Most of us know that the US locks up more people than anywhere else on the planet and currently has almost 2.3 million in prison. It is also interesting to note that 22 per cent of the total are incarcerated due to drugs convictions.
Having watched the new Netflix documentary titled Dirty Money I thought it worth sharing some of the story. The movie explains that Attorney General Breuer signed off on a settlement deal with a top banking corporation after they admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. Breuer elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions, opting instead for a financial settlement which I’m told was about five weeks of income for the bank.
The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that drug dealers would sometimes come to the bank’s Mexican branches and deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.
The government’s rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system.
As a result of the government’s investigation, the guilty bank has “clawed back” deferred compensation bonuses given to some of its most senior US anti-money laundering and compliance officers and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials during the five-year period of the deferred prosecution agreement.
You might ask, what’s the appropriate financial penalty for a bank found wanting in this way? How about every dollar the bank has made since it started its illegal activity? When it comes to the executives not only take what they earned but take their houses, their cars, the paintings they bought at Sotheby’s auctions, the clothes in their closets and then throw them in jail.
Sounds harsh? The only problem is, that’s exactly what the government does just about every day to ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases.
It would be interesting to ask the residents of Tenaha, Texas what they think about this settlement. Local police routinely pull over (mostly black) motorists and, whenever they find cash, they offer motorists a choice. They could either allow police to seize the money, or face drug and money laundering charges.
Or we could ask Anthony Smelley, the Indiana resident who won $50,000 in a car accident settlement and was carrying about $17K of that in cash in his car when he got pulled over. No drugs were found, but police took the money anyway. Even after Smelley produced documentation proving where he got the money from, Putnam County officials tried to keep the money claiming he could have used the cash to buy drugs in the future.
Just ask Cameron Douglas, the son of Michael Douglas, who got five years in jail for simple possession. His jailers kept him in solitary for 23 hours a day for 11 months and denied him visits with family and friends.
It seems the US government has decided that employing double standards is the name of the game. All you must do is threaten the global financial system and it seems you can get away with anything.