organized crime

RICO Financial crimes and organized crime figure

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It was established in 1990 to provide a government-wide, multi-source intelligence and analytical network to support the detection, investigation, and prosecution of domestic and international money laundering and other financial crimes.

FinCEN is a key player in the fight against money laundering and other financial crimes. It serves as the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for the United States and is part of an international network of FIUs known as the Egmont Group, and maintains FBAR filings from US persons holding in excess of $10,000 in foreign banks.

RICO Financial crimes and organized crime figure

FinCEN’s main roles

  1. Collecting and analyzing information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.
  2. Coordinating with domestic and international policy and enforcement agencies.
  3. Administering the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), which requires financial institutions to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering.
  4. Issuing advisories and guidance to alert financial institutions about methods, trends, and typologies of money laundering and other financial crimes.
  5. Enforcing compliance with the BSA and its implementing regulations.

Financial institutions are required to report suspicious transactions to FinCEN via Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), and also report transactions over $10,000 via Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs).

While FinCEN is based in the U.S., it is an important player in global efforts to fight financial crime, working closely with other FIUs around the world to share information and collaborate on investigations.

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GOP angry elephants

Only 7 out of 50 among them are patriots — the rest, cowards and knaves who continue to seek destruction of this republic out of self-interest and an authoritarian’s need to dominate others. Today’s impeachment vote of acquittal for Trump‘s role in the January 6 insurrection was brutal but of course, not surprising. It highlighted once again something that’s been hiding in plain sight for some time — that the Republican Party is a criminal organization that thinks of itself and its members as being above the law.

“Law and Order” is just another Big Lie

It’s used to cover up quite the opposite — criminality, entitlement, sadism, and a zeal for the domination of others. Including both the violent insurrectionist kind and the pasty jowly turtly slow walking kind on the right wing. The GOP is an insult to the rule of law.

https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1360092604919128064?s=20

There is no best time to impeach a president

Unfortunately the spineless toothless Republican Senators defanged the Constitution today, by casting into doubt its power to achieve healthy checks and balances between the branches of government. They gleefully gave up the role of Congress in moderating the chief executive — to the probable detriment of us all.

As usual, they performed a series of timeline hacks, rhetorical games, and parliamentary tricks that resulting in the “logical” impossibility of ever successfully impeaching a US president. They are masters at avoiding responsibility for their actions, and fiercely protect their own, even despite heinous crimes.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his merry band of “institutionalists” and “originalists” have managed to do more damage to our institutions than any other Republican administration, and that’s truly saying something.

In addition to sowing doubt about our elections, throwing SCOTUS and the courts under the bus despite having packed them with conservative judges and loyalists for years, damaging our sovereignty and our national security, and impugning our reputation with nations around the world, they’ve managed to turn the United States into a kleptocracy. It’s official: the Republican Party is a criminal organization.

Let the DOJ do its work

Even Trump’s own lawyer advocated for it, along with McConnell. Though he can’t be trusted and will surely have tricks up his sleeve, it would be cathartic to see Attorney General Merrick Garland and the much-maligned Department of Justice bring down the largest RICO case in the history of history. I hope that karma brings justice to all of them, regardless of the actual outcome here and now.

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Titushki (or titushky) are paid street thugs sent to act as provocateurs, who provoke clashes or destroy property to tarnish peaceful protests and blame the left for “violence.”

The concept is from Ukraine, where it was first employed by later ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. He hired street hooligans in civilian clothing to perform illegal acts including street beatings, carjackings, kidnappings, and murders. Their purpose was both to intimidate the opposition against his government and create pretexts for arresting pro-democracy protestors.

During the events of Euromaidan in 2013-14, Yanukovich’s Party of Regions paid titushki about $100 per day to blend into peaceful crowds and start picking fights. After violence broke out, mass arrests would disperse the gatherings and round up protestors — and the titushki were again used as either “witnesses or “victims” for the show trials of these ginned up “crimes.”

Titushki in the U.S.?

During the George Floyd protests in summer 2020, city officials in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and elsewhere reported a pattern of out-of-town agents provacateur escalating peaceful protests and instigating aggression, incitement, and property damage. A Ukranian immigrant family in Idaho with no prior political activity organized one of the most important pro-Trump demonstrations of the summer in Portland, out of nowhere. There was umbrella man. He may be more likely aligned with the white nationalist groups who were also id’d as instigating violence and who also have an undercover plot against America going on so, you know, strange bedfellows!

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  • a. The Alfa Bank pinging server
  • b. Connections in the Trump campaign      
    • 1. Paul Manafort — former campaign manager who helped rig elections for Ukrainian pro-Moscow former president Viktor Yanukovich      
    • 2. Sergei Millian — head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the US      
    • 3. Ivanka’s friendship with Putin’s girlfriend
  • c. Russian hacking of the DNC emails
  • d. Russian attempted hacks on state vote registration rolls
  • e. Russian bots and paid disinformation operatives influencing public opinion in the US presidential election
    • 1. Twitter      
    • 2. Medium      
    • 3. Facebook (?)      
    • 4. Darkweb
  • f. High probability of significant Russian investment in the Trump Organization, its subsidiaries, shell companies, or off-shore protectorates
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