'YOU DON'T FIT IN, F**K OFF', RESERVE BANK WHISTLEBLOWER TOLD

September 30, 2013 Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker
 

EXCLUSIVE - 'You don't fit in, f--- off'

Key whistleblower Brian Hood's efforts to lift the lid on note printing corruption did not go down well with his bosses.

The man who exposed alleged bribery in two Reserve Bank subsidiaries was told "you don't fit in, f--- off" at the height of his whistle-blowing.
Former company secretary of reserve company Note Printing Australia (NPA), Brian Hood, alerted various directors of NPA and its sister RBA polymer bank-note company Securency in 2007 that the two companies were using overseas agents whom he suspected of paying bribes to win note-printing contracts.
In a joint Fairfax Media and Four Corners investigation-- which airs on ABC 1 at 8.30pm on Monday — Mr Hood gives his first public interview to reveal the pressure he faced attempting to expose the suspected corruption.
One of his senior colleagues at NPA, who was also a director at Securency, told Mr Hood to "f--- off" from the Reserve Bank company.

Advertisement

However, Mr Hood said this only strengthened his resolve in 2007 and 2008 to repeatedly alert the Reserve Bank of the alleged kickbacks scandal that was looming.
"I thought, well I'm not going to give in to the bastards, I'm hitting a raw nerve here … wimping out like that wasn't in my nature."
The Reserve Bank, NPA and Securency kept Mr Hood's repeated whistleblowing hidden from police until 2009 - seven months after he'd been made redundant - when the media reported on the company's corrupt business activities. The RBA was then forced to call in the Australian Federal Police, which charged Securency and NPA with bribery in 2011.
But Mr Hood and a second RBA banknote company whistleblower, James Shelton have revealed that several former directors of the two companies - including former long-time chairman of both companies, Graeme Thompson - have never been investigated over allegations they breached the Corporations Act by allowing extremely high-risk business practices.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has also never investigated whether any senior RBA company officers breached whistleblower protection laws in the manner they treated Mr Hood.
Today, Fairfax Media has also exposed confidential RBA files that reveal that NPA used a "frontman" to secretly liaise with Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law and bodyguard in an illegal effort to sell plastic banknotes to the dictator at the height of UN sanctions in 1998.
Confidential bank documents reveal that in May 1998 NPA launched a secret project codenamed "Delta" to secure $80 million that Saddam Hussein had "already allocated" to buy Australian plastic note technology. RBA officials working for NPA said this money could potentially be accessed by funnelling them through a Jordanian bank "with the green light of SH [Saddam Hussein]". The RBA officials used a frontman to cover up NPA's use of the notoriously corrupt Arshad Yassin - Saddam's brother-in-law and bodyguard - as a "facilitator".
Legal expert and Sydney University associate professor David Chaikin, who reviewed the Project Delta files for Fairfax Media, said they showed a "very strong prima-facie case" that the RBA officials involved in the Iraq trip had breached UN sanction 661. The sanction banned countries from engaging in any business dealings "which promote or are calculated to promote" the sale or supply of any goods to Iraq.
Project Delta was known to top RBA banknote officials, including former long-standing NPA director Mark Bethwaite. A Delta file faxed to Mr Bethwaite in 1998 states that Arshad Yassin's involvement in the secret deal was "critical as all decisions on this project will be taken by SH [Saddam Hussein]".
Project Delta was stopped in September 1998 after John Hines, an Australian diplomat in the Department of Foreign Affairs' Middle East branch, learnt of it and wrote a furious letter to NPA warning that its "informal meeting with Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law may have already breached Australia's obligations in international law".
Project Delta was never made public because Mr Bethwaite and other NPA directors kept it secret in 1998 and again in 2009 when the corruption allegations involving NPA and Securency were aired in the media.
Rather than stopping all high-risk business practices when Delta was wound down in 1998, NPA and Securency directors embraced bribery-prone activities, including paying foreign agents huge sums in return for them convincing overseas officials to award contracts to the RBA's banknote companies.
But the Australian Federal Police and ASIC have never investigated the former directors of the two companies for overseeing these high-risk practices.
Under Australian corporate law, directors must act with care and diligence to ensure their companies do not engage in corruption.
ASIC has not interviewed a single witness or suspect after it decided in 2012 not to conduct a formal inquiry. ASIC made the decision after reviewing documents gathered during the AFP bribery probe, despite the fact that the AFP never investigated directors for corporate offences.
In his first public interview, Mr Hood alleges that not only did some former directors allow risky business practices to occur, they also covered up suspected corruption.
One example cited by Mr Hood involved Mr Thompson in 2007 ordering NPA to wire $400,000 in taxpayer money to a Malaysian arms dealer who was helping the company to win banknote contracts and who had already been paid more than $2.5 million. The money was sent despite Mr Hood's pleas not to pay the dealer because he was suspected of being corrupt.
Mr Hood said he was "gobsmacked" by Mr Thompson's conduct because it clearly exposed the RBA company to possible bribery. Even after the arms dealer was sacked, Mr Thompson and other directors approved further payments to him in return for his lobbying of Malaysian officials. In 2011, Malaysian authorities charged the arms dealer with using NPA money to pay bribes.
Mr Hood also revealed that Mr Thompson and other directors, including Mr Bethwaite and former RBA board member Dick Warburton, agreed to conceal from Nepali authorities the secret commissions that NPA had paid to an agent in Nepal.
"The inaction by ASIC has been astounding. The parent organisation [the Reserve Bank] and the boards of directors have all got their responsibilities. Clearly there has been failings ... and they should be investigated," said Mr Hood, who was the NPA's company secretary between 2004 and 2008.
A second whistleblower, James Shelton, who was a sales manager at Securency in 2007 and 2008, said: "The board is responsible for corporate governance ... They [directors] would have known there were very large deals being done in very corrupt places."
Mr Hood has also criticising RBA governor Glenn Stevens for testifying before Federal Parliament that the first the RBA knew of corruption allegations involving Securency was when they were aired in the media in 2009.
Mr Hood said he had told the RBA in writing and in a verbal briefing in 2007 that Securency and NPA were exposed to corruption.
The RBA still owns all of NPA but sold its half-share in Securency this year. The bank, Mr Thompson, Mr Bethwaite and Mr Warburton all declined to answer questions.
Mr Hood has also publicly challenged RBA governor Glenn Stevens' parliamentary testimony in 2010-2012 on the scandal, saying it "wasn't the truth".
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt this morning said most Australians would be shocked by the revelation the Reserve Bank "was using their money to line up dirty deals with Saddam Hussein".
Mr Bandt, who has used his position on the Parlialment's economics committee to question the RBA's handling of alleged corruption within its banknote firms, said corporate regulator ASIC had to explain why it had not investigated the scandal.
"ASIC throws the book at a lone global-warming activist who sends out a press release, yet turns a blind eye to repeated claims of sustained corporate corruption in the Reserve Bank," he said.
Mr Bandt said the Greens would ask ASIC to explain to Parliament why it has failed to investigate serious and repeated claims of illegality within the RBA's corporate activities.
He also said the Greens would push for senior RBA officials to re-appear before Parliament to answer questions about their previous testimony.
The RBA in a statement said the 1998 Iraq trip was ‘‘ill-advised’’.
‘‘No banknotes were ultimately supplied to Iraq.  On the records available to the Bank, the project went into abeyance after concerns were raised by DFAT with the then CEO of NPA,’’ a bank spokeswoman said.
She said bank governor Glenn Stevens had always answered questions about the scandal truthfully when appearing before various parliamentary committees.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/you-dont-fit-in-f-off-reserve-bank-whistleblower-told-20130930-2undq.html

SADDAM AND THE DEAL OF A LIFETIME

September 30, 2013 Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie

Project Delta was the Reserve Bank's $80million secret. The problem was the deal was illegal, but that didn't worry Saddam Hussein ... or the RBA.

'The worst corruption scandal in our history'

A joint Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation reveals shocking new allegations in the Securency / Note Printing Australia scandal.

It is early summer in Baghdad and the heat is already stifling. Two Australian businessmen, still stiff from the long drive across parched desert plains from Jordan, walk along a crowded street.
They, and the armed henchmen escorting them, find relief inside an airconditioned office belonging to a well-dressed man with fair hair and striking blue eyes - unusual for an Arab in these parts.

The practices included paying agents after they had been sacked for bribery concerns. 

But in the court of Saddam Hussein, Arshad Yassin is far from your average man: the Iraqi dictator's brother-in-law is the feared former head of Hussein's private security unit, his personal pilot and, by virtue of his influential position, a notorious plunderer of Iraq's historic treasures.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Photo: Reuters

For the Australians, Yassin is the conduit for the deal of a lifetime, even though what is being discussed on that hot May day in 1998 is against international law. Given the high stakes, and the involvement of Hussein's inner circle, those present also know that what they are discussing has to be kept confidential.

Advertisement

And so it has remained for 15 years, due to an extraordinary exercise in concealment by the organisation responsible for sending the Australians to Iraq - the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Today, Fairfax Media and the ABC's Four Corners program reveal confidential RBA documents that show its banknote-printing arm, Note Printing Australia, launched ''Project Delta'' in May 1998 to secure $80 million set aside by Hussein for new currency.

Hussein's brother-in-law Arshad Yassin. Photo: Supplied

The only problem was that United Nations trade sanctions on Iraq - which banned promoting business deals with Hussein's regime - meant the Project Delta proposal was illegal. The RBA's brush with Hussein was the first of many instances where its polymer banknote firms, NPA and Securency, got involved with dubious people and allegedly illegal activity.
Those companies and several of their former executives have now been called to account, charged with Australia's first foreign bribery offences. But what about the businessmen and RBA officials who sat on the companies' boards and were responsible for their good corporate conduct?
Why, when they repeatedly failed to act on evidence of alleged corruption across several years, has the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, not sought to explore their role in the scandal?

Whistleblowers Brian Hood (left) and James Shelton. Photo: Jason South

Former deputy RBA governor Graeme Thompson and former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton were NPA directors at the time of the Iraq venture. While neither man would answer questions about their knowledge of the Iraq trip or other matters related to NPA's alleged corruption, there is no doubt both knew the RBA was responsible for enforcing United Nations Security Council sanction 661, banning all business interactions with Hussein's regime.
Thompson is now a director of AMP Superannuation Limited and Warburton is chairman of the Westfield Retail Trust. Their fellow NPA director at the time of the Iraq trip, Mark Bethwaite, is on the board of the Sydney Catchment Authority and was treasurer of the federal Liberal Party between 2006 and 2008.
The Iraq currency deal might have gone ahead if not for the intervention of Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which later in 1998 warned NPA that what had occurred ''may have already breached Australia's obligations in international law''.
Making matters worse, wrote DFAT's assistant secretary of Middle East and Africa branch, John Hines, was that at least one of the RBA's men had travelled to Iraq using an official Australian government passport, a fact that ''only adds to the potential for embarrassment to the government''.
The existence of Project Delta has never been publicly acknowledged by anyone from the RBA and the federal police were not aware of the Iraq documents until Fairfax Media provided them.
Legal expert Dr David Chaikin believes the Iraqi dealings were a prima-facie breach of Australia's obligations under international law. ''They were acting dishonestly in trying to circumvent the UN sanctions and Australian law,'' says Dr Chaikin, from the University of Sydney's business school.
For more than a decade, Thompson and some of his fellow directors, including the RBA assistant governor who replaced Thompson as chairman, Bob Rankin, authorised tens of millions of dollars to be transferred overseas by NPA and Securency to overseas agents who promised to win the firm contracts. These agents operated in countries where bribery is common and included an arms dealer, a foreign spy chief and a white-collar criminal.
Not once did the directors, or any of the RBA's leadership team, raise any concerns with police about the use of agents, not even when a whistleblower provided them with specific evidence of bribery in 2007 and 2008. The RBA only called in police after Fairfax Media reported on corruption concerns in May 2009.
Despite criminal charges against NPA and Securency, and a host of former executives in 2011, the companies' directors have not been scrutinised. Australian law requires directors to act with diligence to ensure their firms avoid illegality, but ASIC has, for reasons it won't explain, rejected an AFP referral to examine possible corporate offences.
Today, in addition to the revelation of the RBA's dealings with Saddam Hussein's family, two whistleblowers, who are also key police witnesses in the bribery case, speak publicly for the first time about the scandal.
Former NPA company secretary Brian Hood and former Securency sales executive James Shelton accuse the boards of both companies of failing in their corporate duties to the extent that ASIC has no option but to investigate.
For instance, Hood says that, in 2007, chairman Thompson ordered him to send $400,000 to a Malaysian arms dealer, despite concerns the arms dealer was corrupt. Hood and Shelton say they are staggered by ASIC's lack of interest in NPA and Securency board members. ''It seems that there are a group of people that are untouchable. Why, I don't know,'' Hood says.
The small group of men who worked in senior management or sales for the RBA's currency firms lived in a world of power and privilege.
Their job was to fly to often exotic destinations to meet politicians, central bankers and senior bureaucrats and convince them to buy Australia's unique plastic banknotes.
With official Australian government passports, doors were always open. But the RBA men knew that what happened behind closed doors had to remain secret. The two NPA men who went to Baghdad in 1998 were certainly aware of the clandestine nature of their business.
In a confidential report faxed on May 22, 1998, to Bethwaite, one of the NPA men - who cannot be named for legal reasons - outlined what role Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law, Yassin, was to play and how his involvement had to be kept secret.
''Mr Arshed [sic] Yassin: Married to Saddam Hussein's sister and first cousin of SH [Saddam Hussein]. Extremely influential, he is willing to open all the doors for us. He confirmed that SH has seen polymer notes samples and is keen to adopt our product. AY's [Arshad Yassin's] assistance is critical, as all decisions on this project will be taken by SH,'' the report states.
The fax goes on to describe NPA using a ''front man'' to conceal its dealings with Saddam Hussein's inner circle.
Iraq did need new banknotes. Its money was old and easily counterfeited. But UN sanctions made it impossible for any currency printer to deal with Iraq without an export permit from its home government.
However, according to the faxed report, Hussein was keen on the Australian technology and had ''instructed the central bank to freeze all negotiations with other suppliers, and to provide him with a full proposal for the polymer banknotes''.
Bethwaite, who says he cannot recall reading the Iraq fax and asked that all questions be put to the RBA, was warned that rival currency firms were aware of NPA's dealings in Iraq and ''are actively trying to undermine our efforts''. ''For this reason confidentiality on this project is paramount.''
Hussein's men were told by the Australians that although NPA could not deliver any product until the trade embargo was lifted, ''nothing was stopping us to sign a contract and to have products (banknotes, machines, etc) manufactured as long as we had a guarantee of payment established''.
Iraq had the money to pay for new banknotes, with Yassin advising that ''SH office has already allocated USm 65 for the total project''.
A payment option proposed by the Iraqis involved a private bank paying on Iraq's behalf, with the Central Bank of Jordan acting as guarantor. ''This option only possible with the green light of SH,'' the fax concludes.
For 11 years, the Iraq fax remained buried in a file at NPA's Craigieburn headquarters in Melbourne's north. It was found in 2009 by veteran NPA employee Danny Reid, who, after more than 20 years working on the technical side of the business, found himself in 2005 among the jet-setting chosen few charged with selling plastic banknotes around the world.
Reid, head of NPA's sales and marketing since 2005, declined to be interviewed. However, Fairfax Media has obtained a statement by Reid that was lodged with police this year. It has never before been made public and is damning.
Reid claims that NPA directors and RBA officials were aware of ''high-risk strategies and poor business practices'' since early 1998. These practices included paying agents after they had been sacked for bribery concerns.
''The ongoing authorised payments to agents that had already had their contracts terminated, even after the [internal] … investigation, cannot be ignored. If NPA directors had such a high level of concern in regard to the high probability of corruption and criminal activity, how could they possibly authorise further payments [to overseas agents]?''
When Reid found the Project Delta documents on Iraq in June 2009, he telephoned Rankin, then assistant RBA governor and NPA chairman, and read their contents.
In response to questions from Fairfax Media in 2009 about the Iraq trip, Rankin released a brief statement declaring no deal had been done and no sanctions were breached. He did not mention the involvement of Hussein's brother-in-law nor the DFAT advice that sanctions might have already been broken.
Ironically, it was the 2006 Cole inquiry into wheat exporter AWB's corrupt dealings with Iraq that prompted NPA's directors to examine their company's own use of overseas agents to win contracts.
A series of internal reviews in 2007 and 2008 found evidence of corrupt behaviour by NPA agents overseas. But neither the NPA board nor the RBA leadership alerted federal police for further investigation.
Hood, as NPA company secretary, was central to these internal probes. He documented explosive allegations of the company's overseas agents paying bribes to win deals in Malaysia and Nepal.
But despite passing on his concerns to the board, Hood witnessed Thompson and other directors authorise further payments to allegedly dodgy foreign agents.
''I was pretty stunned by the decision to let the funds go,'' Hood says. ''I thought this is clearly not in the best interests of the company.''
In June 2007, Hood personally briefed RBA's deputy governor, Ric Battellino, about his corruption concerns. Battellino then asked Hood to put his concerns in writing.
Still no one at the RBA called the federal police or ASIC.
Instead, corporate law firm Freehills, which has no police powers, was asked to investigate. Freehills found no breaches of Australian law.
In the wake of Hood's concerns, NPA decided to sack all its overseas agents and, in late 2007, Thompson stood down as NPA chairman. But he remained in charge of the board of sister firm Securency.
Hood's fellow whistleblower, James Shelton, arrived at Securency in 2007 as a fresh-faced sales executive. Although he and Hood worked just a few hundred metres apart in companies devoted to the same task - selling the Reserve Bank's polymer currency material across the globe - they only met years later when they became star police witnesses.
Shelton says in his first week at Securency he suspected the company was paying bribes. He was further alarmed when he learnt that while NPA had dismissed its agents, Securency, still chaired by Thompson, had decided to keep its far bigger network of fixers, including those sacked by its sister firm.
''If it's not good for one, it's not good for the other,'' he says.
In 2008, Hood was pushed out of NPA. After doing so much to report corruption, he was told by new NPA chairman Bob Rankin that his position was redundant.
Around the same time, Shelton had seen enough and also wanted out. He felt he could not go to the board because another employee with similar concerns had been sacked after reporting matters to a senior Securency manager whose job it was to liaise with directors.
Instead, Shelton contacted the AFP while still working for Securency (his contract would expire at the end of 2008).
While the police showed some initial interest in acting on his concerns, they soon stalled.
In response, Shelton decided to contact The Age. With a government and intelligence background, going to the press was not a natural instinct for Shelton.
But it paid off. The federal police launched a full-blown probe after the firms' use of foreign agents was reported on the front page.
Australia's banknote bribery scandal has damaged many. Two overseas agents have been charged with paying bribes on behalf of the RBA firms, with more arrests expected. One has taken his own life.
Former senior staff from Securency and NPA have also been charged in connection with the agents' alleged bribery. Whistleblowers Hood and Shelton were ostracised, left disillusioned and temporarily unemployed. But where others have paid a price, the men who sat around the board tables of both RBA firms have not been asked by anyone how this happened under their watch.
Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie are investigative reporters.
Watch Four Corners at 8.30pm tonight on ABC1 for exclusive interviews with the key police witnesses.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/saddam-and-the-deal-of-a-lifetime-20130929-2umay.html#ixzz2gMtZij5l

 

RBA'S ILLEGAL BID FOR SADDAM DEAL

September 30, 2013 Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker 

The Reserve Bank used a ''frontman'' to secretly liaise with Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law and bodyguard in an illegal effort to sell plastic banknotes to the dictator at the height of UN sanctions, according to confidential RBA files.

Project Delta was never made public because Mr Bethwaite and other NPA directors kept it secret in 1998 and again in 2009 when the corruption allegations involving NPA and Securency were aired in the media. 

The revelation comes as two RBA whistleblowers, now police witnesses in the banknote bribery scandal, break their silence on the failure of the corporate watchdog ASIC to investigate the ''untouchable'' directors of two allegedly corrupt RBA companies.

Click to play video

'The worst corruption scandal in our history'

A joint Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation reveals shocking new allegations in the Securency / Note Printing Australia scandal.

The two polymer banknote firms, Note Printing Australia and Securency, are facing criminal charges for allegedly paying kickbacks to win banknote printing contracts.

Advertisement

But the firms' former directors, who were appointed by the RBA, have never been investigated for allowing corruption-prone business practices to flourish for 10 years.
Whistleblower and former NPA executive Brian Hood has also publicly challenged RBA governor Glenn Stevens' parliamentary testimony in 2010-2012 on the scandal, saying it ''wasn't the truth''.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Photo: Reuters

A joint Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation can reveal that allegedly corrupt practices spread - with the knowledge of some directors - for many years before Mr Hood and a second whistleblower, James Shelton, raised concerns that ultimately led to police charging the two RBA companies with bribery in 2011.
Confidential bank documents reveal that in May 1998 NPA launched a secret project codenamed "Delta" to secure $80 million that Saddam Hussein had ''already allocated'' to buy Australian plastic note technology. RBA officials working for NPA said these funds could potentially be accessed by funnelling them through a Jordanian bank ''with the green light of SH [Saddam Hussein]''. The RBA officials used a frontman to cover up NPA's use of the notoriously corrupt Arshad Yassin - Saddam's brother-in-law and bodyguard - as a ''facilitator''.
Legal expert and Sydney University associate professor David Chaikin, who reviewed the Project Delta files for Fairfax Media, said they showed a ''very strong prima facie'' case that the RBA officials involved in the Iraq trip had breached UN sanction 661. The sanction banned Australians from engaging in any business dealings ''which promote or are calculated to promote'' the sale or supply of any goods to Iraq.

Whistleblower: Former NPA company secretary Brian Hood. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

Project Delta was known to top RBA banknote officials, including former long-standing NPA director Mark Bethwaite. A Delta file faxed to Mr Bethwaite in 1998 states that Arshad Yassin's involvement in the secret deal was ''critical as all decisions on this project will be taken by SH [Saddam Hussein]''.
Project Delta was stopped in September 1998 after John Hines, an Australian diplomat in the Department of Foreign Affairs' Middle East branch, learnt of it and wrote a furious letter to NPA warning that its ''informal meeting with Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law may have already breached Australia's obligations in international law''.
Project Delta was never made public because Mr Bethwaite and other NPA directors kept it secret in 1998 and again in 2009 when the corruption allegations involving NPA and Securency were aired in the media.

'Facilitator': Saddam's brother-in-law Arshad Yassin. Photo: Supplied

Rather than stopping all high-risk business practices when Delta was wound down in 1998, NPA and Securency directors embraced bribery-prone activities, including paying foreign agents huge sums in return for them convincing overseas officials to award contracts to the RBA's banknote companies.
But the Australian Federal Police and ASIC have never investigated the former directors of the two firms, including the long-standing chairman and former RBA deputy governor Graeme Thompson, for overseeing these high-risk practices. Under Australian corporate law, directors must act with care and diligence to ensure their firms do not engage in corruption.
ASIC has not interviewed a single witness or suspect after it decided in 2012 not to conduct a formal inquiry. ASIC made the decision after reviewing documents gathered during the AFP bribery probe, despite the fact that the AFP never investigated directors for alleged corporate offences.

Glenn Stevens: Brian Hood has publicly challenged the RBA governor's parliamentary testimony". Photo: Rob Homer

In his first public interview, former NPA company secretary Brian Hood alleges that not only did some former directors allow risky business practices to occur, they also covered up suspected corruption.
One example cited by Mr Hood involved Mr Thompson in 2007 ordering NPA to wire $400,000 in taxpayer funds to a Malaysian arms dealer who was helping the firm to win banknote contracts and who had already been paid more than $2.5 million. The money was sent despite Mr Hood's pleas not to pay the dealer as he was suspected of being corrupt.
Mr Hood said he was "gobsmacked" by Mr Thompson's conduct because it clearly exposed the RBA firm to possible bribery. Even after the arms dealer was sacked, Mr Thompson and other directors approved further payments to him in return for his lobbying of Malaysian officials. In 2011, Malaysian authorities charged the arms dealer with using NPA funds to allegedly pay bribes.

Revelation: Details have emerged about The Reserve Bank's alleged participation in top-secret "Project Delta". Photo: AFP

Mr Hood also revealed that Mr Thompson and other directors, including Mr Bethwaite and former RBA board member Dick Warburton, agreed to conceal from Nepali authorities the secret commissions that NPA had paid to an agent in Nepal.
"The inaction by ASIC has been astounding. The parent organisation [the Reserve Bank] and the boards of directors have all got their responsibilities. Clearly there has been failings … and they should be investigated," said Mr Hood, who was the NPA's company secretary between 2004 and 2008.
Whistleblower James Shelton, who was a sales manager at Securency in 2007 and 2008, said: "The board is responsible for corporate governance … They [directors] would have known there were very large deals being done in very corrupt places.''
Mr Hood has also attacked RBA governor Glenn Stevens for testifying before Parliament that the first the RBA knew of corruption allegations involving Securency was when they were aired in the media in 2009.
Mr Hood said he had told the RBA in writing and in a verbal briefing in 2007 that Securency and NPA were exposed to alleged corruption.
The RBA still owns all of NPA but sold its half-share in Securency earlier this year. The bank, Mr Thompson, Mr Bethwaite and Mr Warburton all declined to answer questions.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/rbas-illegal-bid-for-saddam-deal-20130929-2umi4.html 

HOW THE RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA OUTSOURCES ITS ROLE TO FOREIGN PRIVATE BANKERS

Ann Pettifor 22 September 2011

The tectonic plates of Australia's economy are shifting, as the mining boom generates the kind of ebullience common to all booms.
But cracks are appearing that could quickly overwhelm the gains made by the boom. These expose the Reserve Bank of Australia's flawed management of Australia's financial system.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the RBA's role (according to the 1959 Reserve Bank Act) is "to ensure that the monetary and banking policy of the Bank is directed to the greatest advantage of the people of Australia … to the maintenance of full employment … and the economic prosperity and welfare of the people..."
We need to bear that in mind in light of the RBA's recent policy stance. First the policy to set the highest official interest rate in the developed world. Second, the policy that permits the Australian dollar to rise to unsustainable levels. Third, the policy that allows Australia's banks to go abroad to raise funding in international capital markets.  
The RBA should fulfil its mandate by providing Australia's banks with finance - just as the US Fed and the Bank of England do. The process is a virtually costless way of injecting finance into the system, at very low rates of interest. However the RBA has chosen not to.
The cost of borrowing in foreign markets has risen recently because of the crisis in the eurozone. Australian banks' credit costs in international money markets have increased by more than 1.00 per cent in less than three months.¹ In addition these banks face exchange rate risks - risks that could be avoided if the RBA was fulfilling its role.
But these are not the only risks posed by this policy. Foreign bankers lend to Australian banks by borrowing from their own central banks – at rates of 1 per cent or less. When they collect the prize of lending at 4.5 per cent, they do so by raiding the coffers of the RBA for hard currency. In other words, foreign private bankers are leaning on their taxpayer-backed central banks to make a quick and lucrative buck at the expense of Australians. The RBA turns a blind eye to this form of daylight robbery.
It gets worse. By borrowing in global capital markets, banks attract funds into Australia - $100 billion this year. These, added to inward investment flows into mining sectors, force up the exchange rate, the cost of Australian labour, products and services. Indeed there is a direct causal line between a very high rate of interest; banks borrowing abroad, the rise in the dollar, and the collapse of Bluescope Steel.
The ability of central banks to create cheap, but carefully regulated finance is intended to encourage and support sound private and public investment to guarantee the prosperity and welfare of Australians. The RBA has outsourced this role to foreign private banks.
Some might say that the big four Australian banks are very profitable indeed; that they survived the tsunami of the GFC – and that there is little to worry about.
Except that one small 'crack' has appeared in the system. International market players have taken out insurance against Australia's big four banks defaulting on their foreign loans – Credit Default Swaps (or CDSs). CDs's are 'premiums' taken out by speculators that do not own the underlying asset insured. (Something forbidden by regulators on normal insurance, because if we were allowed to take out insurance on another's asset e.g. property – the incentive to burn it down would be very great. But hey, this is the global financial system where anything goes.)
The 'premium' on the likelihood of the four Australian banks' defaulting has climbed by 50 per cent over August – indicating that speculators are losing confidence in these banks.
The noise around the mining boom means that this 'crack' appearing in the Australian economy is not audible to most. Nevertheless it poses a grave threat to Australians: one that the RBA would be wise to address before the onset of Credit Crunch 2.0.
1. Satjayit Das, author of Traders, Guns and Money in The Big Picture: From Green to Red - is Credit Crunch 2.0 imminent?
Ann Pettifor is a British Economist who co-founded the global Jubilee 2000 Campaign. She visited Australia last week on a speaking tour.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2911672.html 

 

THE MONEY CHANGERS: ROTHSCHILD BANKING DYNASTY SAID TO BE WORTH $100 TRILLION

November 3, 2012 By Left Hook: ‘When The Rothschilds Dial 911′ By Dean Henderson

Since America’s inception…  there has been a lingering notion that European Illuminati bankers seek to bring America to its knees and return it to the fold of the Crown of England, which centuries ago became the key political vassal for the Eight Families who own majority stock in every private central bank in the world- Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman, Goldman Sachs, Warburg, Lazard and Israel Moses Seif.
Many US Presidents warned of the intrigues of the cabal, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams; and later Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.  The latter two were assassinated for trying to nationalize the Federal Reserve via the issuance of Treasury Department-backed (publicly-issued) currency. 

As cited in my Big Oil & Their Bankers… book and by others, the Eight Families own 52% of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, far and away the most powerful Fed Bank.  Their ownership is disguised under names like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  
Do I exaggerate when I claim that there are Eight Families?  Well, yes, actually these oligarchs have interbred to the point that they are now, for all practical purposes, one big family, with the Rothschilds being the most powerful.  Their net worth alone is estimated at well over $100 trillion. These people, whose latest justification for lording over us is that they are descended from Jesus Christ himself, are, for obvious reasons, counter-revolutionary.  In their collective if obtuse minds, there are no good revolutions.  Democracy is antithema.  Government is something that only gets in the way.  It must be discredited and bought.  The American Revolution really pissed these inbreds off.  In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Crown of England still holds sway via the Governor General.  Most European countries retained their monarchies.  In America, we had a revolution, democracy and government. A medieval rollback of the American Revolution begins with the concept that “government is the root of all evil”.  This strain of thinking is promoted by the Saudi/Israeli-owned Fox News.  These nations are not “Islamic” and “Jewish”.  They are fronts for the Crown of England and the Rothschilds.  The well-paid corporate lackey leadership of the Republican Party pushes this anti-government agenda, while the idiocracy misnomer known as the Tea Party takes this monarchist argument to its fascist extreme.

Deutsche Bank: born of of the Third Reich, now influencing the European Super State plan

Key to this revolutionary rollback is that seminal event- 911- which was used by Windsor family country cousin George Bush Jr. to dismantle our Bill of Rights, bankrupt our nation and destroy our image throughout the world via two oil-grab, narco-stimulant, contractor-friendly wars.  In the weeks before 911 the financial weekly Barons reported that Deutsche Bank had purchased huge put options (betting that a stock will go down in price) on American & United Airlines, and WTC reinsurance giants Munich RE, Swiss RE and the French Axa. Deutsche Bank, historically owned by the Nazi-funding Warburg family, bought Bankers Trust in 1999 to become the world’s largest bank with $882 billion in assets.  Bankers Trust, as its name indicates, had been the Eight Families’ US wealth repository and is the largest shareholder of the Four Horsemen- Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell- who later reaped the Iraq/Afghanistan oil bonanza. In 2001 Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-MI) Banking Committee fingered Banker’s Trust as a major player in drug money laundering.  On August 28th, just two weeks before 911, Deutsche Bank executive Kevin Ingram pled guilty to laundering heroin proceeds and arranging US weapons sales to parties in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  A June 15, 2001 New York Post article said Osama bin Laden was the likely buyer.  Kevin Ingram is a close friend of Clinton Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs insider Robert Rubin, now a board member at Citigroup.  Ingram had worked at both Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.

Alvin Bernard “Buzzy” Krongard: Israel’s agent in the C.I.A.

Banker’s Trust purchased the fast-growing Alex Brown investment bank in 1997 before the two merged into Deutsche Bank.  Alex Brown took its name from founder A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard who served as chairman until the 1997 Bankers Trust buyout.  Krongard is now the #3 man at CIA.  On September 15th, four days after 911, the New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank Global Private Banking Chairman Mayo Shattuck III had suddenly resigned. Mohammed Atta and two of other alleged hijackers had accounts at the Deutsche Bank Hamburg headquarters.  There were reports that bin Laden’s family had taken a large stake in Deutsche Bank with help from Carlyle Group financial advisor George Bush Sr.  The bin Laden’s had $2 million invested in Carlyle Group.  They held big stakes in Microsoft and Boeing, and had extensive business dealings with Citigroup, GE, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Fremont Group (recently spun-off by Bechtel). Within twenty days of 911, Deutsche Bank had hired away (effectively silencing) SEC lead investigator Richard Walker, whose main task would have been to delve into the mysterious shorting of airline and insurance stocks prior to 911. The final phase of counter-revolution can be accomplished through the withdrawal of Eight Families’ funding of America’s $11 trillion debt, which has mostly accrued due to the US military’s role as mercenary praetorian guard of the Illuminati global empire, coupled with a devastating US military defeat in Afghanistan.

Grand Master of Scottish Rite Freemasonry and NWO  visionary Albert Pike

On August 15, 1871 Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry General Albert Pike, who later founded the Ku Klux Klan and prosecuted the Indian Wars, wrote a letter to Italian P-1 33rd Degree Grand Commander and Mafia founder Guiseppe Mazzini.  In the letter Pike talked of a Brotherhood plan for three World Wars.  The first, he said, would destroy czarist Russia and create a Communist “bogeyman” which the bankers could employ to justify their foreign interventions around the world.  The second, Pike said, would be used to create Israel, which would become a mercenary force for the international bankers, protecting Middle Eastern oil interests for Rothschild and Rockefeller combines.

The Third World War, stated Pike’s letter, would pit Arabs against Zionists, and would culminate in a New World Order completely controlled by the international bankers and their secret societies.  Pike described the events that would unfold as pretext for WWIII, “We must provoke a social cataclysm which in all its horror…everywhere the citizens obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries…will receive the true light through the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out into public view. In June 2001, a female Russian doctor stated in a Pravda column that the US would be subject to a massive terrorist attack in late August 2001.  She was then asked what she believed was coming next.  She suggested selling dollars and buying Russian rubles, saying that the secret group behind 911 was the most powerful force in the world, worth over $300 trillion.  She said this group would soon “strike America in the back” while it was down and that the next shoe to drop would be the decimation of the US economy.  This “secret group” could only be the Illuminati Rothschild-led Eight Families.

Cecil Rhodes: Architect of the globalist ‘Round Table’ steering group.

Cecil Rhodes, the Rothschild protégé who founded the Business Roundtable in the early 20th century wrote his last will and testament in 1877.  Rhodes’ vision was implemented through the establishment of the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London.  Rhodes founded the Standard Chartered Bank, whose UAE Dubai branch supplied the 911 hijackers with the funds needed to carry out the attack.

Rhodes last will and testament said he hoped, “to establish a trust, to and for the establishment and promotion and development of a secret society, the true aim and object whereof shall be the extension of British rule throughout the world…and the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” Dialing all American Revolutionaries!
Dean Henderson is the author of four books:

Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve & Stickin’ it to the Matrix.  Subscribe free to his weekly column Left Hook

http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/11/03/the-money-changers-rothchild-banking-dynasty-said-to-be-worth-100-trillion/

 

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A REMARKABLE LEADER: JOHN DOERR, VENTURE CAPITALIST

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com  

THE ROTHSCHILD FAMILY - PUPPET MASTERS - WORLD'S ONLY TRILLIONAIRES

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com  

WHY 500 TRILLION DOLLAR RICH ROTHSCHILD'S ARE NOT ON FORBES RICHEST PEOPLE LIST?

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com  

WHISTLEBLOWER KAREN HUDES CORRUPTION / WORLD BANK EXPOSED

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com   

HERMITAGE CEO BROWDER: DON'T INVEST IN RUSSIA TODAY

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com  

JAMES WOLFENSOHN, FORMER WORLD BANK PRESIDENT SPILLS THE BEANS: BIG SHIFT COMING

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/OR HEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES.
AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com 

ROLLING STONE : ROTHSCHILD CORRUPTION GOES MAINSTREAM

May 10, 2013 by Volubrjotr 

 Jacob Rothschild

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

1. IMF Reassess Global Economic Fate: Emerging Economies Slow ~ No Longer The Dynamic Engine For Global Growth!
2. Alert => Banker’s Martial Law Build Up: The Rothschild Government Is Ready For Chaos To Escape Justice For Their Crimes ~ Nuremberg Trials Await Them!

Barry Soetoro

1. You Think Flooding The U.S. With QE4 Is Bad ~ Well You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Japan & European Central Bank Printed Funny Money Is Coming To America! This “NEXT” Mafia “BUBBLE” Scheme To Usurp The United States Must Be Stopped Now!

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

1. Hungary Kills The Rothschild Banks: Ordered To Vacate Country.
2. Looming Crash Of Rothschild Fed-Fueled Bubble Economy: Fed Reserve’s Charter Expires 2013!

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It’s about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

1. The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
2. 36 Rothschild UBS Banksters Face Criminal Charges In Liborgate Robbery: Rothschild’s Waterloo!

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
“It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”
The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.
But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.
“A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
“Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

1. ROLLING STONE: “Conspiracy Theorists Of The World, Believers In The Hidden Hands Of The Rothschilds, We Skeptics Owe You An Apology.”
2. Why Western Democracy Is Mind Control And Invisible Government: Rothschild Banking Mafia. Pravda.Ru

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.
The banks found a loophole, a basic flaw in the machine. Across the financial system, there are places where prices or official indices are set based upon unverified data sent in by private banks and financial companies. In other words, we gave the players with incentives to game the system institutional roles in the economic infrastructure.

1. President Putin Stamping Out The Rothschild Rockefeller Syndicate Maggots From Russia!
2. BREAKING => CNN Goldman Sachs & The Rothschild Zionist Matrix: Landmark Case ~ Rothschildism Delineated From Abrahamic Judaism!!

Libor, which measures the prices banks charge one another to borrow money, is a perfect example, not only of this basic flaw in the price-setting system but of the weakness in the regulatory framework supposedly policing it. Couple a voluntary reporting scheme with too-big-to-fail status and a revolving-door legal system, and what you get is unstoppable corruption.
Every morning, 18 of the world’s biggest banks submit data to an office in London about how much they believe they would have to pay to borrow from other banks. The 18 banks together are called the “Libor panel,” and when all of these data from all 18 panelist banks are collected, the numbers are averaged out. What emerges, every morning at 11:30 London time, are the daily Libor figures.
Banks submit numbers about borrowing in 10 different currencies across 15 different time periods, e.g., loans as short as one day and as long as one year. This mountain of bank-submitted data is used every day to create benchmark rates that affect the prices of everything from credit cards to mortgages to currencies to commercial loans (both short- and long-term) to swaps.

Gangster Bankers Broke Every Law in the Book

Dating back perhaps as far as the early Nineties, traders and others inside these banks were sometimes calling up the company geeks responsible for submitting the daily Libor numbers (the “Libor submitters”) and asking them to fudge the numbers. Usually, the gimmick was the trader had made a bet on something – a swap, currencies, something – and he wanted the Libor submitter to make the numbers look lower (or, occasionally, higher) to help his bet pay off.
Famously, one Barclays trader monkeyed with Libor submissions in exchange for a bottle of Bollinger champagne, but in some cases, it was even lamer than that. This is from an exchange between a trader and a Libor submitter at the Royal Bank of Scotland:

SWISS FRANC TRADER: can u put 6m swiss libor in low pls?…
PRIMARY SUBMITTER: Whats it worth
SWSISS FRANC TRADER: ive got some sushi rolls from yesterday?…
PRIMARY SUBMITTER: ok low 6m, just for u
SWISS FRANC TRADER: wooooooohooooooo. . . thatd be awesome

1. John Kerry’s Syrian Amityville Horror: Violates The United State’s Constitution War Powers Act & International Law!
2. Jordan to Head Syria Rebel Arms Program: Following Obama/Kerry Visit ~ Jordan Promised 1,056 Double Oil Pipe Line from Iraq ~ Jordan Now Helps Rothschilds Tumble Syria’s Central Bank!

Screwing around with world interest rates that affect billions of people in exchange for day-old sushi – it’s hard to imagine an image that better captures the moral insanity of the modern financial-services sector.
Hundreds of similar exchanges were uncovered when regulators like Britain’s Financial Services Authority and the U.S. Justice Department started burrowing into the befouled entrails of Libor. The documentary evidence of anti-competitive manipulation they found was so overwhelming that, to read it, one almost becomes embarrassed for the banks. “It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money,” chirped one yen trader. “Pure manipulation going on,” wrote another.
Yet despite so many instances of at least attempted manipulation, the banks mostly skated. Barclays got off with a relatively minor fine in the $450 million range, UBS was stuck with $1.5 billion in penalties, and RBS was forced to give up $615 million. Apart from a few low-level flunkies overseas, no individual involved in this scam that impacted nearly everyone in the industrialized world was even threatened with criminal prosecution.
Two of America’s top law-enforcement officials, Attorney General Eric Holder and former Justice Department Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer, confessed that it’s dangerous to prosecute offending banks because they are simply too big. Making arrests, they say, might lead to “collateral consequences” in the economy.
The relatively small sums of money extracted in these settlements did not go toward reparations for the cities, towns and other victims who lost money due to Libor manipulation. Instead, it flowed mindlessly into government coffers. So it was left to towns and cities like Baltimore (which lost money due to fluctuations in their municipal investments caused by Libor movements), pensions like the New Britain, Connecticut, Firefighters’ and Police Benefit Fund, and other foundations – and even individuals (billionaire real-estate developer Sheldon Solow, who filed his own suit in February, claims that his company lost $450 million because of Libor manipulation) – to sue the banks for damages.
One of the biggest Libor suits was proceeding on schedule when, early in March, an army of superstar lawyers working on behalf of the banks descended upon federal judge Naomi Buchwald in the Southern District of New York to argue an extraordinary motion to dismiss. The banks’ legal dream team drew from heavyweight Beltway-connected firms like Boies Schiller (you remember David Boies represented Al Gore), Davis Polk (home of top ex-regulators like former SEC enforcement chief Linda Thomsen) and Covington & Burling, the onetime private-practice home of both Holder and Breuer.
The presence of Covington & Burling in the suit – representing, of all companies, Citigroup, the former employer of current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew – was particularly galling. Right as the Libor case was being dismissed, the firm had hired none other than Lanny Breuer, the same Lanny Breuer who, just a few months before, was the assistant attorney general who had balked at criminally prosecuting UBS over Libor because, he said, “Our goal here is not to destroy a major financial institution.”
In any case, this all-star squad of white-shoe lawyers came before Buchwald and made the mother of all audacious arguments. Robert Wise of Davis Polk, representing Bank of America, told Buchwald that the banks could not possibly be guilty of anti- competitive collusion because nobody ever said that the creation of Libor was competitive. “It is essential to our argument that this is not a competitive process,” he said. “The banks do not compete with one another in the submission of Libor.”
If you squint incredibly hard and look at the issue through a mirror, maybe while standing on your head, you can sort of see what Wise is saying. In a very theoretical, technical sense, the actual process by which banks submit Libor data – 18 geeks sending numbers to the British Bankers’ Association offices in London once every morning – is not competitive per se.

Leather gloves worn by Lincoln to Ford’s Theater on the night of his assassination. Blood stains are visible at the cuffs.

1. President Lincoln’s Plan Of Doing Away With Rothschild’s Federal Reserve.

But these numbers are supposed to reflect interbank-loan prices derived in a real, competitive market. Saying the Libor submission process is not competitive is sort of like pointing out that bank robbers obeyed the speed limit on the way to the heist. It’s the silliest kind of legal sophistry.
But Wise eventually outdid even that argument, essentially saying that while the banks may have lied to or cheated their customers, they weren’t guilty of the particular crime of antitrust collusion. This is like the old joke about the lawyer who gets up in court and claims his client had to be innocent, because his client was committing a crime in a different state at the time of the offense.
“The plaintiffs, I believe, are confusing a claim of being perhaps deceived,” he said, “with a claim for harm to competition.”
Judge Buchwald swallowed this lunatic argument whole and dismissed most of the case. Libor, she said, was a “cooperative endeavor” that was “never intended to be competitive.” Her decision “does not reflect the reality of this business, where all of these banks were acting as competitors throughout the process,” said the antitrust lawyer Sokol. Buchwald made this ruling despite the fact that both the U.S. and British governments had already settled with three banks for billions of dollars for improper manipulation, manipulation that these companies admitted to in their settlements.
Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld LLP, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs in this Libor suit, declined to comment specifically on the dismissal. But he did talk about the significance of the Libor case and other manipulation cases now in the pipeline.
“It’s now evident that there is a ubiquitous culture among the banks to collude and cheat their customers as many times as they can in as many forms as they can conceive,” he said. “And that’s not just surmising. This is just based upon what they’ve been caught at.”
Greenberger says the lack of serious consequences for the Libor scandal has only made other kinds of manipulation more inevitable. “There’s no therapy like sending those who are used to wearing Gucci shoes to jail,” he says. “But when the attorney general says, ‘I don’t want to indict people,’ it’s the Wild West. There’s no law.”
The problem is, a number of markets feature the same infrastructural weakness that failed in the Libor mess. In the case of interest-rate swaps and the ISDAfix benchmark, the system is very similar to Libor, although the investigation into these markets reportedly focuses on some different types of improprieties.
Though interest-rate swaps are not widely understood outside the finance world, the root concept actually isn’t that hard. If you can imagine taking out a variable-rate mortgage and then paying a bank to make your loan payments fixed, you’ve got the basic idea of an interest-rate swap.
In practice, it might be a country like Greece or a regional government like Jefferson County, Alabama, that borrows money at a variable rate of interest, then later goes to a bank to “swap” that loan to a more predictable fixed rate. In its simplest form, the customer in a swap deal is usually paying a premium for the safety and security of fixed interest rates, while the firm selling the swap is usually betting that it knows more about future movements in interest rates than its customers.

Infernal Mafia Funds

1. The IMF & Rothschild’s Federal Reserve In The USA About To Merge: The Impact On You In Layman Language ~ To Get You Up To Speed As Quickly As Possible!

Prices for interest-rate swaps are often based on ISDAfix, which, like Libor, is yet another of these privately calculated benchmarks. ISDAfix’s U.S. dollar rates are published every day, at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., after a gang of the same usual-suspect megabanks (Bank of America, RBS, Deutsche, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, etc.) submits information about bids and offers for swaps.
And here’s what we know so far: The CFTC has sent subpoenas to ICAP and to as many as 15 of those member banks, and plans to interview about a dozen ICAP employees from the company’s office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Moreover, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, or ISDA, which works together with ICAP (for U.S. dollar transactions) and Thomson Reuters to compute the ISDAfix benchmark, has hired the consulting firm Oliver Wyman to review the process by which ISDAfix is calculated. Oliver Wyman is the same company that the British Bankers’ Association hired to review the Libor submission process after that scandal broke last year. The upshot of all of this is that it looks very much like ISDAfix could be Libor all over again.
“It’s obviously reminiscent of the Libor manipulation issue,” Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University, told reporters. “People may have been naive that simply reporting these rates was enough to avoid manipulation.”
And just like in Libor, the potential losers in an interest-rate-swap manipulation scandal would be the same sad-sack collection of cities, towns, companies and other nonbank entities that have no way of knowing if they’re paying the real price for swaps or a price being manipulated by bank insiders for profit. Moreover, ISDAfix is not only used to calculate prices for interest-rate swaps, it’s also used to set values for about $550 billion worth of bonds tied to commercial real estate, and also affects the payouts on some state-pension annuities.
So although it’s not quite as widespread as Libor, ISDAfix is sufficiently power-jammed into the world financial infrastructure that any manipulation of the rate would be catastrophic – and a huge class of victims that could include everyone from state pensioners to big cities to wealthy investors in structured notes would have no idea they were being robbed.
“How is some municipality in Cleveland or wherever going to know if it’s getting ripped off?” asks Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, a fund manager who has long been an advocate of greater transparency in the derivatives world. “The answer is, they won’t know.”
Worse still, the CFTC investigation apparently isn’t limited to possible manipulation of swap prices by monkeying around with ISDAfix. According to reports, the commission is also looking at whether or not employees at ICAP may have intentionally delayed publication of swap prices, which in theory could give someone (bankers, cough, cough) a chance to trade ahead of the information.

1. Rothschild Banking Cabalists Melt Up: Preparing Americans For HYPERINFLATION.
2. Ready? Basel III 2013 – 2019: The Dump Phase Of The Cartel’s Pyramid Scheme Begins!
3. Dodd Frank & Basel III Enacted Treason Against The United States: Wealth Funneled Into Rothschild’s [BOE] Bank Of England.

Swap prices are published when ICAP employees manually enter the data on a computer screen called “19901.” Some 6,000 customers subscribe to a service that allows them to access the data appearing on the 19901 screen.
The key here is that unlike a more transparent, regulated market like the New York Stock Exchange, where the results of stock trades are computed more or less instantly and everyone in theory can immediately see the impact of trading on the prices of stocks, in the swap market the whole world is dependent upon a handful of brokers quickly and honestly entering data about trades by hand into a computer terminal.
Any delay in entering price data would provide the banks involved in the transactions with a rare opportunity to trade ahead of the information. One way to imagine it would be to picture a racetrack where a giant curtain is pulled over the track as the horses come down the stretch – and the gallery is only told two minutes later which horse actually won. Anyone on the right side of the curtain could make a lot of smart bets before the audience saw the results of the race.
At ICAP, the interest-rate swap desk, and the 19901 screen, were reportedly controlled by a small group of 20 or so brokers, some of whom were making millions of dollars. These brokers made so much money for themselves the unit was nicknamed “Treasure Island.”
Already, there are some reports that brokers of Treasure Island did create such intentional delays. Bloomberg interviewed a former broker who claims that he watched ICAP brokers delay the reporting of swap prices. “That allows dealers to tell the brokers to delay putting trades into the system instead of in real time,” Bloomberg wrote, noting the former broker had “witnessed such activity firsthand.” An ICAP spokesman has no comment on the story, though the company has released a statement saying that it is “cooperating” with the CFTC’s inquiry and that it “maintains policies that prohibit” the improper behavior alleged in news reports.

1. Jacob Rothschild aka; Hitler Finds Out Gun Control Is Against The Bill Of Rights And Failed In The Senate!

The idea that prices in a $379 trillion market could be dependent on a desk of about 20 guys in New Jersey should tell you a lot about the absurdity of our financial infrastructure. The whole thing, in fact, has a darkly comic element to it. “It’s almost hilarious in the irony,” says David Frenk, director of research for Better Markets, a financial-reform advocacy group, “that they called it ISDAfix.”
After scandals involving libor and, perhaps, ISDAfix, the question that should have everyone freaked out is this: What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.
“In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.

Evelyn Rothschild

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it.
The problem in each of these markets is the same: We all have to rely upon the honesty of companies like Barclays (already caught and fined $453 million for rigging Libor) or JPMorgan Chase (paid a $228 million settlement for rigging municipal-bond auctions) or UBS (fined a collective $1.66 billion for both muni-bond rigging and Libor manipulation) to faithfully report the real prices of things like interest rates, swaps, currencies and commodities.

1. United Front Against Austerity aka; Rothschildism!
2. Rothschild Czar Obama Manufactured False Intel On Chemical Weapons In Syria.

All of these benchmarks based on voluntary reporting are now being looked at by regulators around the world, and God knows what they’ll find. The European Federation of Financial Services Users wrote in an official EU survey last summer that all of these systems are ripe targets for manipulation. “In general,” it wrote, “those markets which are based on non-attested, voluntary submission of data from agents whose benefits depend on such benchmarks are especially vulnerable of market abuse and distortion.”
Translation: When prices are set by companies that can profit by manipulating them, we’re fucked.

Jaco ~ Legend in His Own Mind

Vatican vs Illuminati

“You name it,” says Frenk. “Any of these benchmarks is a possibility for corruption.”
The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It’s not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magically make whatever’s in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing – and it’s only just coming into view.
Here In Reality

1. Obama & Hitler From No Where: Thats How Rothschild Likes It.

2. The New World Order is “Communism”: Also Known As Rothschildism Or More Bluntly Robbery!

Related articles

• “The Illuminati Were Amateurs” – Matt Taibbi Explains How “Everything Is Rigged” (zerohedge.com)
• Price Fixing of the Highest Order (darkgovernment.com)
• Politics & NWO – Re: Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal E (disclose.tv)
• ROLLING STONE: “CONSPIRACY THEORISTS OF THE WORLD, Believers In The Hidden Hands Of THE ROTHSCHILDS AND The MASONS And The ILLUMINATI, WE SKEPTICS OWE YOU AN APOLOGY.” (secretsofthefed.com)
• Rothschild’s (Red Sheild) World (streetdemocracy.wordpress.com)
• President Putin Stamping Out The Rothschild Rockefeller Syndicate Maggots From Russia! (politicalvelcraft.org)
• Finland Braces For End Of NWO Eurozone! (politicalvelcraft.org)
• News & World Events – Hungary Kills The Rothschild Banks: Ordered To Vacate Countr (disclose.tv)
• Hungary Orders Rothschild’s IMF To Vacate The Country: Now Issuing Debt-Free Money! (radicalpress.com)

http://politicalvelcraft.org/2013/05/10/rolling-stone-rothschild-corruption-goes-mainstream/

ETHICAL DONATORS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS REQUIRED, TO FILL THIS SPACE WITH YOUR POLITICAL SLOGANS, ADVERTISING OFFERS, WEBSITE DETAILS, CHARITY REQUESTS, LECTURE OPPORTUNITIES, EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS, SPIRITUAL AND/ORHEALTH ENLIGHTENMENT COURSES. AS AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE GLOBAL INDEPENDENT MEDIA COMMUNITY, MIKIVERSE BANKS HONOURABLY REQUESTS YOUR HELP TO KEEP YOUR NEWS, DIVERSE,AND FREE OF CORPORATE, GOVERNMENT SPIN AND CONTROL. FOR MORE INFO ON HOW YOU MAY ASSIST, 
PLEASE CONTACT: themikiverse@gmail.com