Citibank squirming after being outed as money launderer

🚨NEW: For 2 years, I have been working on a massive, global financial investigation w/my @BuzzFeedNews colleagues based on secret US govt docs we shared w/@ICIJ, internal bank records & intvs w/100s of sources.

Here's Day 1 #FinCENFiles https://t.co/YnOOE3bMdG

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— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) September 20, 2020

South Dakota Republicans have their heads crammed so far into Frank Farrar's colon they can all kiss Wall Drug's Teddy Hustead on the lips in there.

Bankster and former South Dakota Governor Frank Farrar has sat on Citibank and Wells Fargo boards. Elitism in South Dakota is Denny Sanford and Dana Dykhouse and careers in usury get your names on an underground lab, public buildings and a football stadium.

How are 64+ county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They're not; but, it is the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people.

It's obvious this phenomenon is no accident: it has been manufactured to make the state a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks. Divining an alternate universe where Randy Scott is still cruising the Moody County back roads while a Hellbent Bill Janklow is lurking at every intersection in South Dakota's ideological landscape is easier than imagining the decriminalization of Citibank's prospectus.

Current Republican Governor Kristi Noem is a graduate of the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, an anti-think tank think tank that teaches how wedge issues raise campaign dollars for the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. 

Republican former Governor now US Senator Reich Mike Rounds, one of the least effective members of Congress, was elected with cash from ALEC-backed National Federation of Independent Business. South Dakota's GOP legislators and candidates enjoy millions in lobbyist benefits from ALEC. In a campaign fundraising email to supporters Rounds said he believes the Democratic blue wave is building momentum even in my home state and that "South Dakota could be the sleeper race that delivers Democrats a majority in the U.S. Senate." Rounds, who bragged he could build a $9 million war chest in 2013 has less than $2 million in the bank today. The so-called “Americans for Prosperity” is a Koch-soaked dark money group with an agent in Sioux Falls. 

 
According to accountant and State Senator Susan Wismer (D-Britton) there are about $900 billion in 105 trusts alone.

South Dakota is fast becoming a mini-Switzerland for the world’s rich. Analysts and local politicians estimate that $250 billion to $900 billion is now stashed in South Dakota trusts by the likes of Chinese billionaires looking to keep their fortunes out of reach of the government, Europeans looking to avoid taxes and Americans looking to shield wealth from spouses. Yet South Dakota’s trust laws may be difficult to challenge. Trusts in South Dakota are perpetual, meaning a wealthy family can put assets into a trust that are held in perpetuity, rather than for a limited period of time. The state also gives trusts sweeping privacy and asset-protections against creditors, business partners, lawsuits or ex-spouses. Adding to its attraction, South Dakota has no inheritance or capital gains or income taxes. [Billionaire divorce uncovers secretive world of trusts in South Dakota]

#fincenfiles

Lots of squirming in the board rooms of Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Standard Charter, HSBC pic.twitter.com/1Ew0w8CVY4

— Christopher Burgess (@burgessct) September 20, 2020