January 2011

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is seizing a record number of bank accounts for money laundering.  In summary, here is how it works.  A Special Agent from ICE submits an Affidavit to a Federal Judge, the Judge signs a Seizure Warrant authoring the Special Agent to serve that document upon the bank to seize whatever money is in that account.  Although the seizure of such accounts may accomplish a legitimate law enforcement purpose in attempting to stop the illicit sale of narcotics by taking the money generated from those sales, the process is too easily abused by the U.S. Government.

The Affidavit filed by the Special Agent is usually “sealed” which means it will not be available to the public or even the person or company for which the bank account monies were seized. Due process should allow a claimant prompt access to that information so the account holder may meaningfully challenge the seizure in Federal Court.  At a minimum, the Seizure Warrant should specify what the facts were that supported an allegation of money laundering. Right now, the standard language in the Seizure Warrant only states:

The bank account is subject to seizure and grounds exist for the issuance of this seizure warrant pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 981(a)(1(A) and 21 U.S.C. 881.

That’s it; that’s all you get from the U.S. Government as the reasons that your entire bank account has now been cleaned out, potentially leaving a company unable to pay its bills, including to its employees, or […]

I am still troubled by the Wall Street Journal lead article on October 4, 2010 with the headline “Recession-Weary Americans Sour on Free Trade.”  I asked myself why would Americans who live in an economy built successfully on the principles of capitalism and free enterprise be against international trade?  The WSJ article stated that a poll concluded that 53% of Americans said free trade hurt, rather than helped, the U.S. economy, a statistic that increased from 46% in 2007 and 32% in 1999.  My bold prediction is that 2011 will be the year that the Obama Administration successfully finalizes free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, and then Congress passes laws approving them.

Americans sometimes want their cake and eat it too. They want American companies to make and export more airplanes, more tractors, and more wheat and corn, all the while shopping at their local department stores and buying merchandise made in, and exported from, China, Indonesia, and Mexico.   As stated in the WSJ by my law school friend Myron Brilliant, Senior Vice President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

When we knock down [trade] barriers in those [foreign] markets, we create jobs here [in the United States]. We’ve got to trade to create jobs in our country.

Boeing employs tens of thousands of employees in the United States to produce airplanes to sell overseas.  American farmers grow wheat and corn in amounts far beyond what could be consumed in the United States.  Caterpillar sells more tractor equipment overseas than it does in the United States. According to […]