Clinton?? Same as the Taliban getting $10-20 million per year??
Cuba had been a trans-shippment point for many years. Castro purged and killed some of his top Generals he had running the deal a few years back. He found that they had sticky fingers. Rumor has it that the Swiss accounts were opened by one of them, Fidel just took over the deposits and control when he executed el general.
And here I thoughts the Federal Reserve sent all the worn out bills to MY island...
Let's say Castro did get his money from drug dealing or maybe it was another "loan" from France. What would motivate USB violate US regulations? Who/what exactly is USB?
Tourist money? Drug money? The big question: why isn't Castro using the almost $4 billion to help the beleaguered people of Cuba, who live well below the poverty line?
Answer: If the condition of Cuba's people improves, Castro willl have to stop blaming the USA for poverty.
I wonder whether this $3.9 billion is in addition to the $1 billion Forbes magazine reported Castro has tucked away in Swiss banks.
Drug dealing, but also I'm almost sure that all the baseball players that 'escaped' from cuba during the 90's, and for the past 3 years, who are now making millions in our MLB, deposit money for papa fidel in foreign banks.
NEW YORK INQUIRY
Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Carlos Zarate told The Herald Thursday that the U.S. attorney's office in New York is investigating a ''potential nexus out of New York'' with the Cuba-UBS deal, but declined to go into details.
The tale of Cuba's dealings with UBS started within another mystery: the $762 million in U.S. cash that American troops in Iraq found in hide-outs linked to Saddam Hussein.
The cash was traced to several foreign banks, including UBS, that had been contracted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to exchange new U.S. dollars for worn-out bills being taken out of circulation. The program is known as the Extended Custodial Inventory.
But the ECI agreement specifically barred the foreign banks from doing business with countries under U.S. sanctions.
ILLEGAL TRANSFER
Although U.S. investigators who examined the Iraqi hoard determined the banks had not sent U.S. cash directly to Baghdad, they discovered UBS had illegally transferred about $5 billion to Cuba, Libya, Iran and the former Yugoslavia.
The Federal Reserve Board canceled its contract with UBS last year and in May fined it $100 million for the violations.
Still unclear is why UBS employees violated the U.S. regulations, and then tried to conceal the Cuban deals by altering the bank's records. No one has so far been charged with any crimes.
The majority of the transactions with Cuba took place from 1996, when the Federal Reserve contracted UBS for the ECI program, through April 2003, said Yleem Poblete, staff director for the House International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, which Ros-Lehtinen chairs.
USB Switzerland ping