anti-money-laundering procedures and work closely with the authorities when suspicious activity is discovered.”
Los Zetas, which controls 11 Mexican states, is responsible for shipping thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. each year.
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Post by Mila on Jul 12, 2012 3:00:21 GMT 4
Boa is not the only one, they are all dirty in the banking palace:
HSBC will apologize at a July 17 U.S.Senate hearing for anti-money laundering controls that weren’t effective enough, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
“We failed to spot and deal with unacceptable behavior,” Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver said in the note sent to employees yesterday, referring to the period between 2004 and 2010. “It is right that we be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong.”
Europe’s largest bank will be questioned by U.S. lawmakers about two weeks after a record fine was levied against Barclays for rigging interest rates and its ex-CEO Robert Diamond was grilled in the U.K. HSBC, which has doubled spending on compliance since 2010 to curtail illicit money transfers, may also face a “hefty fine,” Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. said.
“The real issue here is that the U.S. agencies have cited HSBC several times for being deficient at money-laundering practices as long ago as 2003,” Jim Antos, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Mizuho, said by telephone today. “Nine years later, the situation is apparently not yet under control.”
U.S. prosecutors may take criminal or civil enforcement measures involving the London-based bank amid an investigation into terrorist funding, HSBC said in February.
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