Citation for Obama-Levey hire:
10/7/2010, "Stuart Levey and the damaging effect of Iran sanctions-for the United States," raceforiran.com
"The very first appointment that President-elect Obama made at the Treasury Department, even before he could get Secretary Geithner confirmed, was to retain Stuart Levey (a Dick Cheney protégé) from the Bush Administration....That President-elect Obama moved so rapidly to retain Levey was a sad indicator of how internally contradictory and incoherent the Obama Administration’s Iran policy would turn out to be."...
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Ed. note: As a point of context, the above website's concern about Levey wasn't terrorist and drug financing. They view Levey as a neo-con Obama was forced to hire by his backers.
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Article about Levey leaving government:
1/24/2011, "Point Man [Levey] on U.S. Sanctions to Depart," WSJ, Jay Solomon
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Levey now employed by HSBC and testifies on their behalf:
7/16/12, "...a hearing on Tuesday at which HSBC executives are scheduled to testify.
These will include HSBC's chief legal officer Stuart Levey, who joined the bank in January and was previously one of the top officials on terrorism and finance at the US Treasury Department."...
7/16/12, "Senate report: HSBC 'allowed drug money laundering'," BBC-----------------------------------------------------
7/16/12, "HSBC Helped Terrorists, Iran, Mexican Drug Cartels Launder Money, Senate Report Says," Forbes, Fontevecchia
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More from the BBC article:
7/16/12, "Senate report: HSBC 'allowed drug money laundering'," BBC
"The report also concludes that the US bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, failed to properly monitor HSBC.
The report into HSBC, released ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, says huge sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the bank.
Suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands, Iran and Saudi Arabia also passed through the bank."...
-----------------------------------------------------US lets HSBC off the hook, Senate show meant nothing, will just have to pay a fine. US says they passed "suspicious travelers checks." Sen. Levin freely admits US Treasury Dept. via OCC let HSBC terror financing, drug money, go on for years. Implication is next time you do terror financing, make sure travelers checks are legit.
7/17/12, "HSBC Has Not Been Fined For Money Laundering," Forbes, T. Worstall
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The Economist's Tom Easton was interviewed on WNYC radio on 7/19/12 about the HSBC so-called scandal. He notes HSBC practices are common throughout the banking industry and the US lets them go on:
7/19/12, "Backstory: What Happened at HSBC," WNYC, (local NPR affiliate), the Leonard Lopate Show
"This week the Senate held hearings on HSBC’s failure to halt illegal foreign transactions involving Mexican drug traffickers and Middle Eastern banks with suspected ties to terrorists. Tom Easton, the New York finance and economics correspondent for The Economist, talks about why the bank was overwhelmed by compliance demands of so many different countries—and why its competitors may be as well."
Among comments to WNYC about HSBC story:
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"This speaks to general naivety that the average American has.
If you call an HSBC office TODAY in say, HK, (and you have some kind of references) you can begin a candid conversation about hiding money from US authorities or a not-so-vague conversation about laundering money.
Believe me, I've been solicited by these and other bankers. They will tell you up-front that hiding and fixing money is what they do.
This is what goes on all through the international banking community.
All said, I don't envy anyone trying to do any kind of banking in Mexico -- it's worse than any concept like 'wild-west' would conjure up."
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Ed. note: I heard WNYC's interview with The Economist's Tom Easton re: HSBC. The podcast is available at WNYC's website. Of Stuart Levey now a top HSBC official, formerly a top US Treasury official on terror financing, Easton said Levey defended HSBC saying we have to respect other nation's laws. He was referring to terrorist and drug financing, that even if the US doesn't like those things, we must respect that other countries do accept them. This item was near the end of the Easton interview. Easton said UK banking laws have no problem with terror and drug financing. About Mexican banking, Easton said it's all under criminal control, bankers are kidnapped and disappear routinely.
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I was looking for a transcript of Levey's US Senate testimony:
7/17/12, "HSBC's Senate testimonies: in full," UK Telegraph
The Telegraph provides data leading to testimony of Stuart Levey and others. So far I couldn't figure out how to access it but in the meantime I'm noting it for future reference.
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More on Levey, another Harvard guy key in US government mob operations:
Former US Treasury official Stuart Levey under whose tenure HSBC engaged in terrorist financing through the US now works for HSBC.
Levey was a failure at what they claim was his specialty, stopping terror financing:
1/24/2011, "Point Man on U.S. Sanctions to Depart," WSJ, Jay Solomon
"When Stuart came [into the Obama administration], he agreed to stay for six months, and it's been two years. There's no perfect time for these things. But this is as good a time as any" to make the change, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said....
A Harvard-trained attorney, Mr. Levey, 47 years old, said he is taking time off before deciding on his next job. He said his letter of resignation would arrive at the White House Monday and that he would stay on at Treasury for about one more month....
Since 2004, he has also built up Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence into a major cog in the U.S. national-security apparatus, with more than 700 people involved in activities such as tracking illicit financing and approving export licenses for sensitive technologies.
Treasury officials now have a prominent seat in virtually every national-security debate.
"Stuart built the U.S. government's effort to combat terrorist financing from the ground up, and created a highly effective, world-class organization that has made Treasury an integral player in U.S. national-security policy," said Tom Donilon, Mr Obama's national-security adviser.
Mr. Levey's strategy has specifically focused on using international companies' needs for the U.S. dollar, and their fears of being barred from the American financial system, as leverage to gain their cooperation....
"If these big banks make mistakes, and find they're being unwittingly used by the Iranians to finance weapons systems or terrorism, it's a real blow to their reputations," said Henry Paulson, who oversaw Mr. Levey's work as President George W. Bush's last Treasury secretary. "That's a pretty big club."
Still, Messrs. Levey and Cohen acknowledged that America's adversaries are continuing to adapt to U.S. financial measures and that the ultimate impact of long-term sanction campaigns remains unclear."...
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Ed. note: It's the exact opposite of what Paulson claims. HSBC easily advanced terrorism and other crimes through the US under Levey's watch. Not once were suspicious HSBC transactions checked, parag. 7 in Forbes article. They can say it's OCC's fault but the point is Levey wasn't the big guy who came in and stopped banks from doing this.
