Enter Citibank: GFI in The American Interest

Raymond Baker of Global Financial Integrity has a fine article in The American Interest, entitled Transparency First. Here is a taster:

"In the aftermath of 9/11, a pitched battle emerged between the American banking industry and the U.S. Congress. The month before the attacks, in August 2001, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) placed a far-reaching anti-money laundering (AML) bill before the Senate Banking Committee chaired by Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX).

Gramm ignored Levin’s proposed legislation just as over the past six years he had prevented no fewer than 11 AML bills from emerging from the committee. But the 9/11 terror attacks changed the political landscape. As Congress began work in October on the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, Levin pleaded that his draft AML bill be included in the new act on the grounds that money laundering had helped and would otherwise continue to help fund terrorist groups intent on the mass-murder of Americans.

Enter Citibank."

Read on. . . (there is more on the free web, though you will need a subscription to get the full article.)

There is also a piece by GFI's Heather Lowe, entitled Law as Leverage.

And, as we've blogged before, there is an in-depth piece (free to view, full-length) by Lucy Komisar entitled The Wall Street ICEcapade, and an article entitled Measuring Secrecy, about our Financial Secrecy Index, by TJN's director John Christensen.