McConnell claims that the Electric Telegraph Serco root company paid the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to open the Langham’s Mycroft war-room betting office in 1865 and Serco’s Five Eyes surveillance and blackmail agents are now using man-in-the-middle attacks on first-response commanders to give the MI-3 Innholders control of government leaders in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
McConnell alleges that Major’s former colleagues at Standard Chartered networked the MI-3 Langham war room with a trading floor in WTC#7 beside the offices of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launder over $250bn of illegal transactions with Iran.
In the light of the Standard Mycroft comment about “fucking Americans”,McConnell presumes that Major’s cronies in the Langham / BBC war rooms decided to conceal the trades by using Bovis to vaporize SEC investigation files with incendiary bombs and remove enough evidence from the crime scene to keep armchair Sherlocks debating mass murder for ever.
McConnell invites key word Googlers to read excerpts below and ask why “The List of Sherlock Innholders – The Wrist That Didn’t Bleed” book has a new title at http://www.abeldanger.net/
Prequel 1: #1847: Marine links MI-3 Mycroft Obama blackmail to Langham Serco Five Eyes and the Murder of Gabriel McGee
WTC7 foreknowledge
Strange meeting - Sherlock – BBC
Exposing 'Five Eyes' Global Surveillance Cabal | Big Brother Watch
“Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings? As a society we are faced with this question due to the growing amount of evidence that explosives were used to bring down all three buildings, and due to the enormous implications of that possibility. The evidence includes the unprecedented nature of what happened that day, the eyewitness testimonies of people present at the site, and the physical evidence demonstrated by photographs and videos. 1, 2 Evidence for explosives is also given through proof by contradiction in that seven years of ever-changing government reports could not provide a non-explosive story for destruction of the WTC buildings. 3, 4, 5 More recently, peer-reviewed scientific papers show that energetic materials were present at the WTC, as indicated by the environmental data and the dust from Ground Zero. 6, 7, 8
The forensic investigation of explosions typically aims to determine who had the means, opportunity and motive to accomplish the explosive event. 9 When that approach is taken with the WTC, we can see that those who had the greatest means and opportunity also had the greatest motive. For example, we've seen that certain tenant companies that occupied the WTC towers not only had the opportunity, but they also had the means in terms of access and expertise, to place explosives in the buildings. 10 We also know that the security companies that were responsible for planning and implementing the security plan for the towers, after the 1993 bombing, appeared to have benefited from the attacks. 11 Additionally, the companies reviewed were connected to each other through certain powerful people and organizations, and had all done major work for the Saudi Arabian government.
In addition to the actual placement of explosives, those involved would need to cleanup any evidence of explosives remaining at the site. In this final essay of a multi-part series, it will be seen that certain people had the means, opportunity and motive to destroy such evidence at Ground Zero, and that something was being hidden after the buildings fell. These facts will be reviewed in light of the knowledge that the debris was considered highly sensitive and nearly all the steel evidence was quickly destroyed. 12 Additionally, although security at the site was intense, safety management was lax or nonexistent and human concerns took a back seat to the goal of rapidly disposing of the evidence. Other curious facts include that known criminal entities were hired to accomplish the debris removal, and that evidence was stolen from Fresh Kills landfill with the approval and coordination of FBI agents.
With all of this in mind, we'll look at who was in charge at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills landfill, and therefore who had the opportunity to destroy evidence of explosives. We'll also look at those who benefited from the cleanup, either through profiting from the debris removal or the rebuilding of Manhattan, or through promotions and partnerships after the events.
…
One of the first firms on the scene was Mazzocchi Wrecking, brought in by the New York City Housing Preservation Department, but then hired by AMEC. A few months after 9/11, the N.J. Division of Gaming Enforcement "charged that three members of the DeCavalcante crime family worked for Mazzocchi." 78 Other AMEC contractors that were linked to the mob were Peter Scalamandre & Sons, and Breeze National, both linked to the Luchese crime family. AMEC's lead person on the ground was Vice President Leo DiRubbo, a reputed associate of the Luchese crime family.
Rudy Giuliani also had connections to the organized crime, other than just Bernard Kerik. Rudy's father, Harold Giuliani (alias Joseph Starrett), was a convicted hold-up man who served time in Sing Sing prison, and was later employed as an enforcer for a Mafia loan shark operation. Rudy's uncle (his mother's brother), Leo D'Avanzo, ran a loan-sharking and gambling operation with Jimmy Dano, "who was a made man." 79Additionally, Rudy's cousin Lewis D'Avanzo "was a stone cold gangster who was shot to death in 1977 by FBI agents when he tried to run them down with his car." 80
Of course, the sins of Rudy's father, and his uncle, and his cousin, and his appointed Police Commissioner should not be used to judge Rudy himself. But these facts are worth considering in that Rudy and his staff hired mafia--connected companies to cleanup Ground Zero.
These companies all made a lot of money at the WTC site. Of the $458 million in federal 9/11 aid spent on debris removal, AMEC took $65.8 million, Bovis hauled in $277.2 million, Tully got $76 million and Turner got $39 million. Subcontractors Breeze National, Peter Scalamandre & Sons, Civetta Cousins, Safeway Environmental and Yonkers Contracting made millions of dollars from their work at the site. Subcontractors Mazzocchi Wrecking and Seasons Contracting made tens of millions of dollars.
Another company that was "all over ground zero" was Laquila Construction, run by mob boss Dino Tomassetti. 81 It's not clear if Richard Tomasetti is related to Dino Tomassetti or his family, although the surnames are often interchangeable. The name Tomasetti (or Tomassetti) comes from L'Aquila, Italy, hence the company name.
Turner Construction, one of the primary contractors at Ground Zero, occupied the 38th floor of the north tower, and was involved in performing the fireproofing upgrades in the towers. It has been noted that these upgrades were completed, in the three years before 9/11, on floors that match up almost identically to the floors of impact and failure on 9/11. 82 In any case, since 1999 Turner has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Hochtief AG, and its CEO is Thomas C. Leppert, who later became mayor of Dallas. President George W. Bush appointed Mayor Leppert to the President's Commission on White House Fellows, and Bush now lives in Dallas, about a mile away from Leppert. 83
Of the other primary contractors, Tishman Construction Corporation oversaw the construction of the new WTC 7, as well as the "Freedom Tower." Primary contractor Tully Construction retained Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), a company that had been involved in the demolition of the bombed Murrah Building in Oklahoma in 1995. CDI was led by Mark Loizeaux, who later became a major defender of the government's story about 9/11. Like some other experts with large government contracts, Loizeaux was at first uncertain about what had happened at the WTC, then changed his story, apparently in order to harmonize with the official story. 84
Once the cleanup was fully coordinated, the operations were consolidated under the control of two of the five primary contractors: AMEC Construction Management and Bovis Lend Lease. These are the two companies that were originally assigned the areas of Ground Zero that included the north tower (AMEC) and the south tower (Bovis).
A truly surprising fact is that, at the time of the attacks on 9/11, AMEC had just completed a $258 million refurbishment of Wedge 1 of the Pentagon, which is exactly where AA Flight 77 impacted that building. 85
At Ground Zero AMEC was led by its Vice Chairman, John Cavanagh, who had previously been the President and COO of Morse Diesel International, the predecessor to AMEC. Morse Diesel had retrofitted WTC building 7 for Salomon Brothers in 1989. In January 2002, Rudy Guiliani issued a Certificate of Recognition to Cavanagh for his dedication to the City of New York. Cavanagh had described the Ground Zero worksite as "the longest commercial fire that has ever occurred at a site." What kept the fire burning, he said, was a huge volume of "plastic, carpet and furniture below the rubble," which the New York Fire Department was "constantly wetting down." 86 Cavanagh is now President of American Fire Suppressant Products.
AMEC was a subsidiary of the British conglomerate AMEC, a company that provides "engineering and project management services to the world's energy, power and process industries." 87 The company is a major international player in the oil and gas industry, as well as in other natural resource industries. AMEC had a significant presence in Saudi Arabia dating back to the late 1970s, providing support to the national oil company Saudi Aramco, which is by far the richest company in the world. 88, 89 Executives and board members at AMEC include former directors of NM Rothschild, Kellogg, Brown and Root (now Halliburton), and SG Warburg.
Bovis Lend Lease was another British construction giant, and was founded by Sir Frank Lampl, a Czech holocaust survivor who worked in the Middle East in the 1970s. 90 The company built the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and the Riyadh Olympic stadium in Saudi Arabia. The US operations were led by Luther Cochrane, who was President and Chief Executive Officer of the holding company for the group's US operations, since September 1995. 91
Bovis' representatives in charge of the WTC site were Jim Abadie and his assistant Charlie Vitchers. In a videotaped deposition for a lawsuit related to health issues, Abadie mentioned that the Bovis project managers for the WTC cleanup project were Mike Biliewa and Jack Masagna. No information is readily available for either of these men.
Years later, Abadie was also in charge of the Deutsche Bank demolition and the September 11th memorial before he resigned in the midst of an investigation into billing and payroll practices at five Bovis projects in New York, including the memorial and Deutsche Bank. 92 For the Deutsche Bank demolition, in 2004, Abadie hired a previously non-existent and highly suspect company called John Galt Construction. 93 After the deaths of two firefighters during the demolition project, John Galt was found to be in the middle of a multi-million dollar "check-cashing" scandal led by two characters named Riad Khalil and Neil Goldstein. Apparently Mr. Khalil had bank records indicating that he had $2.4 million in a bank account in Zurich. 94”
“The Langham, London - history since the 1930s
Article added on February 6, 2004
Time left its toll in the hotel building and the surroundings changed. Across the street, the Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC was built. In 1929-1930, Barclays built a important branch of their bank next door to the hotel. Nine years later, cracks began to appear in the walls of The Langham. The London County Council pronounced "parts of the hotel seriously defective". The hotel builders could not foresee the vibrations and shocks the 20th century would bring. Because of the London underground railway, the hotel had to strengthen the foundations, walls and pillars of The Langham in 1931.
…..
In 1982, the BBC considered demolishing the old hotel. The plan was abandoned in 1985, when the company decided to build a new center at White City. The Ladbroke Group PLC purchased the building in 1986. After the group acquired Hilton International in 1987, the listed property was to be restored to its original Victorian splendor by the architects Halpern Partnership. The renovation was supervised by the building group Bovis, assisted by consultant engineers Ove Arup & Partners. 410 bedrooms and 50 suites, conference and banqueting facilities, restaurants and a business center [an alleged euphemism for the MI-3 Langham Mycroft war room] were created.
Unfortunately, the original artesian well could no longer be used for the freshwater supply, the 200-odd foot steep shaft was sealed off.
The Langham Hilton opened on March 4, 1991 with all the facilities and the comfort of a modern five star hotel. Wherever possible, the interior designers Richmond Design Group retained original features, with the assistance of English Heritage, the government agency responsible for the maintenance and restoration of historic buildings.
The style adopted by the designers for the hotel is that of the late 19th century. Among the preserved details is the stone fireplace bought in the 1920s by architect Ernest Lord from a 17th century country house to create the look of the Italian renaissance. It has been cleaned and re-set in the Chukka Bar. The ceiling in the Memories of the Empire restaurant is of a traditional Victorian design, akin to an Owen Jones concept. It was painted by hand in 1990, as it was by artists in 1865.
The official opening of the Langham Hilton was by Gloria Hunniford, a radio and television personality, whose live two-hour program on BBC's Radio 2 that day was devoted to the hotel and its history. The first general manager was Austrian Rudi Jagersbacher, recruited from Claridges. In 1993, he was followed by Michael Shepherd.
In 1991, Diana, the Princess of Wales started becoming a regular guest - making the first official royal visit to the hotel only days after it opened. Other Royal visitors include the Duchess of Kent and Duke of Edinburgh. The then British Prime Minister John Major also attended dinners at the hotel, which hosted numerous politicians around the world. Novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, tennis star Steffi Graf, singer Rod Stewart, film director Sir Richard Attenborough and many others have been among the hotel visitors and guests since 1991.”
Article added on February 6, 2004
Time left its toll in the hotel building and the surroundings changed. Across the street, the Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC was built. In 1929-1930, Barclays built a important branch of their bank next door to the hotel. Nine years later, cracks began to appear in the walls of The Langham. The London County Council pronounced "parts of the hotel seriously defective". The hotel builders could not foresee the vibrations and shocks the 20th century would bring. Because of the London underground railway, the hotel had to strengthen the foundations, walls and pillars of The Langham in 1931.
…..
In 1982, the BBC considered demolishing the old hotel. The plan was abandoned in 1985, when the company decided to build a new center at White City. The Ladbroke Group PLC purchased the building in 1986. After the group acquired Hilton International in 1987, the listed property was to be restored to its original Victorian splendor by the architects Halpern Partnership. The renovation was supervised by the building group Bovis, assisted by consultant engineers Ove Arup & Partners. 410 bedrooms and 50 suites, conference and banqueting facilities, restaurants and a business center [an alleged euphemism for the MI-3 Langham Mycroft war room] were created.
Unfortunately, the original artesian well could no longer be used for the freshwater supply, the 200-odd foot steep shaft was sealed off.
The Langham Hilton opened on March 4, 1991 with all the facilities and the comfort of a modern five star hotel. Wherever possible, the interior designers Richmond Design Group retained original features, with the assistance of English Heritage, the government agency responsible for the maintenance and restoration of historic buildings.
The style adopted by the designers for the hotel is that of the late 19th century. Among the preserved details is the stone fireplace bought in the 1920s by architect Ernest Lord from a 17th century country house to create the look of the Italian renaissance. It has been cleaned and re-set in the Chukka Bar. The ceiling in the Memories of the Empire restaurant is of a traditional Victorian design, akin to an Owen Jones concept. It was painted by hand in 1990, as it was by artists in 1865.
The official opening of the Langham Hilton was by Gloria Hunniford, a radio and television personality, whose live two-hour program on BBC's Radio 2 that day was devoted to the hotel and its history. The first general manager was Austrian Rudi Jagersbacher, recruited from Claridges. In 1993, he was followed by Michael Shepherd.
In 1991, Diana, the Princess of Wales started becoming a regular guest - making the first official royal visit to the hotel only days after it opened. Other Royal visitors include the Duchess of Kent and Duke of Edinburgh. The then British Prime Minister John Major also attended dinners at the hotel, which hosted numerous politicians around the world. Novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, tennis star Steffi Graf, singer Rod Stewart, film director Sir Richard Attenborough and many others have been among the hotel visitors and guests since 1991.”
“Lend Lease Project Management & Construction (formerly Bovis Lend Lease, trading as Lend Lease) is the international project management and construction division of Lend Lease Group.
History[edit]
1885 to 2000[edit]
The origins of Lend Lease Project Management & Construction date back to the establishment of C. W. Bovis & Co by Charles William Bovis in London in 1885.[1] It changed hands in 1908 when it was acquired by Samuel Joseph and his cousin, Sidney Gluckstein.[2]
Bovis was one of the few construction companies to go public in the 1920s, during which time it developed an extensive retail clientele, by far the most important and long lasting of which was Marks & Spencer. Central to the relationship with Marks was the pioneering Bovis System contract, designed to bring the interests of the contractor and client together: “the Bovis System pays the builder the prime cost of the work plus an agreed fee to cover overheads and profit. The client receives any savings during construction instead of the contractor.” [3]
During the war, Bovis built the munitions factory at Swynnerton and worked on Mulberry Harbour.[3] At the end of hostilities, Bovis resumed work for the private sector and in the early 1950s, the company moved into housing. Following the acquisition of Frank Sanderson's business in 1967, Bovis Homes expanded rapidly and became one of the largest housebuilders by the early 1970s.[4]
Frank Sanderson was to change radically the future of Bovis. He was appointed Managing Director of Bovis Holdings in January 1970, and Chairman and Chief Executive in August 1972. After a number of housing acquisitions, Sanderson attempted to obtain control of P&O by means of a reverse takeover. An initial agreement was followed by a boardroom and shareholder revolt at P&O and at the end of 1972 the merger failed. There was boardroom dissension, too, at Bovis and Sanderson was forced out in September 1973.[4]
One of Sanderson’s acquisitions, in 1971, had been Twentieth Century Banking, and two years later the secondary banking crisis created a run on deposits at the Bovis banking subsidiary. The crisis came to a head in December 1973 when National Westminster Bank refused to provide the necessary funds. A rescue of Bovis was inevitable and, ironically, the rescuer proved to be P&O: in March 1974 Bovis became a subsidiary of P&O.[3]
From 1985 the company was led by Sir Frank Lampl, who changed it from a British concern into an international contractor.[5] Bovis Homes was demerged in 1997, and floated on the London Stock Exchange.[6]
The company was bought by Lend Lease Corporation in 1999, at which time it became Bovis Lend Lease.[7]
2000 to present[edit]
In 2008, the company and a subcontractor abatement firm, the John Galt Corporation, were charged with numerous OSHAsafety violations after a fire broke out and killed two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank Building, a Manhattan skyscraper being demolished in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The violations included an employee (Safety Manager) of "Lend Lease's Project Management & Construction Business" filling out a safety check list that identified a stand-pipe as being present and functional - when it was actually disconnected in a hard to see spot. The firemen consulted the check list, thought they had a good system and proceeded up into the building to fight the fire. Only when they reached the dangerous area that was on fire, did they realize the system did not have any water pressure, and they died trying to retreat amid the confusion.[8] As of June 2011, two out of the three individuals charged in the associated manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide case have been acquitted.[9]
On 17 February 2011 Lend Lease announced wider ranging changes to its group of brands. This announcement resulted in the retirement of the Bovis Lend Lease, Delfin Lend Lease, Vivas Lend Lease, Catalyst Lend Lease, Retirement by Design and Lend Lease Primelife brands and the instatement of Lend Lease as the primary and only brand across the business' operation's globally. Under the rebrand and internal structural changes, the company was re-identified as Lend Lease Project Management & Construction, and was no longer a separate entity, but "a strategic business unit of the Lend Lease Group".
In 2012, Lend Lease agreed to pay $56 million in fines and restitution after admitting that the company had routinely over-billed clients and evaded government rules regarding the hiring of women and minority-owned firms. For a ten year time span ending in 2009, the company along with others devised a scheme to defraud federal, state and local government contracting agencies as well as private clients. The fine is the largest in the city's history.[10]
On 29 October 2012 the long boom of a Lend Lease construction crane atop the 1,004 foot high One57 snapped during Hurricane Sandy forcing the evacuation of several buildings in Midtown Manhattan.[11]
Operations[edit]
The company has managed construction projects worldwide, including retail developments and airport terminals. Lend Lease's Project Management & Construction Business has a significant presence in Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States. Key sector expertise includes commercial, retail, residential, government, industrial and pharmaceutical.
As a major contractor in the UK, Lend Lease Project Management & Construction is a member of the UK Contractors Group, a grouping of leading firms from within the Confederation of British Industry.[12]
Major projects[edit]
Major projects involving Lend Lease Project Management & Construction and its antecedents have included:
the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre completed in 1986[13]
the Lloyd's Building in London also completed in 1986[14]
the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield completed in 1990[15]
Disneyland Paris completed in 1992[16]
the Trafford Shopping Centre in Manchester completed in 1998[15]
the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent completed in 1999,[15]
the refurbishment of Glasgow Central Station completed in 2000[17]
the National Museum of Australia completed in 2001[18]
the Chicagoland Speedway in Illinois completed in 2001[19]
the Scottish Parliament Building completed in 2004[20]
the Chapelfield Shopping Centre in Norwich completed in 2005[21]
Bridgewater Place in Leeds completed in 2006[22]
the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago completed in 2009[23]
the Broadgate Tower and 201 Bishopsgate in London completed in 2009[24]
the Burnley and Nelson
the Trump SoHo in New York completed in 2010[26]
the refurbishment of the BBC Headquarters in London due to be completed in 2011[27]
the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum in New York also due to be completed in 2011.[28]”
“Standard Chartered accused of over $250bn of illegal transactions to Iran
"You fucking Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?"
BY ALEX HERN PUBLISHED 07 AUGUST 2012 7:15
Standard Chartered, the British bank, stands accused of having run a major operation to facilitate money transfers in and out of Iran, in violation of American sanctions against the company. The amount of money it is thought moved totals $250bn, and would have earned Standard Chartered millions in fees.
The New York department of financial services said in a statement that:
Motivated by greed, [Standard Chartered] acted for at least ten years without any regard for the legal, reputational, and national security consequences of its flagrantly deceptive actions.
The full complaint claims jaw-dropping levels of arrogance on the part of the bank. When London was informed of concerns by the head of American operations that US law was being systematically broken, the group director replied:
You f---ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?
In order to facilitate the trades without being found out, the banks employees had to strip the information that the trades were coming from Iran out of the wire transfer. And when volume grew too high to manage, they automated the systems:
When SCB anticipated that its business with Iranian Clients would grow too large for SCB employees to “repair” manually the instructions for New York bound wire transfers, SCB automated the process by building an electronic repair system with “specific repair queues,” for each Iranian Client.
Once the bank realised that the heat was on, it started getting even more tricksy. It asked its auditor, Deloitte, to delete any mention of the activities from its report:
Having improperly gleaned insights into the regulators’ concerns and strategies for investigating U-Turn-related misconduct, SCB asked D&T to delete from its draft “independent” report any reference to certain types of payments that could ultimately reveal SCB’s Iranian U-Turn practices. In an email discussing D&T’s draft, a D&T partner admitted that “we agreed” to SCB’s request because “this is too much and too politically sensitive for both SCB and Deloitte. That is why I drafted the watered-down version.”
And eventually even moved their compliance department to India to forestall the regulators:
Outsourcing of the entire OFAC compliance process for the New York branch to Chennai, India, with no evidence of any oversight or communication between the Chennai and the New York offices.
What's really scary is that even the "good guys" - the people at Standard Chartered who were raising questions - reveal breathtaking attitudes towards breach of law. The head of American operations, who first told London of his concerns, is quoted as writing:
Firstly, we believe [the Iranian business] needs urgent reviewing at the Group level to evaluate if its returns and strategic benefits are . . . still commensurate with the potential to cause very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the Group. Secondly, there is equally importantly potential of risk of subjecting management in US and London (e.g. you and I) and elsewhere to personal reputational damages and/or serious criminal liability.
Reread that first point. He is not saying "we have broken the law, and need to stop", but instead "we have broken the law, and need to review its returns and strategic benefits to make sure it's worth doing". That is evidence of internalised corruption to a worrying degree.
The bank itself rejects "the position and portrayal of facts made by the New York State Department of Financial Services", according to its statement. Its major position is that the vast majority of its transactions to Iran were legal, and the the DFS has misinterpreted a point of law. It claims just $14m worth of transactions broke the regulations, and that it brought those to the regulator's attention as soon as it knew.
Standard Chartered had been one of the banks which made it through the crisis relatively unchanged. That looks set to change now.”
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
In order to facilitate the trades without being found out, the banks employees had to strip the information that the trades were coming from Iran out of the wire transfer. And when volume grew too high to manage, they automated the systems:
When SCB anticipated that its business with Iranian Clients would grow too large for SCB employees to “repair” manually the instructions for New York bound wire transfers, SCB automated the process by building an electronic repair system with “specific repair queues,” for each Iranian Client.
Once the bank realised that the heat was on, it started getting even more tricksy. It asked its auditor, Deloitte, to delete any mention of the activities from its report:
Having improperly gleaned insights into the regulators’ concerns and strategies for investigating U-Turn-related misconduct, SCB asked D&T to delete from its draft “independent” report any reference to certain types of payments that could ultimately reveal SCB’s Iranian U-Turn practices. In an email discussing D&T’s draft, a D&T partner admitted that “we agreed” to SCB’s request because “this is too much and too politically sensitive for both SCB and Deloitte. That is why I drafted the watered-down version.”
And eventually even moved their compliance department to India to forestall the regulators:
Outsourcing of the entire OFAC compliance process for the New York branch to Chennai, India, with no evidence of any oversight or communication between the Chennai and the New York offices.
What's really scary is that even the "good guys" - the people at Standard Chartered who were raising questions - reveal breathtaking attitudes towards breach of law. The head of American operations, who first told London of his concerns, is quoted as writing:
Firstly, we believe [the Iranian business] needs urgent reviewing at the Group level to evaluate if its returns and strategic benefits are . . . still commensurate with the potential to cause very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the Group. Secondly, there is equally importantly potential of risk of subjecting management in US and London (e.g. you and I) and elsewhere to personal reputational damages and/or serious criminal liability.
Reread that first point. He is not saying "we have broken the law, and need to stop", but instead "we have broken the law, and need to review its returns and strategic benefits to make sure it's worth doing". That is evidence of internalised corruption to a worrying degree.
The bank itself rejects "the position and portrayal of facts made by the New York State Department of Financial Services", according to its statement. Its major position is that the vast majority of its transactions to Iran were legal, and the the DFS has misinterpreted a point of law. It claims just $14m worth of transactions broke the regulations, and that it brought those to the regulator's attention as soon as it knew.
Standard Chartered had been one of the banks which made it through the crisis relatively unchanged. That looks set to change now.”
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta had money sent to Florida from Standard Chartered bank branch in Dubai.
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