When Obama Pressured Big Banks to Break the Law for Iran, They Resisted
While the story was about yet another Obama administration Iran scandal in which Tehran’s American lobbyists-in-chief sought to make liquid $5.7 billion more dollars for the “moderate Rouhani regime”, for once in the tragedy there was an unlikely unsung hero.
American financial institutions, though often maligned, especially in the post-financial crisis world, serve a vital marketplace function. Just like all enterprises, they can be vehicles for good, such as raising capital to help businesses grow, and ill, such as engaging in fraudulent activities. On the negative side of the ledger, there is a sordid history of banks prioritizing profit over principle when it comes to doing business with evil regimes and sinister characters.
Perhaps the most sickening instance involves the conduct of Swiss banks before, during and after World War II. These institutions accepted Nazi deposits expropriated from Jews and refused for decades to acknowledge these holdings, let alone provide restitution to the families of those looted and often massacred by the German forces.
For those Jews who had smuggled their funds to Swiss banks in the hopes of protecting them from Nazi terror, the Swiss banks made it almost impossible for the victims or their relatives to claim their assets after the war. The Swiss institutions – which further did substantial business with the Nazis throughout the war – only began to face justice some 50 years later following substantial pressure from federal and state governments as well as a series of class action lawsuits.
Less egregious examples abound of banks transacting with tin-pot dictators and crime syndicates. In the case of the Iran deal, many European businesses, including financial institutions, continue to fight tooth and nail to do business with an IRGC-controlled economy, overseen by the Khomeinist regime, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad. These firms and supportive governments are steadfast in their desire to do business that will in whole or in part redound to the benefit of the terrorist-backing, tyrannical revolution-exporting regime, even with America out of the pact. (Read more from “When Obama Pressured Big Banks to Break the Law for Iran, They Resisted” HERE)
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