In 2012, HSBC paid a $1.92B fine after admitting it didn't stop drug cartels from laundering at least $881M through its accounts.
Wachovia and Bank of America have also been linked to money laundering for drug cartels.
🇺🇸 USA
Henry Ford - American auto industry tycoon, Henry Ford reportedly relied on mafia thugs in order to prevent his employees from forming a labor union; according to an FBI file, he had links to several organized crime figures of his day. His right hand man, Henry Bennett was also known to be close to the Mafia.
Wall Street - According to Micheal Franzese, known as the Yuppie Don and a former capo in the Columbo crime family, people in Wall Street collaborate often with mafia figures.
Hollywood - Hollywood's connections to organized crime are basically an open secret.
In this picture you can see prominent actor and director, Sean Penn meeting with the Mexican drug lord El Chapo Gooseman.
Gangster, Johnny Roselli was associated with the Chicago outfit as well as the Italian LA mob. Rosseli was also connected with major Hollywood figures including Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Lana Turner and Betty Hutton.
Porn - The adult film industry has been linked to a scam carried out by members of the Gambino crime family, and there are alleged ties between content being produced and mafia controlled prostitution rings.
Robert Dibernardo was a subordinate to John Gotti, and was purported to control a large portion of the adult film industry in the US. He was an associate of (((Ruben Stirman))), who was known as the Walt Disney of porn. In this business, Stirman is alleged to have had protection and support from the highest levels of the mafia.
🇬🇧 UK
British-American Tobacco (BAT) reportedly claimed in an internal document in 1993 that only 5.4% of their business in China went through legal channels. Allegedly, it was the Triads that were behind an operation to smuggle billions of cigarettes into China and Taiwan from Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. In 1995, former BAT director, Tommy Chiu was killed at a Singapore harbor in what was said to be a Triad style; an alleged triad member was sentenced to 27 years in connection to this murder. Chiu had spoken to the police and claimed that there was high level corruption at BAT; it is believed that this killing was a message to others who might do the same.
Another company that is said to be at the center of this operation was the Hong Kong company, Giant Island, which was founded in the mid 80s to export cigarettes.
London - The city of London is notorious for money laundering. Even Osei Tutu II, the emperor of Ashanti, who has been called the King of Ghana, has been accused of laundering 350 pounds of cash in the city.
A bank official named Mark Arthur, who lost his job as a result of these allegations, claimed that he was unable to say no because it would offend the King. According to the national crime agency, hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal origin would almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks.
Several recognized organized crime groups are involved in money laundering in the city of London; the London property market is reportedly built upon laundered money.
🇮🇹 Italy
Vito Nicastri - In Italy, it's been said that the mafia is the countries biggest business enterprise, and in recent years, they've also been called Italy's number one bank. In the Italian energy business, Vito Nicastri is known as the lord of the wind. Nicastri has been linked with organized crime figures, including Matteo Messina Denaro, who is alleged to be the unchallenged godfather of the Sicilian Mafia after the death of Salvatore Riina in 2017. These links were revealed in an investigation into whether Nicastri was engaged in money laundering.
Major government subsidies have gone into the wind and Solar industries, which according to Italian prosecutors have been deeply infiltrated by the mafia for years, especially in Sicily. Organized crime is also reportedly in control of Italy's agriculture and food businesses; allegedly, fake oil scams, like the ones revealed in operation muma mia, were thought up and executed by organized crime members.
🇩🇪 Germany
In Germany, resources going to the police for the purposes of dealing with organized crime have dramatically decreased, and few investigations into reported cases of organized crime are undertaken.
Deutsche Bank - Deutsche Bank, a German global banking and financial services company has been implicated in the grand laundry Matt Scheme, where billions of dollars were laundered out of Latvia. This money is said to have been of criminal origin.
🇷🇺 Russia
Tambov Gang - In Russia in 2001, Boris Gryzlov, who at the time was interior minister, made the claim that the Tambov Gang controlled up to 100 industrial enterprises in Saint Petersburg, including the Petersburg Fuel Company and four major sea ports; in 2007, the prosecutor general of Russia, Yury Chaika announced that the Tambov gang had recently taken over over thirteen large enterprises in Saint Petersburg.
🇺🇦 Ukraine
Dmytro Firtash - Dmytro Firtash is a Ukrainian businessman who has worked as a middleman for Russian national gas giant, Gazprom. He reportedly told a US ambassador that he required permission from (((Semion Mogilevich))) in order to do business in Ukraine in the 90s. Firtash himself has been accused of bribery and creating a criminal organisation.
Russia supplies 30% of Europe's gas; the largest pipeline in Europe is called the Bratstvo, (meaning brotherhood) a popular term for organized crime in Russia.
An Israeli Lawyer named Zeev Gordon, who has represented Mogilevich for over 20 years, created Eurotrans gas (ETG) in 2002, reportedly registering the company in Dmytro Firtash's name. ETG was suspected of being a front for Gazprom, and had bank accounts in Vienna. Afterwards, Gazprom and ETG Established RosUkrEnergo, (RUE) which was registered in Switzerland. Mogilevich was alleged to have been involved in RUE and by some accounts has been the man in charge.
🇧🇪Belgium
Jean-Michel Nihoul - During the Dutroux sex slavery scandal, in a story in the Guardian, Belgian business magnate, Jean-Michel Nihoul told a reporter: ''I am the Monster of Belgium", going on to say that he would never come to trial, he would never show up if they put him on trial, and that evidence against him would never be heard by a jury, because the information he had on important people would bring the entire government down.
🇯🇵 Japan
After WWII, Douglas McCarthur, who became known as the Gaijin-Shogun, worked with the Yakuza to rebuild Japan and control black market supply chains.
Music Industry - In Japan, the Yakuza have great amount of control over the entertainment industry; many of the major talent agencies are known to be connected with them. This industry is also said to have a strong drug and casting-couch culture, similar to Hollywood.
Susumu Ishii - Susumu Ishii was the head of the Inagawa-kai Yakuza gang, when in 1985 he set up a property development company which became known as the gang's business activities bureau. He bought heavily into blue chip Japanese steel companies like Nippon Steel, Mitsui Metals and Tokyo Corp. Other Yakuza gangs are said to have followed his example.
Itoman - In 1990, it was revealed that Yakuza members were involved in the Itoman trading company. A Korean businessman named Ho Yong Chun, who was known to have extensive Yakuza connections, bought a 19% stake in the company.
Banks - The three largest banks in Japan have been investigated over alleged ties to organized crime after Mizuho Financial Group reportedly loaned over 2M dollars to people with Yakuza ties. This led to the resignation of the chairman of Mizuho, Takashi Sugimoto.
Fukushima - The cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after the 2011 tsunamis is alleged by a whistle-blower to be managed by a chaotic system of subcontractors with organized crime connections. These subcontractors reportedly often ignore safety rules, such as radiation exposure guidelines; organized crime groups are said to be involved in extortion and blackmail in relation to these operations.
🇰🇷 South Korea
Kim Seung-Youn - In South Korea, there are a handful of massive industrial conglomerates known as chaebols, with many of them being family run. These families, which are basically Korean nobility, are often said to be involved with organized crime groups. As one example, Kim Seung-Youn reportedly kidnapped some bar workers with the help of body guards and gangsters, beating them down for having beaten his son's face.
Samsung - The Chaebol, Samsung has been referred to as the main Mafia of South Korea; several Samsung executives have been convicted for bribing members of the government. According to a whistle-blower, this company has a $200M slush fund for buying people off.
🇨🇳 China
Li Qiang - In China, a man named Li Qiang, who is an alleged crime boss, has been sentenced to 20 years on charges related to running a criminal enterprise and bribing officials during the Chongqing crime trials. He is said to have based his gang around his transportation company, Chongqing Yuqiang Group, and had them support his business interests in the outside by doing things like causing traffic jams and putting illegal buses into use in the city in order to dominate the transportation market.
ICBS - The industrial and commercial bank of China or ICBS has had many senior managers in its Madrid branch arrested. Spanish prosecutors have accused the company of being involved in laundering funds from tax fraud and smuggling, carried out by criminal organized stations
🇮🇳 India
Coal Mafia - In India, there exists a recognized mafia raj of government officials, business men, NGOs, organized crime and so on. The Indian coal mafia, for example, has been claimed to exist within the Ministry of Coal by then Coal secretary, P.C. Parakh. He has also said that the industry is fully under the control of mafia.
Suresh Singh is known as the coal king of India, and the head of the coal mafia of Dhanbad, until he was assassinated by gun fire by three men while attending a wedding ceremony, with the assassination being a killing between rival coal clans.
Sand Mafia - There is also a sand mafia, which destroys beeches and river heads, along with the livelihoods of people in nearby communities, in order to make money supplying India's construction ministry.
🇦🇷 Argentina
Ibar Pérez Corradi - In Argentina, Ibar Pérez Corradi, who has been involved in the pharmaceutical industry, has been extradited to the US and arrested in relation to charges related to Ephedrine trafficking. He has also had a warrant for his arrest issued in connection to the triple crime, which refers to the murder of three men connected to the Argentine Pharmaceutical business. Allegedly, the reason for these killings was to prevent the three from entering the Ephedrine trafficking business.
🇧🇷 Brazil
Odebrecht - Based out of Brazil, the company Odebrecht is Latin America's biggest construction firm. It is said to have paid out over $800M in bribes between 2001 and 2016. Marcelo Odebrecht, who is the former CEO of Odebrecht, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges related to bribery, money laundering and organized crime.
In 2017, Marcelo, his father and brother were named in the Paradise Papers, which was a release of confidential documents relating to offshore investments alleged to have used at least one offshore company as a vehicle for paying bribes in connection to Operation Carwash.
Operation Carwash - Starting in 2014, Operation Carwash was an investigation into money laundering, but ended up highlighting allegations of corruption at the Brazilian government controlled oil company, Petrobras. According to the investigation, a group of Petrobras officials colluded with an organized Cartel of 16 companies to overcharge the company for construction and service work in exchange for bribes and kickbacks said to total up to $3B. Those implicated included the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as Eduardo Cunha, who was in the government position called president of the lower house and was sentenced to 15 years. After protests, former president, Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from her position.
By: Sassy and Opinionated
Raped by: Otto Heckel
No comments:
Post a Comment