Bob Bauman (March 4, 2010)
These Draconian laws have been on the books in the United States and other countries for the last two decades, supposedly originally aimed at drug kingpins and their illicit cash.
Later, the AML laws were claimed by politicians to be needed to stop terrorist cash.
In fact, these laws have been mainly used as prosecutorial bargaining chips, since they impose heavy fines and prison sentences. Add ML charges to any threatened indictment and a putative defendant is likely plea to a lesser charge…
Taking the lead in promoting AML laws has been the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a subdivision of the stridently anti-tax haven, pro tax Organization for Economic and Community Development (OECD).
Mainly a front group for the high tax, welfare state G-20 countries, both the OECD and FATF have skillfully advocated AML laws for their tax hungry sponsors as a pious means to destroy financial privacy – and to track down what they claim is massive offshore tax evasion.
Tax Offenses as ML Crimes
It was only a matter of time until it happened — and this week it did; the OECD plans to list tax offenses as — you guessed it — a form of money laundering!
Such a move would add still more criminal penalties for alleged tax offenses that already are crimes. In some countries, such as Switzerland if tax offenses were reclassified as money laundering, local experts say lawyers, tax advisors, accountants and bankers who are implicated in such offenses could get up to three years in jail.
Worse still, some claim that Swiss bank secrecy laws would no longer block assistance to foreign tax authorities, since that secrecy law is waived in money laundering cases.
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http://sovereignsociety.com/2010/03/04/big-brothers-money-laundering-fraud-expands/
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