Some of our favorite BankWatch info:
JPMorgan Chase — Brown Brothers Harriman — Deutschebank — Deutsche Bundesbank — Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart — Union Banking Corp — M.M.Warburg — Bank of Credit & Commerce International
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City. JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, and the sixth largest bank in the world by total assets, with the amount of $2.534 trillion. Wikipedia
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is the oldest and one of the largest private banks in the United States.[2][3] In 1931, the merger of Brown Brothers & Co. (founded in 1818) and Harriman Brothers & Co. formed the current BBH. Assets Under Custody $4.2 trillion, September 30, 2016. Brown Brothers Harriman is also notable for the number of influential American politicians, government appointees, and Cabinet members who have worked at the company, such as W. Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush, Robert A. Lovett, Richard W. Fisher, Robert Roosa, and Alan Greenspan. Wikipedia
Deutsche Bank AG is a German investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. The bank is present in 58 countries with a large presence in Europe, the Americas and Asia.[3] As of December 2017 Deutsche Bank is the 17th largest bank in the world by total assets.[4] The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 and DAX stock market indices. Wikipedia NOTE: Not to be confused with Deutsche Bundesbank or Deutsche Postbank.
Deutsche Bundesbank is the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Due to its strength and former size, the Bundesbank is the most influential member of the ESCB. Both the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank (ECB) are located in Frankfurt, Germany. It is sometimes referred to as "Buba" for Bundesbank, while its official abbreviation is BBk.[1] The Bundesbank was established in 1957 and succeeded the Bank deutscher Länder, which introduced the Deutsche Mark on 20 June 1948. Until the euro was physically introduced in 2002, the Bundesbank was the central bank of the former Deutsche Mark ("German Mark", sometimes known in English as the "Deutschmark").[citation needed] The Bundesbank was the first central bank to be given full independence, leading this form of central bank to be referred to as the Bundesbank model, as opposed, for instance, to the New Zealand model, which has a goal (i.e. inflation target) set by the government. Nowadays, the ECB also uses the Bundesbank model, making the concept the foundation of the entire Euro system. The Bundesbank was greatly respected for its control of inflation through the second half of the 20th century. This made the German Mark one of the most respected currencies, and the Bundesbank gained substantial indirect influence in many European countries. Wikipedia
Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart — Fritz Thyssen (Mülheim an der Ruhr, 9 november 1873 - Buenos Aires, 8 februari 1951) was een Duitse grootindustrieel uit de Thijssen ondernemersfamilie die verbonden is met het technologie bedrijf ThyssenKrupp. Thyssen publiceerde het boek "I Paid Hitler" - Hodder and Stoughton, London 1941 - waarin staat dat hij, vóór en tijdens de eerste jaren van de Tweede Wereldoorlog, samen met Prescott Sheldon Bush - bewindvoerder van de (Rotterdamse) Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart - de nazipartij NSDAP en dus Hitler financierde. In 2014, "I Paid Hitler" in herdruk uit onder de titel “Ik Financierde Hitler” bij Frontier Publishing uit Amsterdam. Wikipedia
FTR #370 Dutch Treat: More about the Thyssen/Bush Banking Connection — 1. This program supplements previous discussion of the Bush family’s Nazi financial heritage. Specifically, the program revisits the Bush/Thyssen-Bornemisza connection. Like Al Taqwa/Nada management and the overlapping Banco del Gotthardo, the Thyssen-Bornemisza operations are based in Lugano Switzerland. This program poses the question of whether the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Al Taqwa milieu may be linked, and whether the Nada/Banco del Gotthardo is part of the Bormann nexus.
Union Banking Corporation Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a banking corporation in the US whose assets were seized by the United States government on October 20, 1942 during World War II under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act and Executive Order No. 9095. According to an October 5, 1942, report from the USA's federal Office of Alien Property Custodian, Union Banking was owned by Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., a Dutch bank. The memo from August 18, 1941, states "My investigation produced no evidence as to the ownership of this Dutch bank."[1] The Dutch bank was alleged to be affiliated with United Steel Works,[relevant? – discuss] a German company. Fritz Thyssen and his brother, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, had the Dutch bank and the steel firm as part of their business and financial empire according to the US. government agency. Fritz Thyssen resigned from the Council of State after November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht, was arrested in 1940, and spent the remainder of the war in a sanatorium and in concentration camps.[citation needed] The APC documents say "Whether any or all part of the funds held by Union Banking Corporation, or companies associated with it, belong to Fritz Thyssen could not be established in this investigation."[2][3][4][5][6][7] The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC dissolved in the 1950 s. Wikipedia
M.M.Warburg & CO (AG & Co.) KGaA is a German independent private bank, based in Hamburg. A family-owned bank, it was founded in 1798 by Banca Levi Kahana of Warburg and brothers Moses Marcus Warburg and Gerson Warburg, two members of the Warburg family. The Warburg family still owns the bank, continuing a more than 200-year legacy of private ownership. Among many notable Warburg descendants was Siegmund Warburg, who founded S. G. Warburg & Co. in London, in 1946, after fleeing Germany to escape the Nazis. The bank rose to become one of the most powerful investment banks in the City during the 60s, 70s, and 80s and Warburg himself one of London's most preeminent and influential financiers of the era. The London subsidiary was sold to Swiss Bank Corporation in 1995 and is today a part of UBS. Some descendants immigrated to the United States, for business reasons and to escape the persecution, and established themselves there. They include banker Paul Warburg and his nephew Eric M. Warburg, founder of Warburg Pincus. Today, M.M.Warburg & CO's core business is in private banking, asset management, and investment banking, serving private, corporate and institutional clients. During recent years, the bank has grown through many acquisitions. It bought several German private banks such as Marcard, Stein & Co. in Hamburg, Carl F. Plump & CO AG in Bremen, Bankhaus Hallbaum AG in Hannoverand Bankhaus Loebbecke AG in Berlin. Furthermore, there are the foreign subsidiaries M. M. Warburg Bank (Switzerland) AG and M. M. Warburg & CO Luxembourg S.A., as well as various mutual funds. Since 2009 the Schwäbische Bank AG in Stuttgart has been part of the Warburg Banking Group. In 2016 the former subsidiary banks Bankhaus Hallbaum, Bankhaus Löbbecke, Bankhaus Carl F. Plump & CO and Schwäbische Bank were amalgamated with M.M.Warburg & CO. The bank's headquarters are located at Ferdinandstraße 75 in Hamburg, with additional offices in Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich and Cologne. The bank also maintains several offices in Zurich and Luxembourg. Wikipedia
BCCI / ICCI — The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier.[1] The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries, and assets in excess of US$20 billion, making it the 7th largest private bank in the world.[2][3] BCCI came under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and illegally gained the controlling interest in a major American bank. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991, and, on 5 July of that year, customs and bank regulators in seven countries raided and locked down records of its branch offices.[4] Investigators in the United States and the UK revealed that BCCI had been "set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection".[5] The liquidators, Deloitte & Touche, filed a lawsuit against the bank's auditors, Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young, which was settled for $175 million in 1998. By 2013, Deloitte & Touche claimed to have recovered about 75% of the creditors' lost money.[6] Wikipedia
FTR #589 Interview with Lucy Komisar About BCCI
—(whole story, here)— Introduction: Highlighting information about the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (“BCCI”), this interview sets forth investigative journalist Lucy Komisar’s chapter on the bank in a new book “A Game as Old as Empire.” A major vehicle for covert operations in the 1970’s, and 1980’s, the institution was known to insiders as “The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International.” With strong connections to both the elder and younger George Bush, the Saudi elite, Saddam Hussein, the Iranian mullahs, the Iran-Contra scandal, drug trafficking, terrorism and the milieu of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the bank’s closets held many skeletons. This broadcast details some of those skeletons, and reviews key aspects of the cover-up. Be sure to visit Lucy’s website, where the book can be ordered at a discount. In addition to the programs noted below, be sure to listen to check out Dave’s other interviews with Lucy, such as FTR#’s 463, 485, 531.
Program Highlights Include: The BCCI’s links through Saudi intelligence to the elder George Bush; the BCCI’s links through its investors to the capitalization of the younger George Bush’s energy ventures; the cover-up of the BCCI investigation by the administration of Bush the Elder; the disappearance of the money that was stolen; the role of the BCCI in the arming of Iran as part of the Iran-Contra scandal; the BCCI’s role in the arming of Saddam Hussein; the role of the BCCI in arming the Afghan mujahedeen; the role of the BCCI and its investors in financing the activities of Osama bin Laden, both during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and subsequently; the role of the Clearstream network in the BCCI affair; the role of FBI director Robert Mueller in covering up the BCCI case. Financed by wealthy investors from Pakistan and the Persian Gulf (mostly Saudi Arabia), the BCCI served as a major vehicle for U.S. covert operations around the world, the Middle East in particular. Eventually, the institution’s role in financing illicit weapons deals, drug trafficking operations and international terrorism led to an investigation. New York D.A. Robert Morgenthau returned indictments. The administration of George W. Bush was less than vigorous in its pursuit of the case, perhaps due to the fact that the BCCI and its major players were very, very close to both the elder and the younger George Bush. The monies that vanished have never been located. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, the ruler of the oil-rich state of Abu Dhabi and head of the United Arab Emirates. The Arabs’ interest in the bank was more than financial. A classified CIA memo on BCCI in the mid-80s said that ‘its principal shareholders are among the power elite of the Middle East, including the rulers of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and several influential Saudi Arabians. They are less interested in profitability than in promoting the Muslim cause.’ BCCI enriched the entourage of the Bushes and other Washington influentials. Its biggest shareholders were Saudi and United Arab Emirates sheiks. The money it stole—somewhere between $9.5 billion and $15 billion—made its 20-year heist the biggest bank fraud in history. Most of it was never recovered. The George H.W. Bush administration, in power when the mega-fraud was discovered, went after the bank half-heartedly and only after indictments by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. It never touched the Persian Gulf money-men who ran the BCCI criminal enterprise. The Bush family and its allies used and then protected the world’s most criminal bank.”
