When you are fighting narco cartels you might accidentally stumble into interesting information that shouldn’t be out there. I got a lot of this information from my dad who worked for MI5 but was assigned to a secret unit in the CIA in Honduras from 1980 to 1991, and my dear friend John ‘Psycho’ Jr. who flew for Air America with drugs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He transported the drugs to the Herat International Airport, which is controlled by the US and the CIA.
Well… all the airports in Afghanistan are controlled by the CIA, but this is the one that supplies the illicit US economy with approximately 60 billion dollars a year!
These drugs are sold worldwide! By the US Government!
In this case, we have traces back to world war 2 where the CIA and The White House transported weapons to countries in the east, typical for rebels to overthrow governments, and as payment for these weapons, they got drugs that were transported back to the US and sold on the streets. IN THE US!!!
During the Korean War from 1950 – 1953, the first allegations against CIA running drugs surfaced, and later when the CIA sponsored the Secret War in Laos 1962 – 1975, they were again accused of trafficking heroin in the golden triangle (Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar).
The Vietnam war was also financed by drug money. In this war, they even sold heroin to their own soldiers. 1/3 of the US soldiers were on heroin. AJPH.64.12_Suppl.38 (aphapublications.org)
The public does not really hear about this traffic until the Iran Contra scandal.
It is tempting to believe that after the revelation of the Iran Contra deals, the CIA and the government stopped doing nasty things like this, but no.
Oliver North who was a very central person in drug running for many years took the fall, got fined $150.000 and 1.200 hours of community service which he later appeals and in the Court of Appeals Judge Gesell dismissed all charges against North on September 16, 1991, and the others who were convicted were pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush in 1993. So pretty much nothing happened to the perps.
End of story right?
NO!
In 1986 we got the Kerry Committee Report. The report included discussions of drug trafficking in the Bahamas, Colombia, Cuba and Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, and Panama. The committee found that money authorized by Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan, contras was used to pay drug trafficking into the US.
But nobody went to jail. Nothing happened.
In Nicaragua, in the 80ties the CIA, directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America.
In 1986 CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, and documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA’s activities in Latin America. The CIA’s connections with Noriega became a public relations “liability” for the U.S. government. This led to DEA’s indication for drug trafficking which the CIA until this point actively tried to prevent.
Eugene was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Nicaragua, but strangely pardoned and released the same year.
In 1989, the United States invaded Panama and captured Noriega. He was brought to Miami and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He kinda took the fall for everybody including the CIA.
Citibank – one of the most corrupted companies in the world
Citibank has a rap sheet longer than any other single person or company in the entire world! Here is a list of Citibanks illegal affairs for which they have been fined over and over again. They are criminal crocks and no one seems to be able to stop them. To this day they continue to be involved in shady affairs and their RAP sheet is as long as Broadway:
1996 The salinas-Citibank affair
The Salinas-Citibank Affair | FRONTLINE | PBS
U.S. SUES NINE BANKS IN DRUG MONEY-LAUNDERING – The Washington Post
2003 Citigroup agreed to pay $101 million to settle SEC charges relating to the Enron fraud, plus another $19 million relating to manipulation of financial statements by another company called Dynegy.
2004 agrees to pay $2.65 billion to settle lawsuits brought by WorldCom investors.
2004 Citigroup agreed to pay $70 million to settle Federal Reserve allegations of abuses in its consumer lending operations
2004 $250,000 for failing to comply with discovery obligations in arbitration cases;
2004 another $250,000 for distributing misleading hedge fund sales literature;
2004 and $275,000 for various violations relating to a futures fund.
2004 Japanese regulators shut down Citi’s private banking operations because of serious rule violations.
2005 Citigroup agrees to pay $2 billion to settle lawsuits brought by Enron investors.
2005 Citygroup fined Civil penalty of $20 million for failing to provide customers material information related to their purchases of mutual fund shares.
2005 Citigroup pays $208 million to settle additional charges relating to mutual fund sales.
2005 Britain’s Financial Services Authority fined a Citigroup unit £13.9 million for violations of bond trading regulations.
2006 NASD fined Citi $225,000 for deficient disclosures in analyst reports
2006 Fined $1.1 million for failing to prevent its brokers from falsely claiming that their customers were disabled to improperly obtain waivers of mutual fund sales charges.
2007 $15 million to settle charges relating to the use of misleading materials in retirement seminars for BellSouth employees.
2008 FINRA (the successor to NASD) fined Citi $300,000 for failing to properly supervise the commissions its brokers charged on stock and option trades, while the SEC announced that Citi would restore about $7 billion in liquidity to customers who had invested in auction rate securities and were allegedly misled about their risk.
2008 Citi agreed to pay $18 million to settle charges brought by the California attorney general concerning the practice of using computerized “sweeps” to remove balances from credit card accounts that were in “recovery” status.
2008 FINRA fined it $2 million for transaction reporting violations and then $175,000 for a failure to properly supervise communications with customers during the initial public offering of Vonage as well as $600,000 for deficiencies related to the supervision of complex trading strategies. The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission announced in October 2009 that Citi would pay $100,000 to settle reporting violations.
FINRA imposed more fines in 2010, including $650,000 for disclosure and supervisory violations relating to Citi’s Direct Borrow Program and $1.5 million for supervisory violations relating to a broker who misappropriated over $60 million from cemetery trust funds. That year, the SEC announced that Citi would pay a $75 million penalty to settle allegations that it misled investors about its exposure to subprime mortgage-related assets.
FINRA fined Citi $500,000 for failing to supervise a sales assistant who misappropriated more than $700,000 in customer funds. The
SEC announced that Citi would pay $285 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors in a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation tied to the U.S. housing market. Citi had taken a proprietary short position against those assets without telling the investors.
2012 there were also more FINRA fines: $600,000 for charging excessive markups and markdowns on bond transactions; $2 million for supervisory violations relating to exchange-traded funds; $3.5 million for providing inaccurate performance data related to subprime securitizations; and $888,000 for using municipal bond proceeds to pay for lobbyists. The CFTC announced Citi would pay $525,000 to settle charges that it had exceeded limits on speculative positions in wheat futures. In January 2013 Citi was one of ten major lenders that agreed to pay a total of $8.5 billion to resolve claims of foreclosure abuses.
2013 Citi agreed to pay $730 million to settle a lawsuit brought by institutional investors charging that they were misled by the bank concerning risks associated with several offerings of Citi preferred stock and bonds between 2006 and 2008.
2013 Citi agreed to pay $968 million to Fannie Mae to settle claims that it misrepresented the quality of home loans sold to the agency.
2013 Freddie Mac announced that Citi would pay $395 million to repurchase home loans the bank had sold to the mortgage agency that did not conform to the latter’s guidelines.
2013 Citi was fined $95 million by the European Commission for its role in the illegal manipulation of the LIBOR interest rate benchmarks by major U.S. and European banks.
2014 it came to light that Citi’s Mexican affiliate Banamex was being investigated by U.S. prosecutors in connection with possible money laundering charges. (In May 2017 Banamex agreed to pay $97 million and enter into a non-prosecution agreement to resolve the money laundering charges.)
2014 Citigroup agreed to pay $1.13 billion to settle claims by institutional investors which had demanded that it buy back residential mortgage-backed securities sold during the run-up to the financial meltdown.
In July 2014 the U.S. Justice Department announced that Citigroup would pay $7 billion to settle charges relating to the packaging and sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities in the period leading up to the financial meltdown.
In November 2014 Citigroup was fined $310 million by the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission and $358 million by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority as part of a settlement of charges that it and other major banks manipulated the foreign exchange market.
That same month, FINRA fined Citigroup Global Markets $15 million for failing to adequately supervise communications between its stock analysts and clients. A few weeks later, FINRA fined the company another $5 million as part of a case against ten investment banks for allowing their analysts to solicit business and offer favourable research coverage in connection with a planned initial public offering of Toys R Us in 2010.
In May 2015 the Justice Department announced that Citibank was one of a group of banks pleading guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to fix foreign currency rates. Citi was fined $925 million (and another $342 million by the Federal Reserve) and put on probation for three years. The SEC gave it a waiver from a rule that would have barred it from remaining in the securities business.
In July 2015 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that Citi would pay about $700 million to customers to settle allegations that it misled them into purchasing unnecessary add-on products for their credit cards. The following February the CFPB ordered Citi to pay a penalty of $3 million and provide nearly $5 million in consumer relief for selling credit card debt with inflated interest rates and for failing to forward consumer payments promptly to debt buyers.
In May 2016 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered three Citi subsidiaries to pay a $175 million penalty to resolve allegations that they manipulated interest rate benchmarks.
In January 2017 the CFTC filed and settled (for $25 million) allegations that Citigroup Global Markets engaged in the illicit practise of spoofing — bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution — in U.S. Treasury futures markets and that it failed to diligently supervise the activities of its employees and agents in conjunction with the spoofing orders.
That same month, the SEC announced that Citigroup Global Markets would pay $18.3 million to settle allegations that it overcharged at least 60,000 investment advisory clients with unauthorized fees. In a separate SEC case, Citi had to pay $2.96 million to settle allegations that it misled investors about a foreign exchange trading program.
Also in January 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined two Citi subsidiaries $28.8 million for keeping borrowers in the dark about options to avoid foreclosure and burdening them with excessive paperwork demands when they applied for foreclosure relief.
In June 2018 the CFPB ordered Citi to pay $335 million in restitution to 1.75 million credit card customers for failing to properly adjust their interest rates.
2018 Citibank fined $70 million for anti-money laundering compliance shortcomings.
Citibank pays a $158.3 million settlement for breaking FHA rules, certifying thousands of unqualified mortgages for FHA insurance.
2017 Citibank agrees to $97.4 Million settlement in money-laundering inquiry.
2018 Citibank to Pay More Than $38 Million for Improper Handling of ADRs
2019 PRA fines Citygroup UK £44 million for failings in regulatory reporting governance and controls.
2020 OCC fines Citibank $17 million for Violating the Flood Disaster Protection Act
Sources:
Citigroup: Corporate Rap Sheet | Corporate Research Project (corp-research.org)
OCC Assesses $400 Million Civil Money Penalty Against Citibank | OCC
AG Shapiro: PA Consumers Get $1 Million Back From Citibank – PA Office of Attorney General
Citigroup outline (taxjustice.net)
Welcome to the real world of the hidden economy!
