United States Banks, contributing to illegal Trafficking

California Baptist University 

BUS520 Section B Managerial Ethics

Dr. Jim Bishop

Daniel Garcia  

US banks, contributing to Illegal trafficking.

Given the constant attacks on migrants, smugglers chose advance payments through bank deposits. Migrants have been easy prey for thieves during their way to the US border, which caused traffickers opt for the use of banks to charge in advance. Although immigration has led the US political agenda, neither the White House nor Congress has addressed the role of banks in financing undocumented traffic. On November 20, President Barack Obama issued a decree to protect the deportation to those undocumented immigrants whose children are US citizens or who arrived before 2010 were minors. Republican lawmakers objected, described the plan as amnesty and instead asked more deportations. Traffickers increased the use of banks after the former attorney general of Arizona Terry Goddard lash Western Union Co., the world's largest money transfer company. Western Union denied his guilt while acknowledging that its employees had allowed traffickers use their services from 2003 to 2007. The company agreed to hire more investigators and inform the authorities of any money order over $ 500 to and from the American Southwest. Since then, we have seen a significant change in banks. Industry researchers say banks can and should do more to close the monetary channels traffickers. The truth is that the big banks ask their researchers focus first stop any suspicious activity to finance terrorism, tax evasion and drug transactions. Detect accounts that fund the illegal trafficking is less important. Human traffickers prefer Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo because they need banks with branches nationwide to receive payments. Criminal gangs use a simple scheme called "accounts funnel." First, traffickers open accounts in US territory under their own names or people trust, then friends and relatives living in the United States for people looking to migrate must deposit payments in those accounts. Traffickers after withdrawing money from bank branches, often near the border with Mexico. The Office of the Arizona Attorney General has documented $ 360 million of funds used for trafficking funnel transferred through accounts based in Arizona between 2008 and 2013. Although there is no evidence that banks have deliberately acted in collusion with traffickers, institutions have failed their responsibility to detect and report suspicious deposits and withdrawals of cash, including money flowing through their accounts at the hands of gangs. According to Terry Goddard regulators and bankers are not doing a good job in monitoring their accounts, do not employ an ordinary level of suspicion. The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and the Patriot Act of 2001 require US banks monitor any transaction that may be linked to money laundering and other crimes, including human smuggling. Banks must designate an official responsible for such compliance, identify the crimes that their customers are at risk of committing and develop policies to detect and stop this type of transaction. Banks must report any suspected criminal activity to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, an agency of the Treasury of the United States. FinCEN submitted reports of suspicious activity to the police for further investigation. These injunctions researchers themselves instructed banks to seek common patterns smugglers as large cash deposits made in a state which were then removed almost immediately in the southwest. Banks identified and marked hundreds of accounts for the fiscal investigated, according to an affidavit by a federal agent. Banks were not accused of any crime. There is nothing illegal about making a cash deposit in a bank; people do it all the time. But by failing to prevent traffickers from using their institutions, banks continue to allow illegal trafficking and often violent. Thus the most important banks in our country contribute in some way to the illegal trafficking. I refuse to think that doing banking activity is always associated to actions of usury. Neither our banks are organizations dedicated to defraud, nor are global example of how business should be done by setting the example to follow. We are in a sort of ethical mediocrity, and urges raise the standard, especially since the country will enter a vigorous development stage where credit is fundamental. Where is the ethics of bankers? Who sets the example? What financial institution inspired living standards of its founders? The US based Ethisphere ranks annually to various companies in various sectors regarding their degree of ethics. This year, the bank took first place overall as the most ethical bank in the world was the Banco do Brasil. Three Australian banks appear in the top five. Old National Bancorp: Only one American appears. Measure ethics is not easy. Is it ethical for a bank that lent good intentions but whose client was fraudulent? Is it unethical that a director is paid a large bonus based on pressures sales force to place credits that customers do not need? Is it ethical to telephone customers to accept an individual credit, personal or payroll knowing that the call was premeditated from the bank and to make us no matter the economic condition of the borrower potential, but only your reply to charge interest? Citigroup defined this year as the year of ethics. As such, we need to listen exemplary actions to correct the problems that have been released. Only then can we believe that the massive credit key will open that attribute, so rare and so elusive: ethics.