Offshore Banking Scoundrel

According to an American Senate investigation, Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, stowed away more than $13m in 125 banks, including such big names as Bank of America, Coutts, Riggs Bank and Citigroup.

Now here would be a good case scenario for the KYC (know your customer) laws, related to offshore banking. How could a banking professional claim that he didn't know that his client was the leader of a nation, accused of murdering it's citizens and using it's military to crush civil dissent. Perhaps he lied on his application and said he was a businessman? but why was he surrounded by the big entourage dressed in military garb? and why was he so paranoid about assassination?

Well fortunately for the associates of Pinochet, they performed their work before there were any such laws, to hold the people who set-up the vehicles and accounts to abscond money, accountable. Back in the day, when what happened offshore, stayed offshore. This day in age the bankers would be hung from the yard-arm, like those from the Bank of Scotland, that tried to launder the cash from the big heist in Ireland. Nowadays, you better know every detail about where the dough is flowing from, because if it's thick or ill-be-gotten, there's going to be some man in a suit carrying a badge, right behind it.

Still, many of the people involved with assisting Augusto Pinochet, all those years ago, will be up to their proverbial eyes in alligators. However, the real culprit is the sick old man Pinochet, dying peacefully in luxury, probably with enough funds still stashed to care for his family in the manner they've become accustomed to, but his own reputation should be well enough destroyed by now.

After-all, who would open 125 separate bank accounts, if what they were doing, or thinking about at the time, was legitimate?

Augusto Pinochet is a low-down scoundrel of the worst kind. As Forest Gump would say, "and that's all I have to say about that".