In the first half, Robert Mazur, a decorated DEA undercover agent, detailed how billions in illicit drug and crime proceeds are kept hidden from governments through money laundering on a yearly basis. Even if marijuana was legalized in the US, it still wouldn't put much of a dent in the Mexican and Colombian cartels, whose main profits come from trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine, he noted. Mazur said that such "narco-terrorists" feed off of the ability to corrupt the police, the military, the judicial and legislative systems that give them safe havens. This corruption is further enabled "when the financial institutions of the world partake in the laundering of the mountains of cash that are generated by those organizations," he said. The banks turn the cash into wire transfers, which help to create legitimate seeming companies that operate globally, he explained, citing the Ayman Joumaa case as an example.

The banks rely on the fact that they are repatriating cash back into the United States on behalf of a large number of correspondent banking relationships. "Unfortunately, we're not asking enough questions about where that cash came from-- there's really no oversight with regards to the movement of bulk cash around the world," he noted. Yet, "there's about a dozen banks in the last four or five years that have entered into what's called deferred prosecutions-- I call it the legal hand slap, admitting criminal guilt in connection with the illegal movement of monies around the world...HSBC is a good example," he reported.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2013/06/20