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Archive for the ‘financial system’ Category

Iranian general sanctioned as drug trafficker – CNN Security …

security.blogs.cnn.com3/7/12

By Jamie Crawford The United States imposed sanctions Wednesday on a senior member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Qods Force and designated him as a narcotics trafficker, the first such designation of an … Gholamreza Baghbani, the current chief of the ICRG-QF office in Zahedan, Iran, has allowed Afghan narcotics traffickers to smuggle opiates through his zone of operations in exchange for money, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran Supreme Leader, Hails Obama Comments …

www.huffingtonpost.com3/8/12

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's top leader Thursday welcomed comments by President Barack Obama advocating diplomacy and not war as a solution to Tehran's nuclear ambitions, a rare positive signal in long-standing hostile transactions … The Senate Banking Committee approved tough new penalties in January that would target Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, require companies that trade on the U.S. stock exchange to disclose any Iran-related business to the …

A just released report from the Green Experts of Iran, an opposition group with sources inside the Islamic republic, provides details of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ connections to drug trafficking, money laundering and counterfeiting.

And the report confirms an interconnected web of criminal enterprises, run by the Guards and often facilitated by Iranian diplomatic consulates, intended to fund the Iranian military’s worldwide terror operation.

The Revolutionary Guards’ Mafia-like network in Europe has grown steadily since Iran’s 1979 revolution, and last year the U.S. government designated Iran as a “Primary Money-Laundering Concern" and imposed new sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.

And on Wednesday, March 8, 2012 the U.S. government named Gen. Gholamreza Baghbani, a general in Iran’s elite Quds force which is a branch of the Guards as a narcotics “kingpin", citing a career of facilitating heroin trafficking from Afghanistan into Iran.

The Green Experts of Iran report, which is written in Farsi, reveals a grand project by the Guards called a “Time for the Collapse", and the Guards according to this plan, intend to destabilize the West through terror, drugs and money laundering.

News media have widely reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his power struggle with those loyal to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has talked of many secret ports across Iran that are used by the Guards for smuggling.

About seventeen months ago, the report states, members of a drug gang were arrested in Baku, Azerbaijan and among them were two Iranians that Iran’s consulate shielded from prosecution.

Other members of the gang were citizens of Azerbaijan, Albania and Tajikistan however, and they confessed to their connection to the Revolutionary Guards’ drug network.

In connection with that arrest, the Green Experts report explains, modern counterfeiting equipment was confiscated, along with information that the Guards had placed similar counterfeiting operations on the borders of Russia and across East Asia.

That information, the report states, led to more arrests eleven months ago in Macau, which is an island protectorate of China, an information that was gathered resulted in the seizure of high-quality forged U.S. treasury bonds.

Those bonds, the report said, were already being easily transacted through regional banks, and arousing no suspicion.

The authorities ultimately tracked the forged currency to a criminal network in Europe which was distributing large sums of counterfeit dollars and euros, in collaboration with the Guards, and had been doing so since at least July 2011.

Information from arrests in Europe showed that the Guards and the Iranian intelligence apparatus were involved in a major money-laundering scheme that involved the assistance of Iranian consulates.

The Green Experts report states that an organized crime family in Albania has collaborated with the Guards for years, running a major money-laundering operation that sends fake currency into Europe.

The Guards, it is said, have been successfully recruiting mostly poor Albanians, who are sent to Iran for intelligence and military training, after which they are sent to work for the European network.

Investigations have shown that one center of distribution of phony banknotes is an Iranian-affiliated company in Hong Kong.

The Revolutionary Guards’ illicit activities have expanded throughout Europe, including to England, Germany, France and, in cooperation with Italian Mafiosi, to northern Italy.

Arrests just weeks ago in Zurich, Switzerland also led to confiscation of a a somewhat hard to believe $6 trillion in fake U.S. bonds and the arrests of eight individuals in Italy, and a further $2 billion in fake bonds were also seized in Rome.

Those arrested in that law-enforcement operation were widely reported to have been trained in Iran, were part of the Guards’ smuggling network, and were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian contacts.

The bonds they were carrying had originally been transported from Hong Kong to Zurich in 2007

On Feb. 21, 2012, Azerbaijan officials announced the arrest of a gang with links to the Revolutionary Guards and the militant terrorist Hezbollah group.

Azerbaijan said.the gang members, who were involved in drug trafficking, were armed with explosives and intended to commit acts of terrorism against foreign nationals,

According to a respected Iraian opposition website called Balatarin, a company belonging to former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rafiqdoust transfers drugs in small packages from Iran via boats and airplanes to Albania, Romania and Bulgaria after which the packages are distributed through Western Europe in trucks belonging to Albanian and Romanian companies.

The same report suggests that the Guards’ drug operation nets $20 billion annually.

A former Guards intelligence officer confirmed this in November, saying that the Guards are trying to undermine the West through their links with global crime networks.

While the trafficking of drugs funds terrorist activities, drug cartels also transport arms and explosives and move terror cells’ personnel from place to place.

And the Guards run the terror cell operation out of Venezuela and into Latin America as a means to enter Mexico and from there into the U.S., according to an April 2010 Pentagon report.

The Guards also use Iranian industries under their control to expand their terrorist activities with one example being the Iran Khodro Company, which is the leading Iranian automaker with many branches outside Iran.

In 2011 a shipment of 286 pounds of heroin was intercepted in Nigeria along with 13 containers of arms and ammunition.

The heroin was hidden in auto parts destined for the Iran Khodro branch in Senegal, which is operated by the Quds Forces.

Green Experts are an opposition group tied to the Green Movement in Iran that opposes the reign of Khamenei.

The movement proposes free elections and the release of Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who are Green movement leaders that have been under house arrest since the 2009 uprisings in Iran.

* For more information on the drug links between Hezbollah and Mexican drug cartels check out Hezbollah Now Linked To Mexican Drug Cartels

California: Bankruptcy Upon the Union Altar – Mike Shedlock …

finance.townhall.com2/26/12

California: Bankruptcy Upon the Union Altar – Mike Shedlock: Bondholders of Stockton, California debt are about to be punished.

Stockton struggles to avoid becoming largest bankrupt city in …

www.scpr.org3/1/12

Still, the attempts to regain its footing haven't been enough, and now the northern city now faces the possibility of becoming the largest in California to declare bankruptcy. Last night, Stockton's city council voted to seek …

The state controller estimates that California will run out of money before the end of March 2012.

And to avoid technical bankruptcy, California needs to find $3 billion in cuts or revenues to keep the state in the black through the rest of this fiscal year.

Is Recovery On The Horizon?

No. The worst is still to come.

California’s Legislative Analyst Office projects that, even with billions in one-time revenues from Facebook’s impending IPO (Initial Public Offering), Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget will run a $6.5 billion deficit.

Democrats in state government are getting so desperate for cash that they have started cannibalizing their local government brethren for revenues to make up the difference.

And the state’s more than 400 redevelopment agencies have become one of the first targets.

What Are RDA’s – Redevelopment Agencies?

Created in the 1940s, RDAs empower a city or county to identify almost any parcel of land as a "redevelopment area", and when that is done, state property tax revenues from that area become frozen and any subsequent increase in property tax revenue beyond the frozen level goes directly to the RDAs.

RDAs are also empowered to borrow money without any voter approval!

They can then buy property with that borrowed money and pay it off with the expected revenue stream from their take of the property taxes. All told, RDAs skim $5 billion from Sacramento every year.

Intended for "economic development", RDAs quickly became the bread-and-butter of almost every pay-to-play construction project in the state.

Developers would give money to local politicians, and those politicians would use the RDAs, and their powers of eminent domain, to obtain land for their campaign contributors on the cheap.

Developers then made millions building upscale shopping malls like Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga.

Everybody won, except the free market and taxpayers.

Step In Arnold Schwarzenegger

In 2010, then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to close his multi-billion dollar budget gap by raiding the RDA but the developers didn’t like that.

They fought back with Proposition 22, which passed in November 2010 and forbids the state from siphoning off RDA money.

And Jerry Brown?

Brown hatched a new plan in 2011 to get that $5 billion, and being a Democrat, he had no philosophical problem with governments picking winners and losers through crony capitalism.

So Brown passed two laws.

The Stick

The first outlawed the RDAs entirely.

The Carrot

The second allowed the RDAs to exist, but only if they gave a certain percentage of revenues to the state every year.

The Death Of RDAs

Some RDAs were happy to play Brown’s extortion game but others took him to court; and they blew up the system for everybody.

The State Supreme Court threw out the second law, ruling that it conflicted with Proposition 22.

But the justices kept the first law banning the agencies; so as of February 1st 2012, all 400 plus RDAs suddenly became extinct.

The Nitty Gritty

But while Brown now gets his RDA cash, which still isn’t enough to close next year’s budget gap, California’s local and city governments are stuck holding the bag for all their liabilities.

How Much Are RDAs Worth?

Cumulatively, RDAs own about $2 billion in assets statewide but the problem is that they also owe around $4 billion in debt and local governments across the state are scrambling to figure out how to pay off this new burden.

Already crushed under the weight of unionized government employee pensions they can’t afford, Brown’s RDA money grab is driving many localities into bankruptcy.

Which States Might File First?

The city of Stockton began the bankruptcy process last week and the cities of Hercules and Lincoln are not far behind.

Has California Learned A Lesson?

Have California Democrats learned that government-funded crony capitalist development isn’t good for their constituents’ bottom line?

Not yet.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, is said to be looking to "recreate a new set of economic development tools for cities".