Read Online Death of a Bankster by David Bishop - Free Book Online Page A

charity toward children, neither the bank nor the Islamic foundation would feel a need to avoid reporting to our government their bringing in or moving around of these funds.”
    “Sam Crawford responded to my earliest contacts because he wanted to build a get-out-of-jail-free card in case these large unreported transfers of cash became known. Whoever put Sam down did so at just the right time—for them, not for us. A good guess is someone learned that Sam had been talking to us—with me.”
    “What’s your next move?”
    “First,” Ryan said, “I need to determine if the murder of Sam Crawford disrupts the activities of this Peace for Lambs Foundation. If it does, then it’s likely the foundation killed Crawford. If not, if things continue pretty much unchanged, then the foundation was likely not involved in the murder. I’m also working on a plan for substituting the bank president, Maxwell Norbert, for Sam Crawford to keep this mission running. If I can do that, we move up the food chain. A perfect result would be for Norbert to be leveraged into hiring one of our finance whizzes to replace Sam Crawford. That would likely get us direct contact with the Pakistani foundation, and give us real time knowledge of each disbursement from the bank account.”
    “How you going pull that off?”
    “Like Crawford, this Maxwell Norbert likes the respect and recognition of being a big-shot banker. They like the side money they get through these illegal actions. The idea of going to jail for these types is incomprehensible. To know this, all we need do is remember that virtually none of the fat-cat bankers went to jail for the activities which led to the enormous taxpayer-funded bailout of the banks. Crawford had made it clear that Norbert was the guy pulling his strings. Crawford had no other firsthand knowledge of anyone else other than Maxwell Norbert, and the bank in Pakistan which transfers over deposits documented as donations. Crawford had the names and addresses of the local Islamic charities in various cities to which he hand-carried funds drawn on his bank. When you trim off the fat, Crawford functioned as a glorified mule, packing money with a sufficient imprimatur to make it all look right inside and outside his bank.”
    “That all fits, Ryan. Pakistan is one of the countries which does not have a financial information unit (FIU) holding membership in the international Egmont Group. Pakistani banks are not required to report cash moving between their and U.S. banks. This means our only look-see on such funds is the reports filed by the receiving U.S. bank.”
    “Crawford admitted to me that he blocks those very reports from going to our government. Without Pakistan being in the Egmont Group, no transfer-out report comes from Pakistan, and with no transfer-in report made by Nation’s First Bank & Trust, we have no knowledge of the flow of these funds. Someone, the foundation it would appear, is paying executives at Crawford’s bank to not report these transfers in.”
    Ryan’s boss in Washington, D.C., went on to say, “I’ve had my staff put together a log of Sam Crawford’s travel itinerary. He made regular stops in Washington, D.C. where neither the bank nor the Islamic foundation has facilities. We figure those trips were to pick up cash brought in through diplomatic pouches into the Pakistani Embassy in D.C. I had a copy of his itinerary left at the drop. You should have it by now.”
    “I do, sir. The D.C. stops could explain how Sam Crawford and this Maxwell Norbert skim their personal payoffs. Through bifurcating their payoffs from the foundation funds Crawford and Norbert cannot be caught through a trail of money moving into the foundation account and then into their own pockets. Smart.”
    “From surveillance cameras here in D.C., I’ll try to identify the Pakistani with diplomatic immunity who had been passing cash directly to Sam Crawford for himself and Norbert. If that is how it went down.