Why do financial predators like Credit Suisse get away with murder? Meet crooked political slime-balls, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Pete Aguilar (fake Dem-CA)Look, I'm not advocating Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan and his whole family be dragged out of their homes, lined up against a wall and peremptorily shot-- even though that would make other bankster perps think twice about activating their criminal personalities. First of all, far fetched as it seems, there may be innocent people in the family. And second, firing squads without trials are a savage, horrific manifestation of totalitarianism. Besides, Dougan, "the chief executive of the first very large bank to be criminally convicted in decades," drives, according to the NY Times, a Prius.
Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to aid tax evasion. It admitted that its bankers enabled clients to illegally evade American taxes over many years.Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, held up the conviction as evidence that large banks are not too big to prosecute. “When a bank engages in misconduct this brazen, it should expect that the Justice Department will pursue criminal prosecution to the fullest extent possible, as has happened here,” he said. Credit Suisse has agreed to pay $2.6 billion to various agencies.The bank, however, has not been required to hand over the names of the American clients whose accounts may have been used for tax evasion.
The disgraceful back room deal means no one goes to prison, no one looses their job, the crooked customers who defrauded the government (and their fellow tax payers out of millions or billions) don't even get their names in the newspapers, let alone an interruption of their larcenous, miserable lives. "Dougan's job appears to be secure. Regulators did not demand his ouster. The company’s board did not discuss removing Mr. Dougan, according to a person briefed on the deliberations who spoke on condition of anonymity… [I]f Mr. Dougan remains in his post, it will add fuel to the debate over whether American authorities are failing to hold top bankers accountable for the sins of their institutions." You think?
“The notion that the chairman and C.E.O. get to keep their jobs is absurd,” said Heather Slavkin Corzo, a senior legal adviser at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “From a policy perspective, you want to see consequences from bad behavior.”Credit Suisse is now moving to prevent any jarring repercussions to its business.While the deal with the American authorities was devised to avoid disrupting Credit Suisse’s core operations, the extent of any harm depends on the reaction of big clients and trading partners. They may decide to pare back business, either out of choice or because their contracts do not allow them to deal with criminally convicted enterprises.
The important takeaway from the episode is the way the Beltway/Wall Street axis is painting it as a big take-down for criminal banksters. "In a sign that banking giants are no longer immune from criminal charges, despite concerns that financial institutions have grown so large and interconnected that they are too big to jail, federal prosecutors demanded that Credit Suisse’s parent company plead guilty to helping thousands of American account holders hide their wealth," wrote the premier mouthpiece for the axis. The shareholders will get a haircut but the criminals-- management-- may be embarrassed but… that's all. Nothing else. Nothing at all. "Hundreds of Credit Suisse employees were involved in the scheme. They often created 'secret offshore accounts' that were held in the names of 'sham entities and foundations.' One Credit Suisse subsidiary began the practice more than a century ago. To cover up the crime, bankers were keen on 'destroying account records.'" A fine isn't fine. It will not deter this kind of routine larcenous behavior. Not one bit. Especially not with corrupt political elites coddling these criminals. Frank Clemente, Executive Director of Americans For Tax Fairness, saw right through Holder's scam to protect the banksters: "We are disappointed that Credit Suisse isn't being required to disclose the full extent of its criminal wrongdoing. Credit Suisse employed numerous schemes to help rich Americans get out of paying their fair share of U.S. taxes. However, the bank continues to shelter its clients by hiding behind Swiss laws and refusing to release their names. The company should stop standing between those 22,000 American tax dodgers and justice." Nor was he alone; John Sellers of the Other 98% went even further in calling out the phony-baloney settlement: "It's not justice when 22,000 ultra-rich Americans get off scot-free for bilking the American people out of billions of tax dollars. When regular Americans admit they broke the law, they lose the money they stole and go to jail. It should be the same with Credit Suisse and its wealthy clients who hid $10 billion from the IRS."I noticed that last week the crooks at the Credit Union National Association spent around $350,000 on two independent expenditures for two of the most corrupt bank-oriented politicians I've ever come across, $156,394 on behalf of Mitch McConnell in his Kentucky primary and $197,189 on behalf a far more obscure-- but equally corrupt and equally slimy-- politician in California's Inland Empire (CA-31), Pete Aguilar. Although Aguilar never talks about it publicly, before the Chamber of Commerce Republicans appointed him as their frontman on the Redlands City Council and then appointed him Mayor of the town, he was a lobbyist for the failed Arrowhead Credit Union in San Bernardino. His job there was funneling "contributions" to crooked Republican politicians in the Jerry Lewis political machine. He was rewarded with a job in politics and now the Credit Union National Association is trying to help Steve Israel give Aguilar a congressional seat.
