The report states such business relationships are possible in spite of anti-money laundering rules that require banks to do due diligence to identify their customers and turn down ill-gotten funds. Global Witness, a co-nominee of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on conflict diamonds, released the report March 11 to coincide with an upcoming G20 summit of finance ministers.
Banks Accused of Helping Dictators
The report accuses Deutsche Bank of helping Turkmenistan’s late president Saparmurat Niyazov, a man not known for embracing human rights, to keep billions of dollars in state gas revenues under his personal control and out of the national budget.
Barclays, states the report, kept open an account for the son of the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, despite evidence that his family had looted the country’s oil revenues. HSBC and Santander, meanwhile, threw wrenches into US efforts to investigate the looting and laundering of Equatorial Guinea’s oil revenues by hiding behind bank secrecy laws in Luxembourg and Spain.
The report also states that Citibank enabled West African warlord Charles Taylor to loot timber revenues, thus indirectly helping Taylor fund two civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Taylor is now on trial for war crimes in The Hague.
To tighten money-laundering laws, Global Witness recommends that banks strengthen their due diligence into customers and that governments make explicit anti-money laundering laws and actively enforce those laws. The report also called for governments to work together to ensure that bank secrecy laws do not hinder anti-money laundering measures.
-- Beth Kampschror
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