08/19/96 HOT ZILLIONS

HOT ZILLIONS

THE LAUNDRYMEN
Inside Money Laundering, the World's Third-Largest Business
By Jeffrey Robinson
Arcade -- 357pp -- $25.95

One day in the fall of 1981, Humberto Orozco and his brother, Eduardo, walked into the lower-Manhattan office of a well-known currency and gold dealer, Deak-Perera, to make an unusual deposit. They handed over a pile of cardboard boxes of cash weighing 233 pounds--so much that Deak's staffers needed nearly an entire day to count the $3.4 million the boxes contained. But Deak was hardly the only house the Orozcos patronized. Between 1980 and 1982, they moved a staggering $151 million through 11 New York banks.
As you (and federal authorities) suspected, the Orozcos were laundering cash from drug deals. They were caught, Deak eventually collapsed as a result of such practices, and Congress has since tightened its laws on money laundering. But as Jeffrey Robinson observes in his entertaining and comprehensive The Laundrymen, the art of hiding dirty and/or taxable money by moving it through the world financial system is anything but dead. ``The good guys are seriously outgunned,'' writes Robinson, the author of numerous books, including a biography of former Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani. The bad guys, meanwhile, ``only need to find one country or one bank willing to do their laundry.'' And, as Robinson suggests, there is no shortage of either.
The Laundrymen traces the business of moving dirty money back to Al Capone and mob banker Meyer Lansky and takes the reader on a stroll through the affairs of a motley crew of like-minded notables, ranging from Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega to electronics-chain magnate ``Crazy Eddie'' Antar. The book is so up-to-date that it even delves into the affairs of Raul Salinas, brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
The First Brother's hundreds of millions in offshore accounts have piqued the interest of prosecutors from Mexico to Switzerland. But Robinson's work is more than a laundry list. Impressively documented, The Laundrymen is also an indictment of governments and banks that are unwilling to deal decisively with an industry that the author estimates handles $200 billion to $500 billion a year. While the U.S. has gone after money launderers with steely determination, he notes, Canada's lax rules on reporting cash transactions make doing dirty deals a snap. And in emerging economies from Russia to Kenya, bankers ask few questions of big depositors.
Even Switzerland takes its lumps: Although Swiss prosecutors have gone to unusual lengths to help U.S. and other investigators, it's still far too easy, Robinson maintains, to find a discreet banker to help stash questionable cash. Worse yet, he says, advances in microelectronics are creating products such as rechargeable cash cards that are tailor-made for future cyberlaunderers.
Robinson has no prescription for the problem--and other than more intense global scrutiny by law enforcers and multinational financial organizations, there probably is no answer right now. But in painting a clear picture of one of the world's sleaziest industries, Robinson has put money laundering on display again. If that's the starting point for serious discussion and coordinated international action, so much the better.
By William Glasgall