Money Laundering Quotes

The drug war is a total scam, prescription drugs kill 300K a year, while marijuana kills no one, but they spend billions/year 'fighting' it, because pot heads make for good little slaves to put into private prisons, owned by the banks who launder the drug money, and it's ALL DOCUMENTED.

We’ll have to figure out a way to spend our money,” said Kaz. “What money?” said Jesper. “It all got poured into the Shu coffers. Like they needed it.” “Did it?” Nina’s eyes narrowed and Jesper saw a bit of her spirit return. “Stop playing around, Brekker, or I’ll send my unholy army of the dead after you.” Kaz shrugged. “I felt the Shu could manage with forty million.” “The thirty million Van Eck owed us—” murmured Jesper. “Four million kruge each. I’m giving Per Haskell’s share to Rotty and Specht. It will be laundered through one of the Dregs’ businesses before it passes back through the Gemensbank, but the funds should be in separate accounts for you by the end of the month.” He paused. “Matthias’ share will go to Nina. I know money doesn’t matter to—” “It matters,” said Nina. “I’ll find a way to make it matter. What will you do with your shares?” “Find a ship,” said Inej. “Put together a crew.” “Help run an empire,” said Jesper. “Try not to run it into the ground,” said Wylan. “And you, Kaz?” Nina asked. “Build something new,” he said with a shrug. “Watch it burn.

Machine learning is like money laundering for bias.

The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money laundering, and The War on Some Drugs.

Now, it’s undeniably true that male writers (including yours truly) are generally and commercially allowed to write about “girl stuff” without being penalized for doing so. In part this is the same old shit it’s always been ... I’ve said before that men who write mostly about men win prizes for revealing the human condition, while women who write about both men and women are filed away as writing “womens’ issues.” Likewise, in fantasy, the imprimatur of a dude somehow makes stuff like romance, relationship drama, introspection, and adorable animal companions magically not girly after all. In a sense, we male fantasists are allowed to be like money launderers for girl cooties." [Game of Thrones and Invisible Cootie Vectors (blog post, March 30, 2014)]

Stella's?" "It's a restaurant called Bella Stella in Little Italy." He frowned. "On Mulberry Street." "You know it?" That didn't surprise me. It was a pretty famous place. "Of course I know it, Esther. There've been two mob hits there in the past five years, and Stella Butera launders money for the Gambello crime family." Okay, so it was notorious as well as famous.

What Cambridge Analytica did was use complex corporate setups across jurisdictions not only to launder money but to launder something that was becoming just as valuable: your data.

According to INTERPOL’s statistics, art theft alternated between the agency’s number three and four spots in priority and importance, just below drug dealing, arms smuggling, and money laundering.

was the first to speak after the movie finished. I made my pitch for the Magnitsky resolution, and concluded, “As you can see, there’s now no difference between the Russian government and organized crime.

The US alone spends $7 billion each year on ‘warming studies’ which, in truth, is nothing but a huge money laundering operation, since no real science is conducted. Vapid alarmist reports are the only product generated.

that the Feds would come after them for money laundering soon, too. I looked skyward and said, “Thank you, God.” I kneaded dirt from my hand. A thin layer formed over the ring. It hurt. It hurt a lot. “You’ll always be with me, Mom. You, too,

The way we see it, London is just one massive money-laundering scheme attached to an impressive public transport system and a few museums, of which even the most honest has more stolen goods than a lock-up garage in Worcester rented by a guy I know called Chalky.

She was thankful that in her job, she didn’t have to choose sides—she fought against currency counterfeiters, stock and bond forgers, money launderers, diamond smugglers—in short, lowlifes like Spyro Leandrou who engaged in activities that were universally perceived as wrong.

This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true. ... This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it. ... Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do.

one of the main reasons Putin had interfered in the US election was because of the Magnitsky Act.

Compact trash into a cube. Then slice it into thin layers and BOOM—you’ve got pieces of modern art. Each sliver belongs in a museum, doing what it’s designed to do—launder money.

the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne published the results of an extensive study of international money laundering.9 The authors compared the banking systems of two hundred countries. The Vatican ranked in the top ten money laundering havens, behind Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Liechtenstein, but ahead of Singapore.

And so, at a December 1981 meeting, Contra leaders, whom Reagan referred to as the “moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” floated the idea that trafficking cocaine into California would provide enough profits to arm and train the anti-Sandinista guerrillas.108 With most of the network already established, the plan was rather straightforward: There were the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia; the airports and money laundering in Panama run by President Manuel Noriega; the well-known lack of radar detection that made landing strips in Costa Rica prime transport depots; and weapons and drug warehouses at Ilopango air base outside San Salvador. The problem had been U.S. law enforcement guarding key entry points into a lucrative market. But with the CIA and the National Security Council now ready to run interference and keep the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service,

Now, it makes sense why they don’t want to connect us to what made them successful. Their success came from drugs, money, diamond , gold laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, heist, kidnappings, corruption, fraud, extortion and killings.

And when spring comes to the City people notice one another in the road; notice the strangers with whom they share aisles and tables and the space where intimate garments are laundered. going in and out, in and out the same door, they handle the handle; on trolleys and park benches they settle thighs on a seat in which hundreds have done it too. Copper coins dropped in the palm have been swallowed by children and tested by gypsies, but it’s still money and people smile at that. It’s the time of year when the City urges contradiction most, encouraging you to buy street food when you have no appetite at all; giving you a taste for a single room occupied by you alone as well as a craving to share it with someone you passed in the street. Really there is no contradiction—rather it’s a condition; the range of what an artful City can do. What can beat bricks warming up to the sun? The return of awnings. The removal of blankets from horses’ backs. Tar softens under the heel and the darkness under bridges changes from gloom to cooling shade. After a light rain, when the leaves have come, tree limbs are like wet fingers playing in woolly green hair. Motor cars become black jet boxes gliding behind hoodlights weakened by mist. On sidewalks turned to satin figures move shoulder first, the crowns of their heads angled shields against the light buckshot that the raindrops are. The faces of children glimpsed at windows appear to be crying, but it is the glass pane dripping that makes it seem so.

Since Modi’s ascension to office, what has happened in the ED, which had registered a preliminary case against Adani in Ahmedabad and was handed details of DRI findings, is illustrative. The officer heading the Ahmedabad branch of the directorate was raided by the CBI, which accused him of possessing disproportionate assets. It failed to prove anything at all, despite months of investigation. The two senior-most officers in the Mumbai regional office, who oversaw the investigations in Ahmedabad, were forced out of the agency. The tenure of Rajan S. Katoch, who was heading the directorate when the case was opened, also ended abruptly. Apart from the Adani case, the Ahmedabad ED investigators were also pursuing some of the biggest money launderers of Gujarat.

On July 13, 2018, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment charging Russian military intelligence officers from the GRU with conspiring to hack into various U.S. computers used by the Clinton Campaign, DNC, DCCC, and other U.S. persons, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030 and 371 (Count One); committing identity theft and conspiring to commit money laundering in furtherance of that hacking conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028A and 1956(h) (Counts Two through Ten); and a separate conspiracy to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of the 2016 U.S. election, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030 and 371 (Count Eleven). Netyksho Indictment.1277 As of this writing, all 12 defendants remain at large.

It’s one thing for Russians to act the way they do. Their society is so harsh and unforgiving that in order to get through life, most people are either getting screwed or screwing someone else—and often both. There are few rewards for doing what is right. It takes exceptional individuals like Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza not to descend reflexively into nihilism, dishonesty, and corruption. In the West, and especially in America, it’s different. There’s no question we have our own issues, but Americans like John Moscow, Mark Cymrot, Chris Cooper, and Glenn Simpson have led charmed lives. They went to the best universities, associated with the highest-caliber people, lived in comfortable homes, and operated in a society that at least aspires to honor good conduct and ethical behavior. Everyone is entitled to a legal defense, but this wasn’t about the law—it was an active Russian disinformation campaign. For these people to use their considerable knowledge, contacts, and skills to assist Putin’s cronies in exchange for nothing more than money was even more contemptible than the actions of the Russians themselves. Many Russians can’t help what they do. But Americans like these can, and they act with full cognizance.

I drew a line from the $230 million fraud to Putin’s proxy, the cellist Sergei Roldugin. I explained that this wasn’t a one-off, but one of thousands of crimes Putin had benefitted from, allowing him to accumulate an estimated $200 billion fortune. I pointed out that nearly all of this wealth was held at financial institutions in the West and at risk of being frozen under the Magnitsky Act. For these reasons, the law was an existential threat to him and his senior officials.

Bollywood's economic workings are more mysterious. It still exists in what was known as the informal and high-risk sector of the Indian economy. Banks rarely invest in Bollywood, where moneylenders are rampant, demanding up to 35 percent interest. The big corporate houses seem no less keen to stay away from filmmaking. A senior executive with the Tatas, one of India's prominent business families, told me, "We went into Bollywood, made one film, lost a lot of money, and got out of it fast," adding that "the place works in ways we couldn't begin to explain to our shareholders." Since only six or seven of the two hundred films made each year earn a profit, the industry has generated little capital of its own. The great studios of the early years of the industry are now defunct. It is outsiders- regular moneylenders, small and big businessmen, real estate people, and, sometimes, mafia dons- who continue to finance new films, and their turnover, given the losses, is rapid. Their motives are mixed: sex, glamour, money laundering, and, more optimistically, profit. They rarely have much to do with the desire to make original, or even competent, films.

The City, Netherton had heard Lowbeer say, explaining the "klept" to Flynne, had long been, and well prior to the jackpot, a unique species of semi-autonomous crypto-state, the single least democratic element of elected British government. It was this singular status, according to Lowbeer, that had allowed it to ride out the eventual collapse of democracy. That, and its core expertise in laundering money, had brought it into a mutually beneficial synergy with the émigré oligarch community, dominated by Russians, who had themselves first been attracted to London by the City’s meta-criminal financial arcana, plus the lavish culture of personal amenities for those requiring same.

Each generation identifies with a small group of people said to have lived lives exemplifying the vices and virtues of that generation. If one were to choose a trial lawyer whose life reflected the unique characteristics of America’s “Wild West” of a criminal justice system in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, that person likely would be my father. New York City of the 1960s until the turn of the 21st century was the world’s epicenter of organized and white-collar crime. During those four decades, the most feared mafia chiefs, assassins, counterfeiters, Orthodox Jewish money launderers, defrocked politicians of every stripe, and Arab bankers arriving in the dead of night in their private jets, sought the counsel of one man: my father, Jimmy La Rossa. Once a Kennedy-era prosecutor, Brooklyn-born Jimmy La Rossa became one of the greatest criminal trial lawyers of his day. He was the one man who knew where all of the bodies were buried, and everyone knew it. It seemed incomprehensible that Jimmy would one day just disappear from New York. Forever. After stealing my dying father from New York Presbyterian Hospital to a waiting Medevac jet, the La Rossa Boys, as we became known, spent the next five years in a place where few would look for two diehard New Yorkers: a coastal town in the South Bay of Los Angeles, aptly named Manhattan Beach. While I cooked him his favorite Italian dishes and kept him alive using the most advanced medical equipment and drugs, my father and I documented our notorious and cinematic life together as equal parts biography and memoir. This is our story.

The people who support and defend those accused of child sexual abuse indiscriminately, those who join organizations dedicated to defending people who are accused of child sexual abuse with no screening whatsoever to keep out those who are guilty as charged are likewise not necessarily people engaged in an objective search for the truth. Some of them can and do use deceit, trickery, misstated research, harassment, intimidation, and charges of laundering federal money to silence their opponents. Those of us who are the recipients of bogus lawsuits and frivolous ethics charges and phony phone calls and pickets outside our offices must know more than the research to survive such tactics. We must know something about endurance and about the importance of refusing to be intimidated. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998

Atonement, expiation, laundering, prophylaxis, promotion and rehabilitation -- it is difficult to put a name to all the various nuances of this general commiseration which is the product of a profound indifference and is accompanied by a fierce strategy of blackmail, of the political takeover of all these negative passions. It is the `politically correct' in all its effects -- an enterprise of laundering and mental prophylaxis, beginning with the prophylactic treatment of language. Black people, the handicapped, the blind and prostitutes become `people of colour', `the disabled', `the visually impaired', and `sex workers': they have to be laundered like dirty money. Every negative destiny has to be cleaned up by a doctoring even more obscene than what it is trying to hide. Euphemistic language, the struggle against sexual harassment -- all this protective and protectionist masquerade is of the same order as the use of the condom. Its mental use, of course -- that is, the prophylactic use of ideas and concepts. Soon we shall think only when we are sheathed in latex. And the data suit of Virtual Reality already slips on like a condom.

As a candidate, Trump’s praise of Putin had been a steady theme. In the White House, his fidelity to Russia’s president had continued, even as he lambasted other world leaders, turned on aides and allies, fired the head of the FBI, bawled out his attorney general, and defenestrated his chief ideologue, Steve Bannon. It was Steele’s dossier that offered a compelling explanation for Trump’s unusual constancy vis-à-vis Russia. First, there was Moscow’s kompromat operation against Trump going back three decades, to the Kryuchkov era. If Trump had indulged in compromising behavior, Putin knew of it. Second, there was the money: the cash from Russia that had gone into Trump’s real estate ventures. The prospect of a lucrative deal in Moscow to build a hotel and tower, a project that was still being negotiated as candidate Trump addressed adoring crowds. And then there were the loans. These had helped rescue Trump after 2008. They had come from a bank that was simultaneously laundering billions of dollars of Russian money. Finally, there was the possibility that the president had other financial connections to Moscow, as yet undisclosed, but perhaps hinted at by his missing tax returns. Together, these factors appeared to place Trump under some sort of obligation. One possible manifestation of this was the president’s courting of Putin in Hamburg. Another was the composition of his campaign team and government, especially in its first iteration. Wherever you looked there was a Russian trace.

Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.

lot. In addition to the behaviour that caused the crisis, major US and European banks have been caught assisting corporate fraud by Enron and others, laundering money for drug cartels and the Iranian military, aiding tax evasion, hiding the assets of corrupt dictators, colluding in order to fix prices, and committing many forms of financial fraud. The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the US financial sector has become a rogue industry.

online certifications, including CFAP (Certified Forensic Accounting Professional), CBFA (Certified Banking Forensic Accountant) and CAME (Certified Anti-money Laundering Expert).

Some terrorism analysts have seen the southern insurgency as an Islamic jihad that forms part of the broader network of AQ-linked extremism, with Islamic theology and religious aspirations (for shari’a law or an Islamic emirate) as a key motivator.73 This surface impression is reinforced by the facts that the violence is led by ustadz74 and other religious teachers, that the mosques and ponoh (Islamic schools) have a central role as recruiting and training bases, and that militants repeatedly state that they are fighting a legitimate defensive jihad against the encroachment of the kafir (infidel) Buddhist Thai government. Clearly, also, the AQ affiliate Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) has used Thailand as a venue for key meetings, financial transfers, acquisition of forged documents,75 and money laundering and as a transit hub for operators.

Today in America, free clinics are used for tax write-offs, money laundering, or political tools.  It’s all about money there.  Both you men are old enough to know that.

A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US invaded Panama, killing a couple of hundred or maybe a couple of thousand people, destroying poor neighborhoods, reinstating a regime of bankers and narcotraffickers—drug peddling and money laundering shot way up, as congressional research bureaus soon advised—and so on. That’s normal, a footnote to history, but there were two differences: one difference is that the pretexts were different. This was the first intervention since the beginning of the Cold War that was not undertaken to defend ourselves from the Russians. This time, it was to defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotraffickers. Secondly, the US recognized right away that it was much freer to invade without any concern that somebody, the Russians, might react somewhere in the world, as former Undersecretary of State Abrams happily pointed out.

The result was a remarkable December 30 decree that gave the Vatican its first ever anti–money laundering law, set to go into effect the following April 1.27 “The Prevention and Countering of Illegal Activities in the Area of Monetary and Financial Dealings” was issued as a motu proprio, a document historically signed personally by the Pope. Benedict took full responsibility for the decision.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the author of the 2009 book that precipitated the string of events from Caloia’s exit to the motu proprio, expressed the feelings of many Vaticanologists: “A few years ago, an anti-money-laundering law in the Vatican and the Holy See would have been unthinkable. They used to say, ‘We’re a sovereign state; these are our affairs.’ The important thing is that they created an anti-money-laundering law and an authority to enforce it. Without that, the Vatican Bank will remain an offshore bank.

Late that autumn a Venezuelan attorney, Alberto Jaime Berti, cooperated with Italian magistrates in return for immunity from prosecution on charges that the IOR was at the center of laundering several hundred million dollars through Swiss and Panamanian banks on behalf of a handful of senior Opus Dei officials.72 The Italian media reported that Berti fingered De Bonis as his Vatican Bank connection and produced dozens of documents with the monsignor’s signature. Prosecutors believed that De Bonis had the key to a safe deposit box at Geneva’s Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. It was in that box, said Berti, that a cache of documents laid out exactly how the IOR laundered the money. De Bonis, cloaked by immunity in his Knights of Malta position, denied even knowing Berti.73 The prosecutors, unable to move against him, had to stand down.

The analytical process starts with the receipt of a report, continues with the collection of additional related information, goes through different forms of analysis, and ends with either a detailed file concerning a money-laundering (or financing of terrorism) case that is forwarded to the law-enforcement authorities or prosecutors or the reaching of a conclusion that no suspicious activity was found. After the analysis is performed, the primary report that triggered it may represent a small part of the file.

I was working on a money-laundering issue. There was a lot of cash and a mazy chain of shell corporations, like always, but I had the guy.

I launder dirty money. You should see my washing machine. (It’s filthy!)

The story includes plots, counterplots, secret missions, money laundering, a high-level sting operation, invasions, naval duels, hard-fought battles in the Russian snow, mutinies, murders, victories, and defeats. The characters include patriots, traitors, special agents, double agents, triple agents, executive agents, agents of influence, agents provocateurs, and at least one femme fatale.

Stablecoin systems are payment systems, and the biggest problem with international payments is not the technology — it’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws. Cryptocurrencies mostly work around this by ignoring it — but Libra couldn’t be allowed to do that.

So does the fact that corrupt officials the world over buy art, often anonymously, as a way to launder money. The uber-rich use it to dodge taxes. Warehouses in Geneva and New York are stacked with specially conditioned safes. There, great works are reduced to the equivalent of zeroes in anonymous bank accounts.

On the surface, it appeared that Trump was acting irrationally, but what I’ve learned over the years as an investor is that almost everyone behaves rationally. If someone does something that appears irrational, it just means you don’t have all the information.

At first, I did them because I owed it to Sergei. He had been killed because he worked for me, and I couldn’t let his killers get away with it. As with the theft of my childhood flute, but on an infinitely grander and more meaningful scale, I have been compelled to get justice. As the theft of my flute showed, this inclination toward justice is part of who I am. It’s in my nature. To reject it would have poisoned me from the inside. Then, as things escalated, it also became a fight for survival. Not only for myself and my family, but for my friends and colleagues, and all the people who were helping Sergei’s cause inside of Russia. But in the end, I’ve done these things because doing them is the right thing to do. For better or worse, I’ve been obsessed with this cause since the moment of Sergei’s death. This obsession has affected every facet of my life, and all of my relationships, even those with my own children. These effects haven’t always been for the better.

Boiled down to its essentials, finance always does the same thing: it takes money from people who have it but don’t need it, and gives it to people who need it and don’t have it, and earns a fee for its trouble. Governments try to regulate this process, to direct the funding toward the causes they care about, and financial institutions try to avoid those rules so they can direct the funding toward the causes that will pay the largest fees. That is financial innovation, which is simply an artificial way of exploiting artificial rules governing the artificial thing we call money, and normally involves finding mismatches between regulations in different countries. It’s clever, but it adds nothing to the sum of human achievement.

The dons who once financed Bollywood in order to get their black money laundered to white had mostly reinvented themselves.

A politically divided and destabilized America - an America drifting toward white nationalism, authoritarianism, and isolationism - will pose no challenge (...). Page 467.

Bermuda law required that the owner of the new company’s stock be a qualified tax-exempt entity. Fortunately, Morgan Stanley discovered The Capital Trust, a Bermuda charitable trust whose beneficiaries were the Bermuda High School for Girls, Saltus Grammar School, Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association, and the Bermuda Foundation. Morgan Stanley, through its investors, would give the charitable trust the $12,000 required to purchase the company’s stock. Finally, the newly formed company had to obtain the permission of the Bermuda Monetary Authority to issue $1.5 billion of bonds backed by the Ajustabonos. The $12,000 stock had been created merely to satisfy a Bermuda technicality. It was this company’s new bonds, not the stock, that Morgan Stanley was planning to sell to investors. To get permission for the company to issue these bonds, Morgan Stanley—again through its investors—had to commit to pay $1,600 per year to the Bermuda government. From an outsider’s perspective, these payments looked like kickbacks. Overall, Morgan Stanley’s actions were barely distinguishable from those of a drug kingpin seeking an appropriate tax haven to launder money. In fact, later that year the PBS television show Frontline would expose the use of off-shore tax havens by both money launderers and Wall Street alike. (I discussed the show with Scarecrow, who said he was flattered by the comparison.)

DPG needed a little magic, and some financial alchemy, to create the new derivatives. The first trick was to split the Ajustabonos into two pieces. The most basic way to do this was to form a new company to buy the Ajustabonos and then have the company issue two new securities linked to the Ajustabonos. To create such a company without incurring the wrath of Mexican and U.S. regulators, Morgan Stanley looked to sunny Bermuda. Bermuda was known as a haven for all kinds of dysfunctional financial behavior and money laundering, first by drug dealers, then by the Mafia, and last by investment banks, including Morgan Stanley. Getting into bed with Drexel in the 1980s had pushed Morgan Stanley down a slippery slope. Now the firm was operating in Bermuda and behaving like the mob. Bermuda would protect DPG, but only at a price, and DPG had to play by Bermuda’s rules. First, Morgan Stanley hired several politically connected Bermuda lawyers to incorporate a special Bermuda company. These lawyers would serve on the company’s board of directors and provide crucial political contacts while the company was issuing its special bonds. Next, to avoid negative tax consequences, Morgan Stanley needed to find an appropriate charitable institution to purchase the company’s stock.

speeches and then ask questions that further their partisan agenda, and there was a little of that here. The Republicans were keen to discredit Glenn Simpson and have me say that the Trump dossier was a complete fiction. And the Democrats wanted me to state that the Trump Tower meeting was evidence of a conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign. I did neither. I stayed laser-focused on playing it straight down the middle.

couldn’t afford for this hearing to become partisan. I needed Republicans and Democrats to continue to work together to fight off Putin as he tried to derail the Magnitsky Act.

Fortunately, as the hearing progressed, the partisanship fell away. There was genuine desire among all the senators to understand how Russia worked and why Putin behaved the way he did.

Senator Feinstein. She thanked me for staying an extra day and said that this was one of the most powerful testimonies she’d heard in her 25 years as a US senator.

At the end of the day, the biggest market for bodyguards in London is Russians (who are afraid of other Russians). With all that money sloshing around, I realized I couldn’t fully trust any of these people.

Because of their friendship, Prince Albert enthusiastically supported the Russian president and occasionally did his bidding. I’d heard stories about Putin’s enemies checking into Monaco hotels, presenting their passports, and finding themselves arrested within minutes by the local police.

Magnitsky Act, which would ban visas and freeze assets of Russian human rights violators, including those who had tortured and killed Sergei.

To really hit these people where it hurt, we needed a European Magnitsky Act as well.

Boris Nemtsov became my partner in getting justice for Sergei and advocating for the Magnitsky Act all over the world.

they also dominate Asia’s illicit child-trafficking, prostitution rings, and money laundering operations – all centrally based out of Shanghai.

met Glenn several times back when I was running the Hermitage Fund, trying to expose corruption at some of the companies we invested in. He was tall, unkempt, and vaguely bearlike. In 2011, he had given up journalism to set up an investigation firm in Washington called Fusion GPS. “I thought Glenn was one of the good guys,” I said. “Perhaps he was, but now he does opposition research for anyone willing to pay,” the journalist said, referring to the types of investigations done by firms that dig up dirt on political candidates

Simpson’s involvement changed everything. He’d been running Fusion GPS for five years and was widely regarded as a well-connected and effective smear campaigner, having left a trail of ruined reputations of politicians and businesspeople from around the world. The Russians had made dozens of unsuccessful, ham-fisted attempts to destroy my credibility—but this guy was the real deal who knew what he was doing. The game of Whac-A-Mole had just become a lot more intense. If Simpson was going to be working the media following the film screening, then Vadim and I needed to be in Washington to run damage control.

Britain’s entire system for regulating money laundering is therefore reliant on money launderers blowing the whistle on criminals, with no prospect of any personal benefit from doing so, and in full knowledge of the fact they’ll face retribution if the criminals find out. Unsurprisingly, therefore, not many whistles get blown.

The thing I found out about infidelity is that it’s judged as the harshest crime you can commit. People are sooner to forgive money laundering or a DWI with children in the car. But when you’re unfaithful in your marriage, forget about it. I think that when people catch wind of an infidelity in their town, the first thing they do is look at their own marriage under a microscope. In some people’s eyes, once you’re labeled a cheater, it will negate every good thing you ever do. You could win a Pulitzer Prize, but you’ll still be a cheater who won the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1988, NDTV got a good contract from Doordarshan to produce a famous weekly show called The World This Week, which was anchored by the owner Prannoy Roy. As per records, Doordarshan granted Rs.2 lakhs ($6000[1]) per episode to NDTV, which was a princely sum in those days. Incidentally the head of Doordarshan at that time was Bhaskar Ghose and his son-in-law journalist Rajdeep Sardesai became the No. 2 in NDTV. The Congress Party was in power then and showed all possible support to NDTV and provided a red-carpet welcome to the private media unit to enjoy the national resources of Doordarshan. Every resource and infrastructure of Doordarshan was used for NDTV’s growth. In fact, in the early days (1995-1997), it is this tax payer money (Doordarshan contract) that got him personal gains again when he did “sweet” private equity deals (for sale of personal stake belonging to him and his wife) to a few global private equity funds. Thus, he built a business from patronage (government money) and then created value and cashed some of it by selling to private equity investors such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Alliance Capital, Jardine Fleming etc.

Prannoy Roy was appointing sons, daughters, in-laws, nephews and nieces of top officials and politicians in NDTV as journalists.  This show of nepotism in journalism changed the style of journalism as access to corridors of power became easy for media houses. Not only bureaucrats, several kith and kin and siblings of top police and military officials too became journalists in NDTV, as and when the organization needed largesse from the system.  This unholy recruitment of journalists completely changed the character of India’s journalism. In those days the joke in Delhi was that all siblings of the powerful, not-so-good-in-academics can become journalists through NDTV. Still, when you look at the family details of many journalists in NDTV, you can see their links with IAS, IPS, IRS, Military top brass uncles, fathers, and in- laws.

It is clearly evident that unethical and corrupt practices were the bedrock of Prannoy Roy journalism. After getting the Doordarshan contract through patronage and a quid pro quo, he shrewdly cashed out over Rs.23 crores (to his personal account in 1994-95) in a short span of few years (see Table 1 below) by selling shares at astronomical valuations to a foreign investor. Simply put, through political patronage he built a business and cashed out for personal profit.  Table 1. Source: NDTV public issue prospectus filed with SEBI in 2004. Date of transfer No. of Equity Shares (Face value of Rs.10) Cost per Shares (Rs.) Price (Rs.) Nature of payment No. of Equity Shares (of Face Value of Rs.4) post splitting 21 Oct 1994 48,140 10 675 Cash 120,350 16 May 1995 99,070 10 675 Cash 247,675 Jul 21 1995 121,625 10 675 Cash 304,063 Aug 22 1995 81,481 10 675 Cash 203,702 After inking favorable deals with Doordarshan, many people in Central Government in 1997 helped NDTV to clinch a magical figure deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV[3] during the liberalization period. The Lutyens Delhi’s cozy club arm twisted Murdoch into an agreement with Prannoy Roy’s NDTV to launch the Star News channel.

launch of the Star News channel happened at the then Prime Minister I K Gujral’s official residence in February 1998.

First CBI FIR against NDTV In 1998 the CBI registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Prannoy Roy and several officials in MIB and Doordarshan for conniving to siphon public money. The FIR found malpractice of around Rs.5 crores ($1.4 million) by Roy and others from Doordarshan’s exchequer. Apart from Rajdeep Sardesai’s father-in-law Bhaskar Ghose, another top official of Doordarshan that helped Prannoy Roy build his empire was Ratikanta Basu, who later joined Murdoch’s Star News. This was a clear case of quid-pro-quo and an apt example of corruption and conspiracy in looting public money.

But luck came Prannoy Roy’s way, when his longtime friend Arun Jaitley became the Information and Broadcasting Minister in October 1999 in the Vajpayee Government. All CBI moves to act against NDTV and Prannoy Roy for looting Doordarshan were put in the deep freezer. CBI could not move an inch because Jaitley as MIB totally blocked the actions of the investigating agency and it could not file a charge sheet in the case. And after 14 years, the CBI in 2013, during Sonia Gandhi led UPA regime filed closure report in trial court. The rest is history-The savior Jaitley continued to be present in NDTV screens with his off and on exclusive interviews.

The first example was the anti-national reporting by Barkha Dutt during the Kargil war. Due to her closeness with Farooq Abdullah, the then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and corridors of power in Delhi, Barkha had access to all military installations in Kargil[4] during the war. Her unethical reporting caused harm to the Indian Army in the end. But nothing happened to Barkha or NDTV due to their clout in Delhi’s power circles even after the alleged anti-national reporting during the war and causing mortal harm to Indian Army.

Severe illegalities of tax evasion were done by NDTV during Congress regime and P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee were competing to dole out gifts to NDTV to please their master Sonia Gandhi who wanted the great injustice (sic) of stoppage on religious conversion undone.

When Pranab Mukherjee became President of India, he went to the extent of allowing NDTV to conduct its 25th anniversary in Rashtrapati Bhawan! This was the first instance in Independent India, when Rashtrapati Bhawan was thrown open for a private function, which was blessed by Who’s Who in Government, Politics, Intelligentsia and Business tycoons in 2013.

Income Tax (IT) Commissioner S K Srivastava’s attempts to act against NDTV over its serial illegalities were curtailed by the Finance Minister P Chidambaram. The officer was hounded by the system which made him collapse physically and mentally for a while.

Sonia Gandhi no end as perhaps she could not digest the application of law to the good Christian (Roy) serving the cause of God – so what if he stole a few pieces of silver?

NDTV was attracting several investors during the UPA regime. Mukesh Ambani and Naveen Jindal’s father in law’s Oswal Group were funding NDTV. Niira Radia tapes tell us that she brought Mukesh Ambani to NDTV. One must remember that these were the days of 2G, Coal, Krishna Godavari (KG) Basin scams[8] under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi. NDTV was accepting money from all the culprits in the scams. Now it is found that NDTV even had a money trail of $40 million from Malaysia’s Maxis Group which was illegally allowed to take over Aircel mobile phone operator by Sonia Gandhi’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram in 2006[9]

ED issues notice to NDTV, Prannoy Roy, wife Radhika and Vikram Chandra for Rs.4369 cr. Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violations with help of Chidambaram. This also includes the 40 million dollars routed to NDTV by Malaysian firm Maxis’s subsidiary Astro, the accused in the Aircel- Maxis scam. According to Income Tax Commissioner S K Srivastava’s complaint to CBI, this 40 million dollar was the bribe received by Chidambaram from Maxis for the illegal Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance of

By this time NDTV had become part and parcel of Lutyens’ cozy club cutting across party lines. Congress and BJP heavyweights were at the disposal of NDTV. Left parties too were silent and complicit on NDTV’s illegalities in wielding power as Prannoy Roy’s wife Radhika Roy was the full blood real sister of Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) Politburo member Brinda Karat (wife of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of CPI-M). Till 2009, the CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat and wife Brinda Karat lived with Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy. NDTV was basking in the aura of the political and intellectual who’s who in the luxurious Lutyens’ Delhi. By this time, it had many nephews, nieces, daughters, sons, daughters in law, sons in law, et al, of powers that be/people at key places on its rolls masquerading as journalists or in other positions within NDTV to curry favours with the obliged and gratified uncles and fathers in law.

After Kargil, another hit job by NDTV that was venomous and hate mongering was the reporting of Gujarat riots of 2002[5]. The target was the rising star of BJP, Chief Minister Narendra Modi. This was done at the instance of Delhi politicians in the Congress and BJP to finish the political career of young Narendra Modi,

Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai did everything possible to malign Narendra Modi

The Christian conversion lobby was extremely upset with Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his Home Minister Amit Bhai Shah for enacting the “Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003” that effectively brought to a grinding halt the induced conversion of poor and innocent Dang tribals of North Gujarat by Christian Missionaries with deep pockets, who were patronized and harboured by successive Congress Govts. of Gujarat.

With their support, NDTV and Prannoy Roy hounded Narendra Modi for 12 years[7]. This was a classic example of Supari Journalism in India. But an important question that remains a mystery till date is where was Narendra Modi’s friend and key ally of NDTV–Arun Jaitley all this while and what was his equation with NDTV?

Arun Jaitley managed to walk a fine line, keeping both his dear friends Prannoy Roy and Narendra Modi in good humor, while Roy continued to attack Modi with vitriolic stories.

Even after casting aspersions on a BJP Chief Minister – Narendra Modi – in 2002, NDTV got its own TV channel license in 2003, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister.  After eating out more than a $100 million from Star News partnership, in 2003, NDTV flipped the bird to media baron Rupert Murdoch. Knowing NDTV’s clout in Delhi, Murdoch did not file any case of cheating against them, as by that time Arun Jaitley had become the Law Minister with hands in several other portfolios and had persuaded Atal Bihari Vajpayee to let NDTV and Prannoy Roy have their way despite the strong ideological opposition of Swaminathan Gurumurthy.

Another powerful minister Pramod Mahajan and Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani was also the well-wishers of NDTV, while it was unceremoniously and unethically attacking their colleague Narendra Modi. Many Cabinet Ministers competed in sending or leaking Simple Messaging Service (SMS) about Cabinet Agenda and decisions to Barkha Dutt.

In a dog-eat-dog world of Politics, it is not too farfetched to imagine that every Central leader of BJP wanted the collapse of the political career of Modi, whom they suspected and very correctly so as a potential threat to their own political ambitions. After all, at the end of the day there are many senior leaders in Congress and BJP who want to die after becoming either the Prime Minister or the President of India, even if for just one day.

Such was NDTV’s clout that they even acquired a Helicopter2 to go for coverage, despite objections from the Civil Aviation Ministry.

After Sonia Gandhi-led UPA came to power with the support of Left parties in 2004, NDTV’s golden days started. NDTV became a go between Congress leadership and its Left partners. Money started pumping in NDTV from tax havens, violating all norms of Finance Ministry during P Chidambaram’s tenure. Padma Shri awards were granted to Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai though NDTV was one of the originators of paid journalism; especially during the 10-year long Congress regime and was at last exposed in the Niira Radia tapes.

it is relevant to mention instances of proximity of NDTV personnel to the UPA – Sonia Singh is the wife of R P N Singh (Home Minister of State). Nidhi Razdan has been talked about as being close to Omar Abdullah (ally of Congress and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir). NDTV Group CEO - K V L Narayan Rao (son of former Chief of Army Staff Gen K V Krishna Rao) etc., was in the IRS (Income Tax Dept). Now the latest, Sarah Jacob (who hosts We the People post Barkha’s exit from NDTV) is the daughter in law of Montek Singh Ahluwalia. One can clearly accept and fathom how the “privileged access party continued” for so many years.

NDTV got an unpleasant surprise when a straight-as-an-arrow Income Tax Officer S K Srivastava, detected large-scale frauds in the accounts of NDTV in 2005 and early 2006. Its larger than law persona notwithstanding; he took up inquiries and investigation in the affairs of NDTV while working as the Additional Director of Income Tax (Inspection) in the Inspection Division of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (the CBDT). He was tasked with the “Preventive Vigilance” functions in the CBDT and the income Tax Dept. NDTV

Srivastava wrote in detail how some corrupt officers in the Income Tax Department hushed up the unpaid dues of NDTV and this started a most vicious and horrible persecution of an honest officer by the mischievous P Chidambaram. Srivastava alleged that Chidambaram hired the corrupt, shameless and immoral IRS officers [Shumana Sen, Ashima Neb, B K Jha, at all] and made them foist fake sexual harassment, sexual assault, molestation and repeated rape charges against S K Srivastava so that P Chidambaram could ease him out of service and thus save NDTV and Prannoy Roy.

This was an elaborate ruse to get S K Srivastava, off the investigation of NDTV for its tax evasion. After some time, P Chidambaram, much against his wishes, became the Home Minister and got Delhi Police under him. Srivastava says that Chidambaram promptly got false and mischievous criminal cases lodged against him, to get him removed from service. Not only that, Chidambaram got him arrested on the premises of the Court [Patiala House Court, Delhi, Jan 8, 2010]. A few illustrative but not exhaustive instances of such monumental persecution of a member of the Indian Revenue Service S K Srivastava are being listed below: Srivastava had found that his junior Income Tax official Shumana Sen IRS was conniving with NDTV in fudging their accounts[10]. In this, she was also supported by her batch mate and partner-in-crime, Ashima Neb, claims Srivastava. Shumana Sen was Assessing Officer of NDTV’s Income Tax circle and her husband Abhisar Sharma was a news presenter of NDTV being a serious violation of Govt. rules and law governing the conduct of employees of Govt. [MHA OM No.F.3/12/(S)/64-Ests.(B), dated 12.10.1965) and Rule 4 of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1965] and despite there being mandatory requirement of serving IRS officers to declare pecuniary interest like employment of spouse, etc., by a Company or Firm to the Govt. and failure of which is to be visited with severest punishment including dismissal from service; Shumana Sen never declared to Govt. that her husband was a staffer of the company which she was assessing to all the Direct Taxes, a serious breach which invites dismissal from service without any benefits. The vicious and criminal vilification of an IRS officer for nothing but doing his duty and protecting the public revenue and public interest which were being prejudiced by NDTV, Minister P Chidambaram and hired mercenaries Shumana Sen and Ashima Neb is something that would send shivers down the spine of any right thinking person. Srivastava was forced to face the allegations and court cases as Minister P Chidambaram was desperate to protect NDTV and hush up its crime, criminality and criminal acts – acts that caused defrauding of public revenue of India running into thousands of crores of rupees.

Srivastava first found the fraud committed by Shumana Sen by illegally granting a reimbursement of Rs.1.46 crores ($325,000[11]) to NDTV by fudging the accounts and Tax Returns of NDTV. He then found a series of favors she received from NDTV for hushing up fudging in accounts by the TV channel, which employed her husband at an exorbitant salary of more than Rs.15 lakhs per annum in 2005, while most of the prominent journalists were getting around half of that. Many favors were granted to Shumana Sen including all expenses paid foreign vacations with entire family [affidavit of Ms. Shumana Sen and her partner-in-fraud Ashima Neb before Delhi High Court, Writ Petition (C) No.1373 of 2011 titled as “Shumana Sen and Anr. Vs. S K Srivastava and Ors.”, para 3.43]. Srivastava also found that Ashima Neb was part of this racket and had actively colluded and conspired with Shumana Sen and Abhisar Sharma in facilitating NDTV frauds and had shared the spoils of the grand fraudulent exercise for laundering the illegal black money of NDTV through evasion of Income Tax.

During the period, June 2006 – October 2008 the media company floated many shell companies across global jurisdictions such as Sweden, Netherlands, UK, Mauritius and Dubai (over 30) etc. to bring into India via illegal hawala route a sum of over USD 150 million dollars. This is clear case of violation of Income Tax Dept and ED provisions. After the execution of sham transactions many of these companies were closed. In some foreign companies, NDTV’s prominent faces Barkha Dutt, Vikram Chandra and Sonia Singh were also shareholders or directors. All these companies were just paper companies at some hotel address or some attorney addresses.

Income Tax Commissioner (Appeals) caught NDTV owners Prannoy Roy and wife Radhika Roy for massive tax evasion and fined around Rs.30 crores each for hushing up their income during 2010-11.

the best laid out plans fail in the face of heroism of some un-factored men and events.

Capt. Mahendranath Mulla of the Indian Navy did not abandon his ship as no Captain would leave behind the men he commanded. He went down with INS Khukri on December 9, 1971, as the men were stuck alive in its bowels several decks below water level.

Accept your defeat, bear the consequences and move on. That is what honourable people do.