Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on September 30, 2012 at 5:23pm

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 2, 2012 at 3:24pm

A similar report says the organized crime is behind 90% of tropical deforestation.

Organized Crime Is Responsible For Up To 90 Percent Of Tropical Def...

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 3, 2012 at 3:26pm

Lax enforcement and lack of transparency for bank money laundering enables the illegal logging which directly drives Climate Change.

Sophisticated Crime Groups Need Sophisticated Financing – Illegal L...

... deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for one-fifth of humanity’s emissions.

... I think its important to think about how these types of organized crime activities are enabled. Sophisticated transnational organized crime cannot exist without ready access to sophistical transnational money laundering.

The recent Senate investigation of HSBC found that the bank was widely involved in all sorts of activity either directly or indirectly connected to drug cartels and terrorist groups. The Senate report was clear that their investigation of HSBC was a case study, and many other banks were likely to be violating anti-money laundering (AML) laws in the exact same way.

After the Wachovia money laundering scandal, which featured remarkably similar behavior to HSBC’s, the bank was fined just $50 million (plus $110 million in asset forfeiture) for almost $400 billion worth of illegal business.

No one went to jail after the Wachovia scandal, and so far no individual has been charged with a crime after HSBC.

We have evidence that we can pin some illegal logging on U.S. banks and financial institutions.

... we need to, in addition to strengthening AML laws and enforcement, end hidden company ownership by passing the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act. A recent article in the Economist found that it was easier to form an anonymous shell company in the United... than pretty much anywhere else in the world, which contributes significantly to our money laundering problems. [emphasis mine]

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 3, 2012 at 6:12pm

The future for children looks bleak, at current rates of forest logging and wildfire.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 11, 2012 at 6:07pm

One Mexican community took the law into their own hands in self-defense against illegal loggers.

Reclaiming the Forests and the Right to Feel Safe

The loggers, who local residents say are protected by one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations and given a virtual free pass by the country’s authorities, had terrorized the community at will for years.

Cherán’s residents said they had been subjected to multiple episodes of rape, kidnapping, extortion and murder by the paramilitary loggers, who have devastated an estimated 70 percent of the surrounding oak forests that sustained the town’s economy and indigenous culture for centuries.

Organized criminal syndicates, like the drug cartel La Familia, created in Michoacán, act like a state within a state, making their own rules and meting out grisly punishments to those who do not obey.

But here in Cherán, a group of townspeople took loggers hostage, expelled the town’s entire police force and representatives of established political parties, and forcibly closed the roads.

The Mexican government authorities had previously ignored their repeated pleas for help, the residents said, so the people of Cherán simply took the law into their own hands.

Women and children around a fire used to help guard the streets of Cherán, Mexico, against armed loggers.