Trevor Hosten

trevhost@gmail.com

The term "mon­ey laun­der­ing" was pro­nounced on the glob­al psy­che im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing New York’s 9/11 at­tacks. Since Amer­i­ca claimed this ne­far­i­ous­ly well-ex­e­cut­ed at­tack was per­pe­trat­ed by 19 Arab ter­ror­ists fi­nanced through $400,000 of sim­ple mon­ey trans­fers, it in­tro­duced and ex­e­cut­ed heavy-hand­ed dic­ta­to­r­i­al poli­cies com­pelling the en­tire world to com­ply with its new dic­tates, un­mind­ful if not un­car­ing of the desta­bil­is­ing im­pli­ca­tions slow­ing the eco­nom­ic progress of small and de­vel­op­ing Caribbean coun­tries all of whom nev­er har­boured a mod­icum of ill-will on this uni­lat­er­al­ly nar­cis­sis­tic be­he­moth, nor have any of them ex­pe­ri­enced home­grown ter­ror­ism.

Since life is in­escapably in­ter­wo­ven with cause and ef­fects, it is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary we eval­u­ate why the far-reach­ing blood­ied hands of the world’s un­com­pro­mis­ing ag­gres­sor would cause un­known min­ions to per­pet­u­ate such ab­hor­rence, an­i­mos­i­ty, and re­venge against their over ped­dled "great­est coun­try in the world" mantra, al­beit with its pletho­ra of in­jus­tices to their own peo­ple lan­guish­ing in jails from pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al overkill, unashamed of hav­ing the world’s largest prison pop­u­la­tion, in­evitably de­stroy­ing fam­i­lies.

This ag­gres­sor used 20 mil­lion gal­lons of lethal chem­i­cal "agent or­ange" in its as­sault on Viet­nam, killing mil­lions while cre­at­ing lin­ger­ing birth de­fects, yet lec­tured Syr­ia on as­sumed chem­i­cal gassing of its peo­ple call­ing it a "moral ab­sur­di­ty". It has top­pled du­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ments whose ide­ol­o­gy they found in­com­pat­i­ble to theirs, and with a his­to­ry of "mis­tak­en­ly killing civil­ians" they have con­duct­ed drone at­tacks on hos­pi­tals, wed­dings, and fu­ner­als killing dozens just to mur­der two or three they deemed "ter­ror­ists". They have desta­bilised many economies through their "eco­nom­ic hit­man", en­gaged "sanc­tions" on na­tions whose elect­ed lead­ers they de­spised, notwith­stand­ing patent­ly suf­fer­ing poor cit­i­zens through sus­pen­sion of med­i­cines, food, SWIFT trans­fers, etc.

Fol­low­ing its hu­mil­i­at­ing 9/11 de­feat, they ag­gres­sive­ly ar­rest­ed 780 "sus­pects" trans­port­ing them blind­fold­ed and group chained to Cu­ba’s Guan­tanamo Bay where they were tor­tured, wa­ter­board­ed, had vi­cious dogs sav­age­ly at­tack them, sol­diers uri­nat­ed on their holy Qur'ans, most held for over 12 years with­out tri­al, fam­i­ly vis­its, at­tor­ney vis­its, and in de­fend­ing its ne­go­ti­at­ed re­lease of five pris­on­ers in ex­change for their cap­tured Sar­gent Gergdahl, the Gov­ern­ment claimed they were re­leased be­cause "we have noth­ing to charge them for," al­beit af­ter 13 years de­ten­tion en­dur­ing bla­tant hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions.

Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Maduro re­minds us that Amer­i­ca has no friends or al­lies in the world, just to­tal self-in­ter­est, while Fi­del Cas­tro died great­ly ad­mired for hav­ing nev­er ca­pit­u­lat­ed to them and for over 50 years un­con­quer­ably stood his ground de­spite re­lent­less pur­suits to desta­bilise Cu­ba, even as­sas­si­nate him. Af­ter 60 years this mighty na­tion can­not for­give Cu­ba for its 1959 rev­o­lu­tion de­pos­ing a dic­ta­tor, for­ev­er hold­ing its pop­u­la­tion to ran­som, for­ev­er un­der­min­ing their pros­per­i­ty.

British judges have on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions re­fused ex­tra­di­tion re­quests to re­turn Amer­i­cans to their home­land cit­ing feared vi­o­la­tions of their hu­man rights, or have de­mand­ed as­sur­ances to the con­trary. But, Amer­i­ca de­mand­ed our Jack Warn­er and with­out ques­tion Trinidad cap­tured him with in­de­cent haste, ready to re­lin­quish a cit­i­zen serv­ing his coun­try with dis­tinc­tion, brought us fame, cat­a­pult­ed our foot­ball to glob­al promi­nence, and quite pos­si­bly the on­ly na­tion­al who in­ter­act­ed with so many world lead­ers. They were ready to ship him to rot in Amer­i­can jails for years for al­leged­ly de­posit­ing mon­ey in a US bank.

All of the above salient facts are nec­es­sary to com­pre­hend the re­al ob­jec­tives of "mon­ey laun­der­ing" hu­mil­i­a­tions which on­ly pro­pelled af­ter 9/11 re­venge, fol­low­ing which the US State De­part­ment was man­dat­ed to cre­ate Egmont Group as the dri­ving force es­tab­lish­ing glob­al Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Units (FIU) de­mand­ing the en­tire world be ground agents com­mand­ed to re­port "sus­pi­cious" trans­ac­tions how­ev­er le­git­i­mate. It prop­a­gat­ed Amer­i­ca’s mantra of "pre­vent­ing ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing" tak­ing no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its che­quered past, fight­ing even its own kar­ma with bru­tal force.

Now de­tec­tives over­whelmed with com­pli­ance, cyn­i­cal­ly dis­trust­ing cus­tomers, banks are los­ing fo­cus on in­no­v­a­tive bank­ing, ut­ter­ly parochial about their desta­bil­is­ing ac­tions on sov­er­eign­ty and eco­nom­ic pro­gres­sions, while gov­ern­ments are threat­ened with sus­pen­sions of SWIFT trans­fers, forc­ing all play­ers in­to pan­ic mode when new­ly dic­ta­to­r­i­al laws as de­mand­ed by Egmont are slow in Par­lia­ment’s pro­mul­ga­tions.

Our op­po­si­tion leader re­cent­ly ac­cused the AG of com­ing to Par­lia­ment with "such grave con­vic­tions in bring­ing dic­ta­to­r­i­al and dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion aimed at the small man". De­spon­dent­ly, we are un­aware that Caribbean bankers or gov­ern­ments have ever ad­mon­ished these dra­con­ian en­cum­brances, ne­go­ti­at­ed bet­ter for their cit­i­zens, or de­mand­ed re­spect of their sov­er­eign­ty, hav­ing in­stead cho­sen cred­u­lous­ly ca­pit­u­lat­ing par­a­digms, im­ply­ing tac­it sup­port.

Trevor Hosten is an en­tre­pre­neur and con­sumer’s ad­vo­cate, and founder of Pub­lic In­ter­est

Re­search Group (PIRG) which pe­ti­tioned Gov­ern­ment for, and ob­tained Trinidad’s Bank­ing

Om­buds­man (now the FSO), and the Bank­rupt­cy & In­sol­ven­cy ACT of 2006.