We’ve known about the securities fraud charges against off-shore bank kingpin Sir Allen Stanford. But now TPM alum Justin
Rood reports that the FBI has a separate, on-going investigation into whether Stanford’s operation served as a money-laundering operation for one of the big Mexican drug cartels.
We’ll see how this story develops. But it does point to something I’ve given quite a bit of thought to — and a decent amount of poking around on — with the Madoff case. When you’re involved in fraudulent enterprises involving billions of dollars, with lots of unaccounted for and untracked streams of money, organized criminal syndicates — whether it’s the mob or drug gangs or whatever — just tend not to be too far behind. I suspect we’ll eventually find that with Madoff securities fraud was not the only crime.
