QUESTION: Marty; there is another documentary on the Abacus Bank and how they were singled out and charged for the 2007-2009 crash. While they said this was a tiny banks for immigrants that was too Small Enough to Jail, I found this offensive that they said it was the first bank to be indicted since 1991. Not even Matt Taibbi ever would report on your case and your film was blocked in the USA because it opened the door to political intervention into Russia by the banksters. I believe HSBC and Republic Bank were charged criminally in your case so there was another bank charged after 1991 but nobody will report it. Am I correct? Has Steve Jame or Matt Taibbi ever contacted you?
ANSWER: As far as I am aware, neither Matt Taibbi nor Steve Jame ever contacted me. You have to look at what and how the government prosecuted the bank in my case. The bank did not plead guilty, it was the holding company that owned the bank – Republic New York Corporation. Then they steered the case to the only Federal Judge who was blind – Richard Casey (who died shortly thereafter). The judge just listened and could not read the truck load of papers to even know the full story. Republic plead guilty promising to make everyone whole and the government allowed them to buy our notes, pocket the profit differential of almost $400 million that was ours which explains the alleged $1 billion turns into $650 million.
When I realized the government was protecting the bank, I did an interview with the Japanese press and told all our Japanese clients that they had better file suit against the bank or they would never see a dime. They listened. Then the government ran to court to put a gag order on me to PREVENT me from helping my clients. You just can’t make up this degree of corruption. Nobody in the press ever reported that one.
The author of Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin, was a journalist for the New York Times. He came to see me about Judge Owen changing the transcripts and told me he was doing the same to Frank Quatrone. The New York Times did not let him report that judges in New York were changing transcripts which is in itself a crime. (see US v Ziccetello).
True, the movie was rated a 10 in Europe, blocked in the USA, and has even been shown in Japan and Canada. It was being shown on international flights to the USA – but not in US theaters. It will appear on German TV in October. Yet, every American newspaper, TV station, and even NetFlix, who first accepted the film and suddenly pulled it, has done everything in their power to suppress the truth from the American people to protect the banks and how Putin even came to power. You just cannot make up this stuff.
Welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave where propaganda is free to prevail over the truth when it goes against New York bankers. The banks pay huge fines and nobody goes to jail BECAUSE the government wants the billions of dollars in fines. It’s either you jail bankers, with no huge fines since the individuals don’t have that kind of money, or you go for the corporate shell and the big bucks. Abacus Bank was small enough to jail BECAUSE they did not have the big bucks to pay off the government and they were Chinese.