Word: money
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...biggest problem may be in deciding how to handle all the borderline illegality the task force will find. "How do you separate drug money from capital-flight money?" asks one of the mavens. "It will be more than drug money we come up with, and what happens when we stumble over a really major company and hold up its dirty linen? Maybe the banks will start turning in the narcotics people rather than lose their biggest customers...
...make a dent in the money-laundering trade, authorities will need more support from the financial community. "They're now willing to tell us about people coming in with bags of cash," says a regulator, "but as far as anything else goes, you can forget it." Yet many bankers think the feds have become indiscriminate in their crackdown. "They are characterizing traditional, ordinary, international banking transactions as money laundering," gripes Gerald Houlihan, a Miami attorney who represents financial institutions in money-laundering and forfeiture cases. "They are not going after money launderers, but are attempting to terrorize banks...
...biggest push could come from the provisions of the Kerry Amendment to the 1988 anti-drug abuse act. The law requires the Treasury Secretary to negotiate bilateral agreements on money-laundering detection and prevention with all U.S. trading partners. Countries that refuse to participate or that negotiate in bad faith could conceivably be excluded from the U.S. banking network and clearinghouses. Yet in hearings earlier this year, Assistant Treasury Secretary Salvatore Martoche indicated that the Bush Administration is reluctant to enforce the law zealously for fear of hampering the U.S. banking industry...
...money-laundering game is also creating a mess for investigators of other crimes, who are running into dead ends when they try to identify the players in fraud cases. Beverly Hills police are stymied by last August's Mob-style assassination of Hollywood entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife Kitty, who were shotgunned in the front room of their mansion. Menendez had been an executive and director of Carolco Pictures, an independent movie company that produced Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movies, and police have been unable to unravel his business affairs or identify all his partners. Carolco is controlled...
Financial experts are beginning to recognize that Washington will be unable to control drug money unless the U.S. compels offshore financial institutions to make their books "transparent" enough to show the true owners of the money. In the end, the Colombian drug cartels are about to force the world to re-examine the international financial system that has developed haphazardly over the 60 years since the Swiss first popularized secret banking. Countries may not yet be willing to make their banking transactions fully "transparent," but some light must be shed on everyone's books. Says Kerry: "It will take significant...