Word: luxembourg
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...country that prizes the secrecy of banking transactions, Luxembourg's ) Bank of Credit and Commerce International grew to become one of the world's largest financial institutions (assets: $21 billion). But in Tampa last week the bank lifted its veil of secrecy when two of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty in the first U.S. money-laundering case against a major international banking house. In a plea-bargaining deal, the two subsidiaries -- one based in Luxembourg and the other in the Cayman Islands -- agreed to surrender $14.7 million of alleged drug profits...
Unable to get at Noriega, the U.S. went after some of his money. The Justice Department asked Britain, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland to freeze accounts in which Noriega was thought to have stashed $10 million or more; France and Switzerland promptly complied. On the basis of documents seized during the invasion, the U.S. felt sure it could prove that the accounts were stuffed with drug money...
...triggered the freezing of $60.1 million in bank accounts in five countries that contained the personal income of Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a leader of the Medellin cartel. Using financial records and computer disks captured by the Colombian government, U.S. agents traced Rodriguez money to accounts in the U.S., Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria and Britain...
Drug Enforcement Administration officials told TIME that one of Rodriguez's purported financial advisers, Panama-based Mauricio Vives, tried desperately to keep moving the money one step ahead of the agents. Vives called a British banker and told him to move several million dollars, fast, to an account in Luxembourg. If the bank were to delay, his Colombian client would kill him, Vives pleaded. The banker refused, and British authorities cooperating with the DEA froze the account. Not all countries were as helpful. U.S. agents said they tracked Rodriguez's money to the Cayman Islands, Spain and Montserrat, but local...
They apparently are, since many small countries have successfully attracted banking business by creating discreet, tax-free havens. In Luxembourg total bank deposits have grown from $40 billion in 1984 to more than $100 billion last year. In the wake of a drug-money scandal involving the Florida operations of Luxembourg-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the country has tried to burnish its public image by declaring money laundering a criminal offense, even while it has fortified its bank-secrecy rules...