Word: trade
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...money-laundering process, especially in the drug trade, begins with greenbacks. Much of the cash simply leaves the U.S. in luggage, since departing travelers are rarely searched. Larger shipments are flown out on private planes or packed in seagoing freight containers, which are almost never inspected. That explains, in part, why U.S. officials are unable to locate fully 80% of all the bills printed by the Treasury. Once overseas, the cash is easy to funnel into black markets, especially in unstable economies where the dollar is the favored underground currency...
...goal of many launderers is to get their money into the maelstrom of global money movements, where the volume is so great that no regulators can really monitor it all. Such traffic has exploded because of the globalization of the world economy, which has multiplied the volume of international trade and currency trading. On an average working day, the Manhattan-based Clearing House for Interbank Payments System handles 145,500 transactions worth more than $700 billion, a 40% increase in just two years...
...would-be money launderers in the past year. "Some are lawyers and businessmen who are skimming cash from their businesses, and they've heard about what you can do through an offshore bank," says Tampa IRS supervisor Morris Dittman. "Others have cash that rolls out of the drug trade. When a druggie buys a big home and car for cash, you have a real estate agent and a salesman with sudden cash, and they begin wondering if they have to share it with the Government...
...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...
There has been one scandal that adds up to major marks. The Politburo's once powerful economic czar, Guntar Mittag, and Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a shadowy financial dealer and former state secretary for foreign trade, are suspected of helping divert to Swiss bank accounts tens of millions of dollars' worth of hard currency. The proceeds came from the illegal sale of arms, artworks and other goods. The affair has become known as the Ko-Ko scandal, after the office of Kommerzielle Koordination, through which the funds were funneled. Last week Schalck-Golodkowski surfaced in West Berlin, offering to return some...