101–106 of 106 posts
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Man that has taken my breath away. I'm pretty aware of how terrible the west can be (and how we can lie about it) but the sheer volume there is immense.
Why would you assume the west is perfect? This list contains things from the 1700’s. Any country will have a laundry list of atrocities if we start that far back.
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It was Iraqi money, but the people spending it were Americans or American controlled. At the point Iraq was under direct occupation control. The fact we saw it as play money because we seized it from the Iraqi government "on behalf of the Iraqi people" and then splashed it around for fun is disgusting.
Please don't bring us into this. The American State is not representative of its subjects.
It is representive because it is a democracy. This sort of thinking you described is what leads to people skirting on their responsibilities.
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Were the bank activities themselves illegal? It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity. It sounds like they were just soliciting banking services in a way that was attractive to illegal actors. Even if the banking services themselves were not legal, it would seem like entrapment if they used that to charge them with banking crimes. If NYPD operated a Limousine service in hopes that crim…
The bank activities were illegal and non compliant. The OCC was about to cut them out of the entire banking network for poor reporting, meaning no OCC-licensed banks could take or send wires to them or hold accounts in their name. It would have shut off all trade for this bank without knowing what they’re doing or alleging any crime, yet. This is how the US enforces its will worldwide. The Treasury has a similar way…
Similar to this story that broke today, where the FBI secretly ran an 'encrypted' messaging network as a two-year sting operation https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/8/22524307/anom-encrypted-me...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were the bank activities themselves illegal? It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity. It sounds like they were just soliciting banking services in a way that was attractive to illegal actors. Even if the banking services themselves were not legal, it would seem like entrapment if they used that to charge them with banking crimes. If NYPD operated a Limousine service in hopes that crim…
“ It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity.” I’d like to note that this isn’t how entrapment works in the US (or many other places). If I’m an investigator, it is not entrapment for me to go to government employees and say “Hey, I’ll give you $100 in exchange for state secrets. You in?”. Covertly soliciting illegal activity to try to catch criminals is not entrapment. It only rises to…
However if they learned information about other criminal activities through this, then those activities would not be subject to a defense of entrapment.
So go ahead and charge them on drug trafficking. But the laundering charges look like entrapment to me. Not a 100% shut and closed case, because it is a bit subjective, but I would expect any defense to have a good chance with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity.” I’d like to note that this isn’t how entrapment works in the US (or many other places). If I’m an investigator, it is not entrapment for me to go to government employees and say “Hey, I’ll give you $100 in exchange for state secrets. You in?”. Covertly soliciting illegal activity to try to catch criminals is not entrapment. It only rises to…
But in this case they are setting up a bank that has the ability to facilitate certain banking practices that would be difficult to accomplish without a complicit bank. As such, no person, whether a criminal or not, would be able to commit these crimes without the help of the bank acting as law enforcement agent. The only way it would not be entrapment with regards to the illegal banking would be if they could show t…
Objective test (Did LEOs use incentives that would cause a normally law-abiding person also do this?): Most normally law abiding people won’t launder money given the opportunity, as they have no incentive and the police didn’t provide any additional incentive here. Not entrapment on those grounds.
Subjective test (Was the defendant pressured into doing this?): It would be hard to argue that these people laundered money against their wills. Furthermore, they’ve all committed additional crimes which would predispose them to want to launder money. Not entrapment on those grounds either.