The Corporate Thieves Bush CIA Spook Fund Terrorism Bank

Jonathan Bush
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Jonathan Bush (born 1931) is an American banker who is an uncle of U.S. President George W. Bush and brother of former President George H. W. Bush.

He is a graduate of Hotchkiss School and Yale University. Like his brother and nephew, he is a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and Skull and Bones.

Career
He founded J. Bush & Co. which provided discreet banking services for the Washington D.C. embassies of foreign governments for many years. In 1997, Riggs Bank bought J. Bush & Co. and made Bush CEO & President of Riggs Investment, a firm based in New Haven, Connecticut.

In the early 1980s, Jonathan Bush helped organize investors for George W. Bush's first oil venture, Arbusto, later called Bush Explorations.

During the 2000 Presidential Campaign, Jonathan Bush was a major contributor and fundraiser to his nephew's election and was named a "Bush Pioneer" for raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. [1]

Controversy
On Saturday, May 20, 2004, onThe Washington Post, published an item about Jonathan Bush which states: "President Bush's uncle, Jonathan J. Bush, is a top executive at Riggs Bank, which this week agreed to pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering."page E02 The accounts in question were Saudi.

In 1991, Bush was fined $30,000 in Massachusetts and several thousand in Connecticut for violating registration laws governing securities sales. He was barred from securities brokerage with the general public in Massachusetts for one year.

Family
Bush is the father of NBC entertainment reporter Billy Bush and healthcare CEO Jonathan S. Bush, and resides in New Haven, Connecticut and North Haven, Maine, with his wife Josephine Bush.

The above found here

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I call President George W. Bush a lying shit bag and post the fax text sent today to the current Governor of Corruptikut, M. Jodi Rell, telling her to eat S--- and go F--- herself, click here

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press box: Media criticism.

The CIA and Riggs Bank

A Wall Street Journal story that the press gang should chase.
By Jack ShaferPosted Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, at 4:10 PM ET

"Follow the money" could be Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn R. Simpson's motto. His sophisticated dispatches from the banking/terrorism/money-laundering/organized crime nexus routinely advance well-covered subjects.

On the last day of 2004, Simpson published a Journal story about the Justice Department's investigation of purported money-laundering at Riggs Bank, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Previous news reports had connected Riggs to the dubious financial machinations of Saudi diplomats and despots from Africa and South America, including Chile's former maximum leader, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Banking regulators fined Riggs $25 million last year for its violations, the institution put itself up for sale, and a Justice Department investigation was started.

Simpson's Dec. 31 piece—inexplicably appearing on Page A-4 instead of A-1—locates what may be the common denominator shared by Riggs, the Saudis, the Africans, and the South Americans: the Central Intelligence Agency.

Citing unnamed U.S. government officials and people familiar with Riggs operations, Simpson reports that the bank has enjoyed a "relationship" with the CIA for some time. "That relationship, which included top current and former Riggs executives receiving U.S. government security clearances, could complicate any prosecution of the bank's officials, according to private lawyers and former prosecutors," he writes. By "complicate" one can safely assume that Simpson means "make impossible."

He writes:
The relationship with the CIA could prove problematic because it could cast a different light on the bank's dealings with two U.S. foreign-policy allies, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Given the intelligence connections to Riggs, prosecutors could be faced with proving that the bank's failure to disclose financial activity by the foreign officials wasn't implicitly authorized by parts of the U.S. government.
Bandar briefed Treasury Secretary John Snow in early 2003 about the work he'd done for the CIA, Simpson notes. The parapolitical credits on the prince's resume include funding the Contras at the behest of the White House, supporting the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union, and serving as a go-between in the mending of the Libya-U.S. relationship. The CIA worked with Pinochet through his secret police chief, Manuel Contreras, Simpson reports, adding that Contreras banked at Riggs as recently as 1979.

"That wasn't money-laundering, detective, I was just serving national security," would be an excellent defense in a criminal prosecution. Another reason the government might want to shut down the criminal probe that Simpson doesn't mention is that where there are one or two CIA-related bank accounts, there are probably more. Better to cover up the extent of Riggs' "full-service" banking.

Simpson's story is a damn fine one, made all the more unique by the fact that nobody followed it except to cite the Journal. On Wednesday (Jan. 5), Washington's hometown newspaper, the Washington Post, ignored the CIA angle in a business story about the Justice Department's settlement talks with Riggs concerning criminal liability. Riggs' merger suitor, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., wants that liability off-loaded before consummating the deal, the Post reported.

Where is the rest of the press on the Riggs-CIA connection? Spooks, sheiks, dictators, millions in laundered money, and a $766 million merger in the balance! What does it take to entice an assignment editor these days, a tsunami or something?

Simpson doesn't name the source of his scoop, which invites me to speculate. He attributes his CIA information to U.S. government officials, which isn't much help. But "people familiar with Riggs operations" does illuminate. It's a safe bet that Riggs officials aren't ratting themselves out to a Journal reporter, which leaves us with the green eyeshades at PNC Financial, who probably know all of the spooky secrets about Riggs bank by now.

Why would PNC leak? There is an April 30 deadline for the merger, and the removal of corporate criminal liability would help seal the deal. Confirmation of my thesis was provided by the stock market. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PNC's hometown newspaper, "The purported link between Riggs and the CIA sent Riggs shares up 7 percent on Friday [Dec. 31]."

******
Interest declared: Simpson is a friend; a decade ago I edited a couple of his freelance features. Also, the Washington Post Co., which owns Washington's hometown newspaper, will complete its purchase of Slate from the Microsoft Corp. a week from today. I don't think the CIA played a role in the sale, but if it did, I want Glenn Simpson to get to the bottom of it.

The above found here on the net

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Fair Finance Watch / Inner City Press

Click here for Inner City Press' weekday news reports, from the United Nations and elsewhere. Click here for Inner City Press' front page Human Rights Report

September 11, 2006

The U.S. Treasury Department announced on September 8 it has cut off Iran's Bank Saderat from access to the U.S. financial system to block terrorist funding, and is sending its officials worldwide to seek similar actions.

Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorist and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey said they will "consult with government and private-sector leaders on measures we should all be taking to protect ourselves from Iran's use of the international financial system to advance its dangerous policies.

The United Nations is one avenue for imposing pressure on the Iranian regime -- an avenue we continue to aggressively pursue -- but like-minded states and even the global private sector may well decide to take additional measures outside of that context," Levey said.

"We have some important success with North Korea," he added, referring to financial sanctions against North Korean companies for proliferating WMDs and a Macao-based bank for allegedly distributing counterfeit U.S dollars and laundering money for the North.

That cut off preceded the test firing of missiles... In an approval order the Fed recited in footnote 13 that ICP Fair Finance Watch

"cited various news and congressional reports from 2003 through 2005 regarding allegations that ES Bank concealed assets and money laundering in connection with accounts held for the benefit of certain international individuals, including former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet."

What a generous description, "international individuals." Until next report, for or with more information, contact us

September 4, 2006 In the shadows and interstices of UN Security Council resolutions, the U.S. is at work. 'There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don't want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea,' Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told AP last week. 'They don't want to be the banker for someone who's engaged in crime, as the North Korean government is,' he said. Banks in Singapore, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Mongolia are opting not to do business with North Korea, Levey said. We'll see.

August 28, 2006

Who's in bed with whom? LAT: Wells Fargo's supposed safeguards for detecting illicit banking activities by terrorists, drug smugglers and other criminals were so weak that federal regulators should have publicly reprimanded the San Francisco-based bank, according to a Treasury Department report released last week. Instead, senior banking regulators met with Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich, then overruled their own staff by letting Wells off with an informal enforcement action -- sparing Wells the scrutiny and embarrassment suffered by other banks that have been forced to disclose that regulators faulted their oversight systems.

"We believe that [the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] should have acted more quickly and forcefully to require Wells to strengthen its compliance and that OCC's failure to take formal enforcement action against Wells sent the wrong message to the banking industry about OCC's resolve to ensure that banks comply" with the Bank Secrecy Act, the inspector general's report said.

The OCC staff recommended Feb. 4, 2005, that a formal cease-and-desist order be issued to Wells Fargo. Dick Kovacevich met five days later with top OCC officials, including Acting Comptroller of the Currency Julie Williams, who was then running the agency.

After that meeting, the OCC pulled the recommended action from consideration by its top supervisory review committee, according to the report. On April 12, 2005, a new memo was issued recommending that the agency take informal action. Who's put at risk by these cozy relationships?

August 14, 2006

The Bank of England on August 11 froze the assets of 19 suspects allegedly involved in the failed plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes. MW: "The Bank of England said financial institutions should check whether they operate bank accounts for the men or hold assets on their behalf in other ways. If so, those accounts and assets should be frozen and all information reported to the bank." The suspects' lawyers say they've barely gotten to see them, and they can be held for up to 25 more days without being charged. Developing.

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