Riggs Bank may plead guilty to crime

D.C. bank expected to plead guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, report says.
January 26, 2005: 8:47 AM EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Riggs Bank N.A., whose international dealings helped trigger a federal crackdown on money laundering by U.S. financial institutions, is expected to plead guilty to a criminal charge arising from its services for foreign embassies and wealthy clients, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The Riggs board has been presented with a plea agreement by prosecutors in which the bank would admit to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to file reports to regulators on suspicious transfers and withdrawals by clients, the article said, citing people close to the case.

The newspaper said directors are expected to accept the plea and the bank would pay a fine of between $16 million and $18 million. The deal could be announced as soon as Thursday, according to the article.

Earlier this year, the Washington, D.C.-based bank agreed to pay a $25 million fine amid allegations of possible violations of federal money laundering laws. In July, Riggs Bank's parent company, Riggs National Corp. (Research) agreed to be acquired by PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (Research) in a deal that was valued at $779 million when it was announced.
more
http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/26/news/midcaps/riggs.reut/

Jeff Clabaugh
Staff Reporter

Stock in Riggs Bank rose Wednesday after reports it is expected to plead guilty as part of a plea bargain with the Justice Department in connection with a money-laundering investigation.


Any settlement would lift a cloud over Riggs that threatens to prevent, or reduce the value, of its acquisition by Pennsylvania-based PNC Financial.

Riggs shares (NASDAQ: RIGS) rose 88 cents, or more than 4 percent, to $22.03 in Wednesday trading.

...

Riggs is under investigation for alleged violations by its international banking division of rules for reporting banking transactions. The bank is getting out of that business. PNC Financial agreed in July to acquire Riggs for $779 million. Riggs has said it cannot predict the impact investigations and lawsuits will have on the merger's ultimate closing.
more
http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2005/01/24/daily21.html

By Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; 1:34 PM

...

The bank, which has been controlled by the family of Joe L. Albritton since 1981, has been under intense scrutiny for its handling of international and embassy clients for more than a year. In April, it agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty as part of an agreement with federal bank regulators stemming from its handling of accounts held by diplomats and officials of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea. The settlement applies only to the bank and its holding company. Criminal investigations of several former Riggs officers are ongoing, the sources said.

...

The guilty plea, which was reported this morning in the Wall Street Journal, is a rare one for a commercial bank. In recent cases of money laundering settlements with the Justice Department, banks have agreed to what is known as a deferred prosecution. That means the bank pays a fine, but does not technically plead guilty -- agreeing instead to certain facts that could result in a prosecution during a period of one or more years.

The relatively small size of the fine also surprised some observers. AmSouth Bank of Alabama paid a $40 million penalty as part of its deferred prosecution agreement on similar charges last fall.
A source familiar with the deal, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the agreement hasn't been filed in court yet, said the negotiations with Justice were affected by a number of factors. First, there was a "deep interest" in getting an agreement done soon so that Riggs could be sold. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has declared Riggs a problem institution, and a sale would remove it as a matter of regulatory concern, this source said.

...

In July, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations detailed Riggs's longstanding ties to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In that inquiry, and subsequent investigations by Riggs's own staff, the bank was found to have conducted suspicious transactions involving Pinochet, members of his family and other Chilean military officers. The plea agreement will detail several transactions involving Equatorial Guinea and Pinochet that should have triggered suspicious activity reports.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38097-2005Jan26.html

What nasty things will NOT be exposed?

Princess Haifa and Riggs-- http://www.opednews.com/duncan_bush_should_cry_uncle_and_releas.htm

This is about Princess Haifa and her checks sent to terrorists:

........One of the other characters involved in this story was Omar al-Bayoumi, supposedly just a simple Saudi student studying in the US. The report has some interesting things to say about this simple student though,

"Despite the fact that he was a student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia. For example, an FBI source identified al-Bayoumi as the person who delivered $400,000 from Saudi Arabia for the Kurdish mosque in San Diego. One of the FBI's best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that al-Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power."


Turns out that some of the money al-Bayoumi received was from Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi Ambassador Bandar Bin Sultan, and daughter of the late King Faisal. The money then ended up in the hands of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi for monthly living expenses while they rented rooms in the home of the FBI informant.

The checks from Princess Haifa were drawn on Riggs Bank in Washington D.C. One of the chief officers of Riggs Bank is Jonathan Bush, an uncle of President George W. Bush...........
So it appears to me, that the redaction of the Saudi information from the 9-11 Report had more to do with covering the President's own ass from the embarrassing fact that his own uncle was part of the Saudi money trail that enabled two of the hijackers to crash a plane into the Pentagon, and very little to do with jeopardizing our national security at all........

Bush, the Saudi billionaire and the Islamists: the story a British firm is


MUST SEE: stories on Riggs National Bank -- note links to 2 of 19 hijackers in San Diego through wire transfer from Saudi Arabia. Jonathon Bush, George W. Bush's uncle, is a top official within the bank and the Motley suit brought by the 9/11 families has issued a subpoena of the bank's records. -KFH


Articles / Current News about 9-11
Date: Apr 02, 2004 - 04:25 PM
Publication of book cancelled as libel laws blamed for stifling free speech
David Leigh -- Wednesday March 31, 2004 -- The Guardian

A book investigating links between rich Saudis and US politicians has been suppressed by the giant publishing firm Random House because, it says, of growing "libel tourism" by wealthy foreigners, and exorbitant legal "success fees".

Libel lawyers are stifling free speech, the deputy chairman of Random House, Simon Master, said yesterday.

The UK publication of House of Bush, House of Saud, by the American writer Craig Unger, has been cancelled because Secker and Warburg, a Random House subsidiary, says it can no longer afford such risks.

The book focuses in part on the activities of a Jeddah-based Saudi billionaire, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who has been engaged in a war of words in the US, where there have been public accusations by officials linking him and others to funding received by Osama bin Laden.

more
http://www.911citizenswatch.org/print.php?sid=176

Hijacked bank

Questions also remain regarding the web of money transfers from Princess Haifa, Prince Bandar and the daughter of late King Faisal, some of which reached Nawaf Alhazmi and fellow terrorist Khalid Almihdar.Princess Haifa's bank account--the source of the funds which ultimately supported the alleged hijackers--was with Riggs Bank where Jonathan J. Bush, the brother of former President George H. W. Bush and uncle of President George W. Bush, is CEO, President and Director of Riggs' investment management subsidiary.

snip

After Al Bayoumi fled the U.S. to England in July, 2001--two months before the attacks, Princess Haifa's Riggs Bank checks were then sent to Osama Basnan, who with his wife Majeda Dweikat, were both later to be found in the U.S. illegally as a result of poor or suspicious State Department visa supervision.

Former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds said she found evidence of espionage in both the State Department and the FBI in pre-9/11 translations of intelligence intercepts--which also warned about planes used as weapons well before the attacks.A federal law enforcement source said Basnan was a known "al-Qaeda sympathizer" who "celebrated the heroes of September 11" at a party after the attacks and openly talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to Newsweek.

Al Bayoumi and Basnan both befriended Alhazmi and fellow Saudi hijacker Khalid Almihdar after they arrived in San Diego, according to the sources; and the Riggs checks from Prince Bandar's wife helped the terroists pay rent and living expences in the months just prior to the attacks, according to reports. Newsweek said Al Bayoumi helped them obtain social security cards and helped them arrange for flying lessons in Florida--indicating dramatic evidence of the state of congressional internal security oversight.

Basnan was convicted of visa fraud and deported to Saudi Arabia on November 17, 2002. His wife Majida Ibrahim--who had also laundered checks from Riggs Bank--was deported the same day to her native Jordan for visa violations. (Washington Post, 9-24, 2002) Reasons were not given why the White House allowed the high profile suspects to leave the country on charges much less important than being implicated as an accessory to mass murder.

more
http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=53


Exclusive: New Questions About Saudi Money—and Bandar

Eric Draper / The White House


The White House is monitoring a joint FBI-Treasury Department probe into wire transfers overseas by Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, pictured with the president in August 2002
By Michael Isikoff
Investigative Correspondent
NewsweekApril 12 issue - A federal investigation into the bank accounts of the Saudi Embassy in Washington has identified more than $27 million in "suspicious" transactions—including hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Muslim charities, and to clerics and Saudi students who are being scrutinized for possible links to terrorist activity, according to government documents obtained by NEWSWEEK. The probe also has uncovered large wire transfers overseas by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The transactions recently prompted the Saudi Embassy's longtime bank, the Riggs Bank of Washington, D.C., to drop the Saudis as a client after embassy officials were "unable to provide an explanation that was satisfying," says a source familiar with the discussions.



A Saudi spokesman strongly denied that any embassy funds were used to support terrorism and said Bandar chose to pull the embassy's accounts out of Riggs. The Saudis point out that an earlier FBI probe into embassy funds that were moved to alleged associates of the 9/11 hijackers has not led to any charges. The current probe, by the FBI and Treasury Department, is one of the most sensitive financial inquiries now being conducted by the government and is being closely monitored by the White House. The federal commission investigating 9/11 was also recently briefed on developments, sources say. U.S. officials stress that they have identified no evidence of any knowing Saudi aid to terrorist groups. But they express frustration at their inability to penetrate a number of large and seemingly irregular transactions. "There's a lot of money moving in a lot of directions—maybe not all that carefully," said one senior law-enforcement official. "Everyone wants to get to the bottom of it."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4661093 /

:hi: Carl

savvy they would just publicize the legal controversy over the books that are being supressed and raise holy hell. The public exposure would then fuel more questions and controversy and the snowball effect would take over. That, IMHO, would shut the lawyers and those behind them down.

emad (1000+ posts) Sat Jul-17-04 09:24 AM
Response to Original message

7. Poppy's/Junior's "blind trusts" held in Riggs accounts managed

by the now dumped US Ambassador to UK William Stamps Farish III? With Uncle Jonathan at the helm as chairman what a winning combo.

Snip from UK Financial Times:

PNC to buy Riggs bank for $779m
By James Politi in New York
Published: July 16 2004 14:17 | Last Updated: July 16 2004 14:17


Riggs National, a bank that has held accounts for US presidents and boasts many foreign embassies as its clients, on Friday agreed to be sold for nearly $800m in stock and cash to PNC Financial of Pennsylvania.....................

This week, a congressional report slammed Riggs for not informing regulators that it was handling tens of millions of dollars for Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, and for top officials in the African dictatorship of Equatorial Guinea. In May, Riggs was ordered to pay a record fine of $25m for money-laundering violations related to diplomats' accounts.

Shortly after, the bank that in the 19th century financed the US government's purchase of Alaska with $7m in gold, announced it was up for sale.

PNC, which edged out competing offers for Riggs from other regional banks in the US, expects the bank's international and embassy units to be divested before the deal closes.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.co...


So, the banker to US presidents and foreign embassies...fined for money laundering violations related to diplomats' accounts.

NO official explanation given about what Farish was dumped so unceremoniously from top London posting in June.

The buzz at London's prestigeous Foreign Correspondents' Club says Farish's wife Sarah was interviewed by UK police in June re her involvement in the now defunct French media giant Versailles whose chairman/c.e.o. Carl Cushnie has been arrested for fraud/embezzlement along with his financial director. By 'involvement' I take it that what's implied is that she was a concealing an investment which was not quite....er....kosher.

Farish and wife departed last saturday. Don T Johnson now left in charge as "Chargé d'Affaires ad interim" - ie pooper scooper in residence....

Embassy biog on Johnson:
http://www.usembassy.org.uk/ukdcm.html


more
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=691609

During WWII in the famous "Trading with the Enemy" trials.

The chickens sure do come home to roost.

Old man Farish was head of Standard Oil and they sold, illegally I might ad, tetraethyl lead gasoline to Nazi Germany's. The Luftwaffe would never have been able to fly without it. This was going on as FDR was trying to keep the British alive with the lend lease project and the Luftwaffe filled the skies of England.

Just a little bit of a conflict between our economic and political sector.

Senator Harry Truman when investigating the national defense program, as committee chairman told newsmen before Farish testified: "I think this approaches treason. Farish began breaking apart at these hearings. He shouted his "indignation" at the senators, and claimed he was not "disloyal."After the March-April hearings ended, more dirt came gushing out of the Justice Department and the Congress on Farish and Standard Oil. Farish had deceived the US Navy to prevent the Navy from acquiring certain patents, while supplying them to the Nazi war machine; meanwhile he was supplying gasoline and tetraethyl lead to Germany's submarines and air force.
Communications between Standard and I.G. Farben from the outbreak of World War II were released to the Senate, showing that tFarish's organization had arranged to deceive the U.S. government into passing over Nazi-owned assets: They would nominally buy I.G.'s share in certain patents because "in the event of war between ourselves and Germany .. .it would certainly be very undesirable to have this 20 percent Standard-I.G pass to an alien property custodian of the U.S. who might sell it to an unfriendly interest.
In August, Farish was brought back for more testimony. He was now frequently accused of lying. Farish was crushed under the intense, public grilling; he became morose, ashen. While Prescott Bush escaped publicity when the government seized his Nazi banking organization in October, Farish had been nailed. He collapsed and died of a heart attack on November 29, 1942.
The Farish family was devastated by the exposure. Son William Stamps Farish, Jr., a lieutenant in the Army Air Force, was humiliated by the public knowledge that his father was fueling the enemy's aircraft; he died in a training accident in Texas six months later. With this double death the fortune comprising much of Standard Oil's profits from Texas and Nazi Germany was now to be settled upon the little four-year-old grandson, William...overlapping the intelligence and financial worlds-The Bush Farish axis started George Bush's career.

A Senate investigating committee under Senator (later US President Harry Truman of Missouri had called Arnold to testify at hearings on corporations' collaboration with the Nazi. The Senators expressed outrage at the cynical way Farish was continuing an alliance with the Hitler regime that begun back in 1933, when Farish became chief of Jersey Standard. Didn't he know there was a war on?
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/listservs/spoons/wood...


new link
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:QKI6f6TDAnAJ:illuminaticonspiracy.org/files/books/BUSH.pdf+Farish+testified:+%22I+think+this+approaches+treason.+Farish+&hl=en

Ambassador to the Court of St James is still void. Journos asking questions about this are summarily rebuffed and ignored. Sbhrub contnues to smirk and block any suggestion that his blind trust bagman or bagman's wife are in any way involved in anything dubious.

Now Riggs wants to do a plea bargain to shush the whole biz of its involvement in organised crime - both at home and in its fave stamping grounds - oil-rich despot hellholes such as Equatorial Guinea.

Watch the headlines about Pinochet. Death by natural causes imminent?

bank in Florida if there is one. Two of the hijackers had an account in Suntrust, which is an old Iran--Contra money laundering bank. The branch that the hijackers had their accounts is in the Bush Executive Plaza.

"Riggs Bank’s failure to alert investigators to a large number of unusual cash transactions by the Saudi Embassy and other foreign bank customers has led to a wide-ranging investigation by Treasury Department regulators....

"'Anytime, you have suspicious money movements, and it’s not reported as needed, it hurts our overall efforts,' a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said ..."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4687305 /


..According to two articles in the Progressive Populist written by Margie Burns, from 1993 to 2000, Bush served on the board of Securacom (since renamed Stratesec). The chairman of the board of Stratesec is Wirt D. Walker III, a cousin of Marvin and George W. Bush. Securacom had contracts to provide security for Dulles International Airport (the airport from which American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, originated) and the World Trade Center in New York.

Securacom's backers include a number of Kuwaitis through a company called KuwAm Corp (Kuwaiti-American Corp.). Stratesec also has Saudi investors.

Walker also serves as a managing director of KuwAm, which maintains offices within the Watergate complex along with Riggs Bank, on whose board Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, sits. Saudi Princess Haifa al Faisal, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar, used a Riggs account to funnel money to Omar al Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, two Saudi students in California associated with two of the 911 hijackers.


http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/10-16-03/discussion.cgi.16.html

George Herbert Walker, grandfather of GH Bush, whose Silesian (Sileezian) Steel Co. made a killing off of Nazi concentration camp labor. When confronted with this buy the Truman Committee he shrugged it off: "business is business".

the federal government has about a b-zillion sanctions that it can impose on banks, their officers, directors, etc.

Of course, many of those target a specific individual, not the bank.

Getting a plea to a felony makes no sense--it only hurts us, the taxpayers who insure the bank (remember the S&l bailout of Bush's dad, for which we are still paying through the nose)

does anyone know, are they going to forego prosecuting individuals, as they did in the Edward Jones case a few weeks ago

It is something that sticks in my craw to no end. They pass the responsibility off to the taxpayer. Absolutely despicable. These crooks will just cycle through the system like they did after the S&L.

Its time to put them behind bars permanently.

would drain the financial swamps of the terrorists?

He was lying.

mansion, shitting himself that he won't be allowed back into the US to see his wife, kids and bank accounts in Texas.

I expect he may have been somewhat more co-operative with the CIA desk at the US embassy Visa section in London than with the Johannesburg Scorpions, public prosecutors or former chums currently in the slammer for the Equatorial Guinea coup plot rap.

Grassing up the Riggs execs involved in his own little nightmare might just motivate the CEO and board to do a little quid pro quo...

This way Riggs staff may be able to avoid testifying in open court by doing the slimy plea bargain that keeps Unka Jonathan Bush, the Albrittons and all the other slimebags out of the news for a while longer.

I think. I've been studying some of the corrupt banking activities of the 20's and 30's and as the government started poking around taking a closer look at the banking activities Nazi's and their US sympathizers started dealing in cash more as the risk factor of business as usual went up.

Maybe that's what's happening here: things are getting to risky and the players want to deal in cash with no paper trail.

The fact that the Justice Dept. is "forced" to look at what is going on is also interesting. This thing with Riggs could be a real pain in the ass for the Bush fascisti.

Riggs Affair Sparks 'Suspicious Activity' Alert on Dole

Bob Dole withdraws $8000 week in cash?
WASHINGTON -- The Riggs National Bank scandal has led to unexpected fallout, including "suspicious activity reports" on former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.

As often as once a week, Mr. Dole's assistant walks around the corner from his Pennsylvania Avenue office in Washington to a branch of Riggs Bank, where she withdraws as much as $8,000 in cash. For walking-around money, Mr. Dole keeps a wad of $100 bills in the breast pocket of his shirt. "I probably use a credit card four or five times a year," Mr. Dole confesses. "I don't even have a wallet."

Mr. Dole's affinity for cash was of no concern to anyone until recently, when federal regulators pawing through the books of scandal-tarred Riggs spotted the large withdrawals and called them to the attention of management. In short order, the bank filed "suspicious activity reports" on Mr. Dole and another prominent Washington figure, Mr. Carlucci, questioning whether the two men might have violated federal laws against money laundering.

The two aren't actually suspected by Riggs of wrongdoing, people familiar with the filings say. But the bank, a unit of Riggs National Corp. (RIGS), felt it had no choice but to file these reports because of the strict wording of the Bank Secrecy Act.

more
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=dji-00094720040902&feed=dji&date=20040902&cat=INDUSTRY

in neighboring red light zones?

Riggs Bank Fined $16 Mln for Hiding Suspect Accounts (Update1)

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Riggs National Corp.'s U.S. banking unit agreed to a $16 million fine and pleaded guilty today to failing to report suspicious financial transactions, including more than $10 million deposited by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington declined to accept the plea agreement for now, questioning whether the fine ``is just a business expense'' for Riggs that wouldn't even cover the profits it made on the suspect accounts. He ordered an independent investigation by probation officers to determine whether the penalty is sufficient and scheduled sentencing for March 29.

``This is not a cost-of-business fine,'' Mark Hulkower, a lawyer for the bank, told Urbina. The $16 million is more than Riggs's profits, he said.

The guilty plea, after a yearlong money laundering probe by U.S. prosecutors, may clear the way for the sale of Riggs to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based PNC Financial Services Group if Urbina approves the plea agreement. Riggs has been a Washington institution for 170 years, the bank of choice for many foreign embassies and scores of government officials.

Con't-
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aO7H3Ji4EfN0&refer=news_index

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Well, thats that, all done!