Charges in #panamapapers got overshadowed by Flynn doc last night. But international criminal syndicates of the kind described in Mueller’s 2011 speech are being dismantled, brick by brick. archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/…
Even in 2011, the FBI knew a debacle like Trump/Russia could be in the making, by a malevolent state actor like Putin: “[T]he playing field has changed. We have seen a shift from regional families with a clear structure, to flat, fluid networks with global reach.”
”These international enterprises are more anonymous and more sophisticated. Rather than running discrete operations, on their own turf, they are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish.”
The criminals may base in “Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. And we are seeing cross-pollination between groups that historically have not worked together. Criminals who may never meet, but who share one thing in common: greed.”
Did the FBI predict, even then, that groups in the USA and Britain would conspire with foreign enemy nations and their crime networks to betray their own country? Hard to read these words and say “no.”
But even in 2011, top law enforcement did not consider schemes like Trump/Russia or Brexit outlandish. Not at all. Mueller predicted “members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military. These individuals know who and what to target, and how best to do it.”
The perps are not poor migrant families, but “capitalists and entrepreneurs . . . master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”
In short, the very entities who launder money in schemes like #PanamaPapers. Mueller: “These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking . . . , computer intrusions . . . . cornering the market on oil.” Anyone come to mind?
cnn.com/2018/11/30/opi…
cnn.com/2018/11/30/opi…
