U.S. Wants Foreign Leaders' Laundered Assets

[Khephra]

Federal officials have developed a plan to seize financial assets laundered into the United States by foreign leaders whom they suspect of public corruption, with a jailed former president of Nicaragua as the first target.

Federal agents at a newly created multiagency task force in Miami have opened nine investigations into allegations of foreign money laundering in six Latin American countries, officials said. In at least one case, a high-ranking foreign official is under investigation, they said.

The effort reflects an aggressive new strategy to try to trace "dirty" money in the United States to its foreign roots, in part by using expanded powers granted to the government under the USA Patriot Act, as the sweeping legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks is known, officials said.

The highest-profile target is Arnoldo Alemán, the former president of Nicaragua, who is imprisoned there on charges of embezzling $100 million before he left office in 2001. Agents in Miami in recent months have seized about $5 million in Florida bank accounts and real estate holdings that they believe was laundered by the former president, his family and associates.

more............

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/politics/23CORR.html

[Paschall]

1. Meanwhile, US corps are still allowed...

...to tuck their earnings away in Caribbean and other tax havens, depriving the country of the contribution they should rightfully be making to the common good.

[jamesinca]

2. This will offset those dollars

Since there is an offset, Bush can encourage more of it!!