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It would be interesting to add a discussion to this article of how the US is able to exert such influence over the North Korean funds that are deposited at this insitution. I haven't seen that addressed in the media, and it doesn't seem to be very intuitive that the US has this kind of influence over a non-US depositor at a non-US bank. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gjones0316 ( talk • contribs) 17:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC).
But even if allegations of $50 million in money laundering in 2002 or hundreds of million of dollars in some other time period have some basis in truth, they are small beer compared to sums uncovered in other and far better documented Treasury investigations of non-US banks which branch operations based in the US. From March 2004 to March 2005, the Israel Discount Bank of New York (a financial institution based in Israel) processed "181,000 third-party wire transfers totaling $35.4 billion," a substantial fraction of which "exhibited characteristics and patterns commonly associated with money laundering." In short, BDA, a small bank in Macau still only vaguely accused of various irregularities despite Treasury's review of 300,000 bank documents, is a tiny fish swimming among some much larger banking whales involved in financial wrongdoing much more extensively documented by Treasury. Moreover, consider that in July 2002 Treasury issued an advisory stating that "Israel has enacted significant reforms to its counter-money laundering system . . . and has taken concrete steps to bring these reforms into effect. Because of the enactment of new laws and the beginning of effective implementation, enhanced scrutiny [by Treasury] with respect to transactions involving Israel . . . is no longer necessary." Yet as noted above, a few years later Treasury (along with New York state banking authorities) was investigating the Israel Discount Bank of New York for major violations involving "high-risk foreign accounts, such as accounts for non-bank financial institutions in Latin America" (the bank was eventually fined $12 million in October 2006). Because of the sums involved and the existence of US-based branch operations that are conduits for direct financial flows into the United States, it might be said that Israeli banks pose a greater threat to the US financial system – and possibly national security – than banks in Macau.
have removed this as constituting original analysis and unattributed pov. Doldrums ( talk) 09:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)