Financial Transparency Coalition

Over the last few months, an aid program (read: bailout) for Cyprus’ banks put together by EU rescuers has met mounting resistance among Europeans. The reason? Money laundering... and the alleged ties of Russian oligarchs to Cyprus’ banks. There does seem to be a questionable relationship there. Last fall, Der Spiegel reported on Germany's Federal Intelligence Service’s (BND) secret report on money laundering in Cyprus. According to Der Spiegel, the report finds that the people who would benefit most from a European bailout of Cyprus banks are Russian oligarchs, mafiosi, and businesspeople who have parked illegal earnings in the small...

In late November of this year, authorities found the body of Maria, a woman in her early 20s, outside an armored van along a mountainous road in northwestern Mexico. In February, Maria Susana Flores Gámez won the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa beauty pageant. She also became involved with the Sinaloa drug Cartel. Maria died in a shootout between the gang and the police in those mountains with a gun in her hand. She was riddled with bullets because someone had used her body as a human shield. Maria was the fourth known beauty queen to get involved with Mexican drug...

Senator Carl Levin (aka “Watchdog of America”) is at it again. Yesterday morning the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Senator Levin (D-MI) chairs, held a hearing to investigate HSBC, the UK-based bank and Europe’s largest financial institution, which has allegedly systematically (and knowingly) lapsed its anti-money laundering systems and allowed suspicious transactions into the United States. According to the subcommittee’s investigative report released Monday, HSBC systematically ignored warnings and failed to stop illegal behavior many times between 2001 and 2010. The report found HSBC accepted deposits intoU.S. branches from Mexican drug cartels, Saudi Arabian banks with terrorist ties,...

Yesterday Heather Hobson, the jury forewoman in the trial of Viktor Bout, looked the infamous illegal arms dealer in the eyes and announced the jury’s final finding of guilt. Bout, a former Soviet air force pilot, has been nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” for his role in funneling weapons to terrorists, including the Taliban and Al Qaeda; trans-national criminals; and armed combatants locked in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. Though Bout has claimed on a Russian radio program that he has “never gotten into the arms trade,” according to European intelligence sources and documents from an African country uncovered...