Well Known, Hidden until Political Expediency Warrants Show Trial

HSBC to Manafort

British multinational banking and financial services holding company HSBC Holdings plc traces its origins to 1865 Hong Kong and Shanghai. Its present form in London was established in 1991 by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. HSBC “is the world’s seventh-largest bank by total assets; and the largest in Europe, with total assets estimated, as of December 2016, at $2.374 trillion. 

One or two billion is petty cash to a king or kingmaker!

HSBC’s identifiable business groups are Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets (investment banking), Retail Banking and Wealth Management, and Global Private Banking. 

Though it calls “home” the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, HSBC has offices estimated at “3,900, in 67 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America; and around 38 million customers.” Forbes Magazine in 2014 recorded HSBC as “the world’s sixth-largest public company.”

Closed, secret, no jail time for this brand of laundering

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n bringing a money laundering case against HSBC, the US Department of Justice said in 2012 that “HSBC had become a preferred bank for Mexican drug cartels and other money launderers, and conducted transactions for customers in several countries barred by U.S. sanctions.” But no HSBC executive was brought to trial or sent to prison.

DOJ penalty: a $1.92 billion fine, five-year deferred prosecution, and agreement to allow monitoring

HSBC Monitor: a former New York prosecutor, Michael Cherkasky, who wrote the later court-ordered sealed report whose content U.S. District Judge John Gleeson said “implicated ‘matters of great public concern.’”

On Appeal: the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, in his January 2016 ruling that “the public had a constitutional right, under the First Amendment, of access” to the Cherkasky report, Judge Gleeson had “abused his discretion.”

In a concurring opinion Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler called on Congress to give courts ‘meaningful oversight’ of companies’ compliance with deferred prosecution agreements—rather than letting prosecutors ‘act as prosecutor, jury, and judge.’”

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SBC and the DOJ were reportedly rejoicing over a win handed to them by the Second Circuit. The public was not. 

Defeated was an HSBC mortgage customer who, before filing for bankruptcy, had petitioned for release of the report “to identify whether problems persisted in HSBC’s business practices.

Defeated were 25 media outlets that had also sought release of the report. They argued that, especially “if fraud or executive branch conduct is at issue, such documents help the public hold the government accountable and understand how courts work.”

Public interest undermined. The CEO of Better Markets commented that the HSBC report case involved critical matters of “public trust and confidence in the rule of law and the judicial system” and that the court in this case had “put private interests above the public interest.”

 

Manafort

U.S. prosecutors in 2017 charged long-time Washington, D.C., lobbyist and adviser to presidential campaigns — extending back to the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole — Paul John Manafort Jr, with having “laundered more than $18 million.”

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anafort is cofounder of a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm established in 1980. For many years, the firm has lobbied on behalf of what is termed “controversial foreign leaders.” 

It stands to reason that this activity was not unknown to officials seated in the U.S. Congress—entrenched Members of the House and Senate routinely manipulated, programmed, bought and sold by lobbyists and their partners and paymasters — and in the Executive branch over the years. All branches have had their pockets lined in one way or another, not least being all those million-dollar speaking engagements by not so independent life-tenured judges.

Is that money laundering? 

Let us not excuse crime but let us not be selective—like selective “terrorists” and “dictators” — in accurately, equally and fairly labeling, charging, prosecuting and judging criminal behavior.

The Robert Mueller (special investigation unit)-requested indictment “charges Manafort with

• conspiracy against the United States,
• conspiracy to launder money,
• failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts,
• being an unregistered agent of foreign principal,
• false and misleading FARA [Foreign Agent Registration Act] statements, and false statements.”

A Dodgy Dossier factors into the indictments

A private investigative firm called “Fusion GPS” reportedly “provided political opposition research against Trump in two distinct phases, with completely separate funders”: 

• (1) a conservative political website; and 
• (2) attorney Marc Elias on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).”

The resulting “dossier” composed of memoranda by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, is said to contain “allegations of misconduct and conspiracy” between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and the Government of Russia during the 2016 election cycle, “with campaign members and Russian operatives allegedly colluding to interfere in the election to benefit Trump.” 

The document has been dubbed the “Trump–Russia dossier” or “the Steele dossier.”

Because of its “unverified assertions,” many media personnel, the intelligence community, and experts “have treated the dossier with caution”; however, “the intelligence community” presumably takes “the allegations seriously and investigates them.” The U.S. president has “denounced the report as ‘fake news.’”

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anafort also appears in the Trump–Russia dossier where entries allege the accused (Manafort)

“had ‘managed’ the ‘well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership’, and that he

used ‘foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries’” and that” [sounding like a child’s game of gossip]

“former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable ‘kick-back payments’ to [the accused]who was Trump’s campaign manager at the time”[Dossier pages 7 and 20].

A partial rundown of DOJ Expediency

• October 30, 2017: Manafort surrenders to FBI after a federal grand jury indictment

• January 3, 2018: the accused files lawsuit challenging special investigator Robert Mueller’s “broad authority; and alleging the Justice Department violated the law in appointing Mueller.”

• January 12, 2018: Mueller asks U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to set a May 14, 2018, trial date

•  January 16, 2018: Judge Jackson denies government’s requested trial date “indicating that the criminal trial appears likely to start, at earliest, in September.

• February 2, 2018: DOJ files motion seeking dismissal of the civil suit brought by the accused against Mueller.

• February 22, 2018: the accused is charged with additional crimes involving a tax avoidance scheme and bank fraud in Virginia.”

• February 28, 2018: accused enters not guilty plea in the District Court for the District of Columbia.

• March 8, 2018: the accused enters “not guilty” plea “to bank fraud and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.”

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astern District of Virginia Judge T. S. Ellis III is reported saying that 

“Given the investigation’s focus on President Trump’s campaign, even a blind person can see that the true target of the Special Counsel’s investigation is President Trump, not [Manafort] and that [Manafort’s] prosecution is part of that larger plan.”

• April 27, 2018: Judge Jackson dismisses the accused’s suit against Mueller

• June 8, 2018 indictment: obstruction of justice and witness tampering

• June 15, 2018: the accused’s bail was revoked

• June 22, 2018: petition to dismiss money laundering charges rejected at court

• June 27, 2018: the accused registers retroactively as a foreign agent

• July 17, 2018: petition for change of venue denied at court

• Eastern District of Virginia Judge T. S. Ellis III sets trial date on tax fraud charges to begin July 10, 2018; changed to July 24, 2018, “citing a medical procedure involving a member of Ellis’s family.”

• July 31, 2018: projected trial date

• September 17, 2018: Judge Jackson sets trial date on court calendar.

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aul John Manafort Jr. is an American lobbyist, political consultant and lawyer who had a five-month (March-August 2016) stint as “campaign chairman” with the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign team.

Sources

Reuters/Fortune “An HSBC Money Laundering Report Can Stay Confidential—For Now”

July 12, 2017 http://fortune.com/2017/07/12/hsbc-money-laundering-report-confidential/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier

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