TERROR FUNDING AND MONEY LAUNDERING
Lazing on a Sunday morning on 17 May 15 many readers of a popular weekly were shaken from their weekend lethargy by the front page banner headline that screamed of hidden Swiss bank accounts operated by 40 odd Sri Lankans.
The piece was an exclusive expose about the HSBC Bank that had helped these Sri Lankans to contravene Sri Lanka’s Central Bank regulations and local laws; the HSBC Bank had actively collaborated with some unscrupulous rich persons in defrauding the Government of Sri Lanka by stashing away 50 million US dollars in secret Swiss Bank accounts.
The HSBC Bank by all accounts is one of the most notorious banks in the world, hooking up with drug traffickers, terrorists, rogue politicians, murderers and political opportunists.
Mark Taibbi editor of the ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine commenting on the damning ‘HSBC Report’ slams the Bank for ‘moving money for organisations linked to Al Qaeda, Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel and Russian Gangsters; he quotes Jack Blum, a former US Senate investigator, “HSBC took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business”.
HSBC Private Banking Holdings (Suisse), a 100% subsidiary of HSBC, is that arm of the HSBC group which provides special services to wealthy people and their families by helping them to stash away their money and to manage their massive wealth; the Bank advises them on tax evasion strategies and on adopting techniques that would prevent the ill gotten wealth being detected by law enforcement agencies of countries around the world.
On being slapped a $1.9 billion fine by US courts in the largest ‘Drug and Terrorism’ money laundering case ever, HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver reportedly admitted to Reuters, “We accept responsibility for our past mistakes.”
Reading the Sunday weekly expose it soon became apparent that there was a major gap in the story; the article failed to mention that Bankster Arjuna Mahendran was the former Managing Director and Chief Investment strategist of the HSBC Private Bank!
As the head of the money laundering unit, the blood money unit and the black money unit of the HSBC, Mahendran was responsible to hide away loot; he was privy to where the ill gotten money went and where it resides.
Mahendran, in his appointed capacity at the HSBC Private Bank, was a glorified money launderer, directly responsible amongst other things for
encouraging and advising his Sri Lankan clients to contravene Sri Lanka’s Central Bank regulations and to defraud the Government of Sri Lanka of legitimate taxes; in this capacity he abetted the breaking of Sri Lanka’s laws and perhaps withheld information relating to serious Financial and National Security issues.
It is ironic that Mahendran, described in Wikipedia as a person accused of stealing close to 40 Billion Sri Lankan Rupees through Insider Trading is today the Governor of the same Central Bank whose regulations he willfully violated and whose regulations he actively encouraged others to violate.
Mahendran’s record as Chairman BOI in 2001 leaves much to be desired. It was during his tenure at the BOI that he admiringly claimed that Raj
Rajaratnam – then yet not serving a jail sentence for insider trading and yet not facing likely charges of money laundering, embezzlement of funds
and funding of LTTE terrorism- was a childhood friend.
It is evident that Rajaratnam inspired his friend. It did not take very long for Mahendran to become a major money laundering player and rub
shoulders with the Banking and Corporate mafia spreading doom and neo – con liberal philosophy around the world.
Mahendran moves around easily with persons like Richard Zimmerman, Michael Geoghegan and John L Thornton who work with major banking fraudsters such as J P Morgan and Goldman Sachs and in Neo Con think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institute and the Pacific Century Group.
Persons within the Government ruling clique say that with Mahendran’s dubious record he should never ever have been even considered for the post of Governor Central Bank when there were persons of Sri Lankan Nationality who had impeccable records of performance and integrity.
But no, a subservient Sirisena appoints Wickramasinghe’s friend Mahendran as Governor of the Central Bank.
When Mahendran got involved in the massive insider trading scandal that cast a 40 Billion Rupee financial burden on the people of the country, many expected Sirisena, if not Wickramasinghe, to sack Mahendran on the spot.
The scene that unfolds is unbelievable. Sirisena quivers and does not even speak on the scandal. On the other hand Wickramasinghe gets bolder and stridently aggressive in defending his Bankster friend. Mahendran is least concerned and unmoved.
What makes Sirisena tremble, Wickramasinghe complacently confident and Mahendran unmoved? It is evident that Mahendran enjoys some sort of impunity. What is the shield that protects Bankster Mahendran is the question many Sri Lankans ask?
When Sirisena and other major players crossed over to the opposition in November last year nobody really believed that they did it for altruistic
motives. “What was the carrot that was offered?” people asked. “Was it power, money or some other unknown factor?”
Were those who crossed over clean? Everyone, for instance, is aware who controls the rice market in the country, be it the farmer or the consumer
and how it is controlled; the method of control certainly spills outside the pail of ‘Yahapalanaya’
An understanding of the recent Afghanistan election model is useful to understand what is happening today in Sri Lanka. The ‘Kerry’ model used in Sri Lanka, to bring into power a US allied leader who does not enjoy the confidence of the people was first used in Afghanistan in September 2014. In that election Abdullah Abdullah who was the loser but a favourite of the US was unconstitutionally appointed Prime Minister and Ashraf Ghani who won, ‘voluntarily’ shed and transferred a lot of his powers to the Prime Minister.
In that election, like in Sri Lanka, US funded NGO operatives (Astra turf operatives) who have no status in the country slithered into an Executive
Council which is only an Advisory body; the Council went beyond their mandate by engineering a situation that made their ‘advice’ an
unconstitutional executive directive, shades of the FCID.
To make all this happen in Afghanistan the US ploughed in mega bucks on the players to make it attractive and worth their while.
The queen of corruption was quick to take credit for the success of the Afghan election model in Sri Lanka; she claimed that she made it happen and that it happened outside the country. Many of those crossing over did very short trips to ‘Mahendran’ country, Singapore. And did Sirisena speak of Thailand?
There was one who claimed he did a short trip to Singapore on medical advice but the medical officer treating him cannot remember giving his
patient such advice; however the extramarital partner was more positive; she says that after the Singaporean trip her paramour spends more money on her and is less niggardly; she says that he talks less now of Sri Lankan culture.
If the Afghans had to go to Singapore to get what was promised, meeting Mahendran would have been useful; he knows the ropes, he knows the people and he would advice them on how to stash the loot without getting caught and without paying taxes. But the Afghans would dare not touch Mahendran because if they did he would squeal. Mahendran certainly lives a charmed life.
In the meantime in perhaps an unconnected but little reported case Raj Rajaratnam’s other friend in Sri Lanka has got a reprieve. The case which
had been dragging on suddenly went into high gear with frequent sittings and the judge hearing the case dismissed the case just before going on retirement. The AG who is under pressure did not object
In this case the Standard Charter Bank had allegedly converted a large sum of foreign currency coming from abroad into local currency in contravention of legal and banking processes. The million dollar question was did the bank act on its own or did they follow instructions. Much of the evidence is with a beleaguered AG and with Mahendran the charmed Governor of the
Central Bank.
By Sarojini Dutt
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