It’s almost common knowledge at this point that banks in the United States and across the globe have been laundering money for terrorists. They take money from terrorist organizations, disguise it in legitimate investments, then return it so the money looks clean. There are lawsuits currently working their way through the courts to help hold these banks accountable and there’s also a new book on its way in mid-March called, “Suspicious Activity,” that highlights the relationship between banks and terrorist organizations. That book is authored by Mike Papantonio, along with attorney Chris Paulos, who served as an advisor for the book.
Click here to order a copy of Mike Papantonio’s new book, “Suspicious Activity.”
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Farron Cousins: It’s almost common knowledge at this point that banks in the United States and across the globe have been laundering money for terrorists. They take money from terrorist organizations, disguise it in legitimate investments, then return it so the money looks clean. The United States Department of Justice has known about this for well over a decade, and they repeatedly do almost nothing about it other than fine the banks a couple billion dollars here, even though they made billions more in profits. There are lawsuits currently working their way through the courts to help hold these banks accountable and there’s also a new book on its way in mid-March called Suspicious Activity. That book is authored by Mike Papantonio, and I have Mike Papantonio, along with attorney Chris Paulos, who served as an advisor for the book. Chris has been working on these terrorism lawsuit cases, and I have them both with me right now. So, Pap, this new book, Suspicious Activity. Before we can even get into that, we’ve gotta go back several books, because this all began with a book called Law and Disorder. We then had Law and Vengeance, Law and Addiction, Inhuman Trafficking, and now Suspicious Activity. But we’re seeing the continuation of a story that developed in Law and Disorder with a lawyer named Nic Deketomis. So what does this new book, where do we find Deke now?
Mike Papantonio: Well, Deke has come through an evolution starting with Law and Disorder. His law firm has gotten bigger. He’s added some really interesting characters. Each one of the books, the reason that they come out surrounded with a lot of intrigue because the case itself that he’s working, they’re actually cases we handle in this law firm. The first case that was really talked about was the Yaz case that was in Law and Disorder, along with the PFAS case in that book. But that started with a Yaz product. It was made, supposedly, because it was a great birth control. The problem was it was killing women. It was killing with DVTs, a whole host of cardiac events. So we handled that case. We tried that first major case. I think the first one we tried, they ended up settling on the eve of trial because the discovery went so bad for ’em.
So you take a story like that and you build a fiction story around it, but it all centers around the character, Nicholas Deketomis, and the firm that specializes in this kind of case. The next one was Law and Vengeance. Law and Vengeance was about the gun manufacturing companies that had created a sight for a gun that was so far off that it would actually kill people by mistake that was within five degrees, five degrees of a point that they were aiming at if you were at 50 yards. So deaths flowed from that. The story centers around that. Inhuman Trafficking was the last one that I did, and that’s about the trafficking problem in the United States, and how we as a law firm jumped into that case. But it’s, again, it’s written around fiction and there aren’t quite as many murders in real life. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So we’re now seeing the continuation of Deke’s story, the law firm’s story and this one, Suspicious Activity, deals with terrorism, but not just, we have terrorist attacks, but the bank’s role in all of this. So tell us what you can, without giving too much away, we still want people to be able to read it and be surprised. So lay this out for us as best you can here.
Mike Papantonio: Well, this law firm decided to go after, and that’s where Chris came in, Chris is the lawyer that’s handling that case against terrorists, and if you look at the HSBC case, it’s worth going and taking a look at the HSBC case. They were fined $1.9 billion, but what they knew was overwhelming. They knew that they were taking in dirty money, and then what they would do is they would do what they called layering. They’d take in the dirty money, and then they would layer it into real complex companies, complex banking avenues, and it would legitimize the money and it would come back out. And then the terrorists were able, or the drug cartels, whoever’s dealing with that washed money, were able to carry on life as usual. But the disappointment with that is that they knew, the government knew that they, Credit Suisse had been caught doing it. Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Credit Suisse, $530 million, Barclays, $290 million. These are the kind of fines that they gave these folks, but they still don’t get it. You see, the money’s too big. So let’s wash money for terrorist. Life goes on, right, Chris?
Chris Paulos: Yeah. It’s, unfortunately, banks are in a position to actually prevent terrorism and have made and taken steps where they have failed their duty, essentially. And the title of Suspicious Activity refers to one of the obligations that banks have to report suspicious activity of transactions that are flowing through their banks and through their correspondent banking accounts. And what we have seen time and time again, is banks actually taking affirmative steps to not report that suspicious activity, be willfully blind to it, and allow nefarious organizations, terrorist organizations, drug cartels and others to bank at their banks as customers and have beneficial ownership in accounts, and that goes unreported. And in some situations, these banks have actually established departments within those banks to specifically handle what they refer to as high risk customers, and to make sure that their transactions aren’t being flagged as suspicious so that regulators and the FBI and other, you know, the Department of Justice are able to prosecute them. So they have not only failed their duty, but they are now facilitating these types of actors and accessing funds needed for their illicit activities.
Farron Cousins: And there’s a good reason for that, right? You talk about these fines and a hundred million here, 500 million there, billions of dollars per year are going through these banks from these organizations. So, just so everyone is aware, this is not just one or two banks handling for one or two people. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business.
Mike Papantonio: It absolutely is.
