Catch & punish $ 134 billion money laundering thugs

Our views:

The seizure of $ 134.5 billion of counterfeit currency at the Swiss- Italian border near Milan, the blanking out of the news in the U.S. media last week was indeed surprising. The declaration by the Italian authorities after more than 10 days that the currency seized was counterfeit and not real, also raised more questions than it answers. What and how did it happen?

The three possibilities are:

1) The TARP funds given to Banks for selling toxic assets were being siphoned away and a hawala transaction ( One which two sets of currencies change hands at two different places to complete a money laundering deal) , in which cash is siphoned off to the undisclosed beneficiary, was caught as it was entering the Swiss border. High level manipulation by the money launderers lead to its being declared as fake currency 10 days later.
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2) This was a fraudulent attempt to destabilise the US Dollar by some big nations and buyers of treasury bonds who are pressing for increased regulation and reforms in U.S. laws and also a reserve currency at the IMF to substitute the U.S. Dollar. They planted the fake currency and ensured that it was caught just to spread panic amongst insecure global investors about high denomination U.S. treasury bonds

3) This was a stage show managed by the U.S. Bank lobby now under intense pressure, in collusion with the U.S. media, to demonstrate to the Obama administration and win public sympathy. This massive fraud, they would show was a bid to undermine the dollar, and proved that people outside the U.S. were really plotting to destabilize the U.S. Hence implied that the regulatory reforms must be deferred, Banks be allowed to amass more power and capital, and the external threats like China, Japan, France, Italy, Russia etc. who were pressing for reforms in U.S. regulatory norms, be dealt with on priority. The underlying sentiment of such a arguement would be "Protect U.S. Banks against foreign destabilizing efforts."

Whatever is the true story, it must not be suppressed, and the guilty even if it is an outside nation must be exposed and punished.

This story here has been pieced together by collecting news items from the sources mainly Bloomberg and Asianews, as mentioned below with links provided for tracking.

On March 30, 2009, the US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in its Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP].
On 8 th of June Asia news from its Milan desk reported the following sensational news on the seizure of $ 134.5 billion U.S. Treasury bearer bonds from the Italian border in one of the supposedly largest money laundering efforts. It reported : http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A
“Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollars each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.”

Almost as soon as the news of the $ 134 billion suitcase hit the Press, Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said that his government is confident about the outlook for U.S. Treasuries, signaling the second-biggest foreign holder of the securities will keep buying them amid record sales.
“We have complete trust in the fact that the U.S. views its strong-dollar policy as fundamental,” Yosano, 70, said in an interview in Tokyo on June 10 before attending a Group of Eight meeting of finance ministers starting today in Italy. “So our trust in U.S. Treasuries is absolutely unshakable.”
China and Russia, the largest and third-largest single holders of the debt, have said they may switch some of their reserves out of Treasuries, and economist Nouriel Roubini said yesterday the dollar won’t always be the world’s reserve currency. Treasury yields fell today after Yosano’s remarks, retreating from a seven-month high. As if on instructions japantoday.com which had reported the news on 11th June promptly withdrew and even blanked out the articles of 11th June pertaining to the case.

U.S. media houses also quickly filtered out the news and though the news became big in Asia and Europe, it received no coverage in the U.S. Among the mainstream top line Business papers only Bloomberg covered the episode.

On the 17th of June Bloomberg columnist William Pesek commented on the $134 Billion suitcase money laundering effort at the Swiss Italian border as under : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a62_boqkurbI
“Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea’s cash in a Swiss vault? Bagmen for Nigerian Internet scammers? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit?
The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realize. At a minimum, it would suggest that the U.S. risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale.
The trillions of dollars of debt the U.S. will issue in the next couple of years needs buyers. Attracting them will require making sure that existing ones aren’t losing faith in the U.S.’s ability to control the dollar.
The dollar is, for better or worse, the core of our world economy and it’s best to keep it stable. News that’s more fitting for international spy novels than the financial pages won’t help that effort. It is incumbent upon the U.S. Treasury to get to the bottom of this tale and keep markets informed.
GDP Carriers
Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia. Yes, they could have built vacation homes amidst Genghis Khan’s Gobi Desert or the famed Temples of Angkor. Bernard Madoff who?
These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest U.S. creditors. It makes you wonder if some of the time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spends keeping the Chinese and Japanese invested in dollars should be devoted to well-financed men crossing the Italian-Swiss border.
This tale has gotten little attention in markets, perhaps because of the absurdity of our times. The last year has been a decidedly disorienting one for capitalists who once knew up from down, red from black and risk from reward. It almost fits with the surreal nature of today that a couple of travelers have more U.S. debt than Brazil in a suitcase and, well, that’s life.”

A few days later Z ollner a German Newspaper reported that the currencies were not fake only to be contradicted by the Italian Police almost 10 days after the incident.

Our questions are :

• Why did it take so long to identify whether the notes were real or fake and why should a imposter fake Kennedy bonds issued almost 50 years ago.
• Why did the U.S. media keep quite when Bloomberg, Asia news and most prominent papers in Europe and Asia carried news as its lead stories
• Will the masterminds behind this 134 billion Dollar money laundering or fraud, be exposed. Will the real culprits ever be brought to book.
• Will the taxpayer get to know who is tampering with his money and why ?

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