G. Kennedy Thompson wikipedia
EXCERPT:
G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson (born November 25, 1950, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina) is an American businessman who was previously chairman, president, and CEO of Wachovia Corporation, formerly First Union Corporation, from 2000 through 2008.[1] First Union Corporation acquired Wachovia Corporation and changed its name to Wachovia in September 2001 after fending off a hostile takeover attempt by SunTrust Bank. Thompson succeeded Edward E. Crutchfield in 2000, who stepped down due to health reasons. Previous positions at First Union included vice chairman of the corporation and head of Global Capital Markets; president, First Union-Florida; senior vice president and head of First Union Human Resources; president, First Union Georgia.

Thompson previously served as president of the Federal Reserve Board's Federal Advisory Committee.

Thompson serves on the Boards of Directors for Hewlett-Packard (HP), Florida Rock Industries, Inc., (NYSE) and Carolinas Healthcare System. Professional affiliations include Board member, Financial Services Roundtable; vice chairman and board member, New York Clearing House; member, Financial Services Forum, The Business Council.

25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis The good intentions, bad managers and greed behind the meltdown

In the early 1980s, the Sandlers' World Savings Bank became the first to sell a tricky home loan called the option ARM. And they pushed the mortgage, which offered several ways to back-load your loan and thereby reduce your early payments, with increasing zeal and misleading advertisements over the next two decades. The couple pocketed $2.3 billion when they sold their bank to Wachovia in 2006. But losses on World Savings' loan portfolio led to the implosion of Wachovia, which was sold under duress late last year to Wells Fargo.

The Sandlers respond here: "Don't Pin the Blame on Us"

Clyde O'Connor
EXCERPT:
After just two weeks, the plane was sold again in another mysterious transaction. The only evidence for this is an anomalous bill of sale with the name of the new owner: “Clyde O’Connor” He’s a well-known guy around Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport.

HALL: I had the sense they seemed to have known more about him than they were letting on, he seems to be a veteran around that area, who’s got a bit of a checkered past.

O’Connor’s been involved in at least two plane crashes and he was cited for Criminal Air Safety Violations in 2001.

Peter Dale Scott wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Investigator
Scott has researched and written several investigative books about the role of the "deep state" (as opposed to the "public state"). However, Scott rejects the label of "conspiracy theory" and has used the phrase "deep politics" to describe his heavily-footnoted political writing. The investigative bent has spilled over into his works of poetry, some of which must contain marginal notes to explain to readers which documents or real-world news events are being referred to. His most recent book, The Road to 9/11 from the University of California Press, deals with historical and geopolitical context of the events of 9/11, and describes "how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11."[3]

An interesting aspect of Scott's work that combines both his investigating interests and his poetry is illustrated by The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11

Venezuelan general indicted in CIA scheme
EXCERPTs:
1) When news of the cocaine shipment broke in November 1993, Kent Harrington, then the chief spokesman for the C.I.A., called the matter ''a most regrettable incident,'' and characterized it as a serious accident. No C.I.A. official has been charged in the case, and there is no evidence that anyone at the agency profited from sales of the drugs.

2) After an investigation that lasted more than five years, the grand jury handed up a sealed indictment earlier this week against Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila, the officials said. The general was the chief of a program set up by the C.I.A. in the late 1980's in conjunction with the Venezuelan National Guard, which sought to infiltrate Colombian gangs shipping cocaine to the United States.

The C.I.A., over the objections of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a branch of the Justice Department, approved the shipment of at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to Miami International Airport as a way of gathering information about the Colombian drug cartels.

But the cocaine ended up on the street because of ''poor judgment and management on the part of several C.I.A. officers,'' the intelligence agency said. One C.I.A. officer, Mark McFarlin, resigned after an internal investigation, and the agency's station chief in Venezuela was recalled to Washington.

The case of the Venezuelan cocaine is the only known instance in which the agency has acknowledged that its actions led to drugs being imported into the United States.

Whistleblowing can damage your career
EXCERPT:
Whistleblowing can damage your career, says Wachovia Bank whistleblower Martin Woods
By OffshoreAlert, February 10, 2010

Are banks genuinely interested in clamping down on money laundering or do they consider compliance to be a nuisance that stands in the way of profits? The experience of former Wachovia Bank compliance officer Martin Woods suggests the latter might be the case.

After Woods reported suspicious activity of alleged money laundering by a notorious Mexican drugs cartel to Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, Wachovia turned on him instead of thanking him, he claims.

In a whistleblower suit fled with an employment tribunal in London, Woods claims that his bosses at Wachovia bullied and demoted him, withdrew his reports of other suspicious activities involving other clients and may even have tipped off the bad guys about his laundering suspicions.

Juan Garcia Abrego wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Juan García Abrego was a Mexican drug lord who started out his criminal career under the tutelage of his uncle Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, who is reported to be the former head of a criminal dynasty along the U.S.-Mexico border now called the Gulf Cartel.

United States intelligence reports state Guerra reared his nephew on car theft before passing down his criminal enterprise.[1] The exact date of succession is unknown, however law enforcement officials recall an incident on January 27, 1987 when Tomás Morlet, former officer in an elite Mexican police force turned national trafficker, exchanged harsh words with García Abrego and was later found, shot twice in the back in the doorway of Guerra's Piedras Negras Restaurant.[1]


Juan Garcia Abrego and American Express
EXCERPT:
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday September 7, 1995 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 2 inches; 68 words Type of Material: Correction
Drug investigation--An article in Monday's Times about alleged Mexican drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego referred to a money-laundering case in which two American Express Bank employees were convicted, and to a civil suit arising from the criminal action. The company reports that its American Express Bank International subsidiary settled the civil suit for $36 million in fines, forfeitures and collateral late last year. The company admitted no guilt in the out-of-court settlement.

Ernesto Flores
EXCERPT:
The World
July 18, 1986
Two men waiting in ambush machine-gunned to death the publisher and star reporter of a Mexican newspaper that has taken a strong stand against corruption and drug smuggling in the border city of Matamoros, police said. Ernesto Flores Torrijos, 46, publisher of El Popular, and reporter Norma Moreno Figueroa, 24, were shot as they stepped from their car in front of their office in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex. Witnesses said dozens of shots were fired. Police said they have no suspects. It was the second time in a month that crusading Mexican journalists have been murdered in the border state of Tamaulipas.

Tomas Gringo Sanchez
EXCERPT:
REVISED, May 26, 1998
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_____________________
No. 97-20130
_____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
JUAN GARCIA ABREGO,
Defendant-Appellant.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
_________________________________________________________________
May 6, 1998
Before KING, EMILIO M. GARZA, and DEMOSS, Circuit Judges.
KING, Circuit Judge:
Defendant-appellant Juan Garcia Abrego appeals his
conviction and sentence for ten counts of possession with intent
to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and
(b)(1)(A), five counts of money laundering in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(A)(i), three counts of money laundering in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(A), one count of conspiracy
to launder money in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h), and one
count of conducting a continuing criminal enterprise in violation
of 21 U.S.C. § 848. We affirm.
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
For approximately two decades, Juan Garcia Abrego was the
hub of a narcotics smuggling syndicate of staggering dimension.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Headquartered in Matamoros, Mexico, Garcia Abrego's organization
was responsible for smuggling tremendous quantities of cocaine
and marijuana into the United States from the mid-1970s to the
mid-1990s.
Garcia Abrego began trafficking large quantities of
marijuana in the mid-1970s. In 1976, Carlos Resendez, a long
time friend of Garcia Abrego, delivered approximately 300
kilograms of marijuana to him. Francisco "Paco" Perez also began
working for Garcia Abrego in the drug trafficking trade around
1980. At Garcia Abrego's direction, Perez unloaded marijuana
flown in on a small plane by Oscar "El Profe" Lopez Olivares,
stored it in a warehouse on Garcia Abrego's ranch in Soliceno,
Mexico, and smuggled it across the border into the United States
in inner tubes.
In the early 1980s, Garcia Abrego expanded his operation.
According to some members of his organization, in 1985, Garcia
Abrego ordered the murder of Casimiro "Cacho" Espinoza, another
drug trafficker in Mexico, in order to eliminate competition.
Thereafter, Luis Medrano, who had previously worked for Espinoza,
went to work for Garcia Abrego.
In 1986, Garcia Abrego began trafficking cocaine because
marijuana was a seasonal business. Luis Medrano and Oscar
Malherbe worked as managers and supervisors one step below Garcia
Abrego in the chain of command in his organization. Medrano and
Malherbe enlisted the services of a number of other individuals,
including Jaime Rivas Gonzales, Tony Ortiz, Tomas "Gringo"
2

Claude de la O
EXCERPT:
At Drug Trial, Mexican Suspect Faces Accuser
Juan Garcia Abrego, only drug dealer to ever make FBI's '10 Most Wanted' list, is being tried in Houston, Tex, on 22 counts of narcotics trafficking and money laundering; prosecution's star witness is Claude de la O, former FBI agent who infiltrated Garcia Abrego's Mexican drug organization by posing as corrupt FBI official; they had 18-month correspondence by phone, letter and messenger, but never met until trial; Garcia Abrego never agreed to face-to-face meeting, and de la O never allowed hi...

September 20, 1996
MORE ON JUAN GARCIA ABREGO AND: INFORMERS, DRUG ABUSE AND TRAFFIC, MEXICO, HOUSTON (TEX), FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, DE LA O, CLAUDE

Yolanda Figueroa and Fernando Balderas
EXCERPT:
Details Emerge in Slaying of Mexico Family
Crime: Author, husband and children were killed by servants avenging sexual abuse, prosecutors say.
December 25, 1996|MARK FINEMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
MEXICO CITY — In the months that writer Yolanda Figueroa and her husband, Fernando Balderas, basked in prominence after the August release of their book on a powerful Mexican drug cartel, there were darker forces at work far closer to the couple's posh home here, prosecutors say.

Indeed, it was about when the couple launched the campaign to sell their muckraking expose on Gulf cartel boss Juan Garcia Abrego that investigators now say Balderas had also turned the family's maids into "sexual hostages."

Mario Ruiz Massieu

Mario Ruiz Massieu is the brother of assassinated Jose Francisco (Pepe) Ruiz Massieu, and a former Deputy Attorney General for Mexico (1993-1994). He led the investigation into his brother Pepe's murder, but gave it up after several months stating the investigation was being blocked by high-ranking PRI officials. He later was accused of trying to protect Raul Salinas.

On September 15, 1999, the former Mexican justice official apparently killed himself at his home in New Jersey rather than face money-laundering charges in the U.S. Ruiz Massieu had been under house arrest in the U.S. for several years as he fought U.S. attempts to extradite him to Mexico to face charges including money laundering and graft. A Houston jury had found that $8 million in his Texas bank accounts was paid him by drug cartels (in particular the Gulf Cartel) in exchange for protection. In his suicide note, Ruiz Massieu blamed Presdient Zedillo for his own death and that of his murdered brother.

Proceso's report (2/16/97) on the U.S.Justice Department's witness testimony in its lawsuit against Mario Ruiz Massieu. The witnesses implicate ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, his siblings Adriana and Raul, his father Raul Salinas Lozano, and his ex-brother-in-law Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu in drug trafficking operations. Includes documents/notes on witnesses testimony.