Ignorant people will shrug, "There's nothing here..." It's too taxing to read investigative journalism, or read a company's prospectus, to try to figure out what's actually going on.
In the wake of 9/11 (the Mother of All Excuses), the CIA & US Treasury were granted extraordinary oversight over SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) activity, recorded in Brussels, Belgium. Yes, Snow was the overseer: tens of thousands of searches were conducted. Publicly, its unknown who & what was targeted.
The SWIFT Scandal was a bigger concern in Europe, where people can still read actual NEWSpapers and care about philosophical abstractions like "freedom" and "privacy." But even some US observers in the US questioned the legality of the program, which continues today.
Through SWIFT, any Cuba transaction could be identified. Its not clearly how aggressively that information was sought, but UBS got nailed by US Tres Sec. John Snow (AntiCuban Rep. Ros Lehtinen office's had the Swiss bank accounts #s.) Cuba would have moved & established new accounts by mid-2004, to other banks. At the same time, one of the last "socialist" banks, BAWAG was making its riskiest loans to a US commodities brokerage house that evaporated almost overnight in 2005, REFCO. The loss almost destroyed BAWAG. Cerberus was the bail-out (2006). All a coincidence?
John Snow certainly brought unique knowledge his new military-industrial behemoth private equity firm, Cerberus. The extraordinary 'Cuba concerns' are not at all surprising, given his background. BAWAG will be forced to do business differently; maybe the labor unions & socialists should take THEIR business elsewhere? Well, as a matter of fact, Austrian customers are still closing accounts at a record clip.
The bad publicity that BAWAG gets from whoring out to Uncle Sam is a lesson to all others, though.
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<hr>Seems to me this a policy that one company has decided to adapt. Is there any evidence that the US government has pressured them or is it just a decision of a few executives in that company, who happen to have strong anti-cuban feelings.<hr></blockquote>
No, it actually appears to be a coordinated & systematic attack on Cuban accounts. As reported 4/26/07, Barclay's is also following Uncle Sam's orders, closing BIG accounts. (Truetown's tip.)
Here's an interesting article on Barclays closing Cuban accts. (4/16/07).
Excerpt:
>>
A spokesman for the Cuban embassy in London said: "We are aware of the intensification of US pressure in various countries in order to make them comply with the regulations of the blockade imposed on Cuba. These pressures include the banking and financial system."
<<
There is definitely a US campaign against European financial institutions with Cuban accounts.
Also: Prensa Latina article 4/26/07
No. 9
Methinks you should do your homework before you play the omniscient teacher:
If you would have read he statement by the Austrian foreign minister, you would know that the EC simply will inform all parties concernned that US law doesn't apply there and that's that. The status quo will be conserved, the US /Cerberus can go take a hike.
Remember how the Norwegian unions recently threatened a big US hotel chain with boycotting them if they would not allow Cubans to stay at their hotel in Norway again - and post haste?
Guess what happened - exactly, the US hotel caved in.
In case you haven't noticed and particularly after the biggest foreign policy blunder of any country post WWII, namely the Iraq desaster, the European body politic is overwhelmingly rising up against the subtle (and less so) pressure by the US to follow their idiotic foreign policy. This is especially true as far as their utterly counterproductive Cuba policy is concerned.
I'm taking bets that in this case the Austrian government and the EC (like the Norwegians) will prevail against Cerberus/the US, and that the Cuban 'entities' will be able to keep their accounts. This might be couched in some diplomatic, i.e. face saving (for the US) language, but it will not change the facts.
Also see the later posting re Barclays.
And stop be so goddamn arrogant - show some respect and that you're capable of civilized discourse.
Has Rosa posted here? I think not. Who is "Louis Saint Laurent"? (Forgive my ignorance of Canadian history.) Related to 'Blvd. St. Laurent' and the 'Laurentiennes' ?
Apologies for my error. There is no suggestion that there might be anything sub-Rosa about our Patty.
The point is that our Canadian ultra-nationalists have overly short memories. As is all too frequently the case in the USA as well, a current head of government is personally demonized for policies or practices of long standing. Mr Saint Laurent was the Canadian PM after Mackenzie King and before Diefenbaker for most of the 1950s. Patty is of sufficient years to know this but apparently has chosen to remember otherwise.
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