http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/108758/u-s-report-details-money-laundering?sec=topStories&pos=6&asset=&ccode=
Is there any part of the financial system that doesn't need fixing?, because if there is I can't see it.
A suitcase containing $1 million in shrink-wrapped bills, hand-carried into New York by the former president of Gabon for his daughter to buy a Manhattan apartment. Purchases of a stretch Hummer H2 armored limousine and C-130 Hercules military transport planes for a civil war in Angola. And a shell company named Sweet Pink used to funnel millions of dollars into the United States from Equatorial Guinea.
These and other deals and money transfers took place in recent years because of inadequate controls on money laundering at large American banks and unregulated American lawyers, real estate agents and lobbyists, according to a Senate report released late Wednesday.
The 325-page report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which will conduct a hearing on Thursday, sheds new light on how banks like Citigroup, Wachovia and Bank of America unwittingly shifted hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of African politicians, their relatives and associates.
The banks ended up closing or restricting the accounts and cooperated with the subcommittee, offering comments on individual transactions.
In all cases, the Senate report says, the banks ignored controls intended to prevent money laundering and related screens on PEP, meaning politically exposed persons — high-risk clients from corrupt countries.
The report recommends strengthening regulations against money laundering at banks and revoking exemptions for lawyers and other third parties from restrictions on money laundering in the USA Patriot Act. It recommends that Congress pass laws requiring people who form corporations to disclose the true owners.
