Asset Forfeiture: USA's AG Holder on freezing correspondent accounts
Speaking at the Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces and Asset Forfeiture Programme's National Leadership Conference last night, US Attorney General drew attention to how the freezing of correspondent bank accounts all but killed an illegal drugs importing business.
The following is an extract from AG Holder's speech.
Operation Honour Student, a case that will be honoured here later tonight, illustrates the power of asset forfeiture and its devastating effect on organized criminal activity. In that case, a task force led by the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section of the Criminal Division, and the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations obtained the forfeiture of USD2.7 million from the accounts of GeneScience, one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in China that had been involved in the illegal distribution of Human Growth Hormone into the United States. To accomplish this forfeiture, the task force employed a new statutory vehicle -- 18 U.S.C. § 981(k) -- which permitted the Government to seize the funds, physically located in China, from the corresponding accounts of Chinese banks in New York. This was the first use of section 981(k), enacted as part of the USA PATRIOT Act, against a Chinese entity, and its success has helped pave the way for subsequent investigations using this groundbreaking authority.
But not to minimise these impressive legal results, the true impact of Operation Honour Student lies in its practical effect on the illegal hGH market in the United States. Task force agents estimate that at the time of the investigation, GeneScience manufactured approximately 90% of the hGH being illegally sold and distributed in the United States. As a direct result of this seizure, GeneScience has stopped all shipments to the United States. So, through the use of a section 981(k) seizure, we were able to eliminate a supplier that represented 90% of an illegal drug market. Ninety percent.
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