This is news? This is ancient history. For the past 50 years there have been so many books written about it and so much evidence uncovered about the collusion of drug traffickers with bankers and government agencies: In Banks We Trust by Penny Lernoux, Dark Alliance by Gary Webb, The Laundrymen by Jeffrey Robinson, The Blood Bankers by James S. Henry, The Washing Machine by Nick Kochan, to name a few.
Nearly everyone involved gets something out of it: the ruling one percent funds their CIA operations (war crimes) in violation of US and international law, banks benefit with the huge cash infusions, drug traffickers get rich, people stuck in America's urban and rural ghettos could be drugged out to stifle dissent, the military-industrial complex likes selling numerous weapons to compliant dictators and local police agencies, and the "War on Terror" is used to justify invasions of other countries after the demise of the "Communist menace". Articles like this appear about once a year to reassure people that their government is doing something about the problem.
Wachovia paid the $160 million in what is called a deferred-prosecution agreement; no one went to prison, and the fines represented a tiny fraction of the money the bank had filtered. In court documents cited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Wachovia acknowledged serious lapses.
