Western banks suck up dirty money

It is good to see your newspaper shining a light into the hidden recesses of global corruption - your headline feature on January 29. The money illicitly siphoned off from developing economies now runs to at least half a trillion dollars annually. Where does it go? Where does the US$6 billion a year sucked out of the Thai economy end up? In the coffers of the Anglo-American banking system.

The major Western banks have been caught laundering huge sums in international drug money and all they get is a slap on the wrist. This is an extortion racket run with the connivance of political elites. Corruption is deliberately sustained by Western democracies. Why? It is a great little money-earner, and just as importantly, it keeps developing countries permanently off balance and all the easier to manipulate.

Is Thailand able to do anything to stop it? Alone, no. As a score of small countries will attest, behind the facade of diplomacy and bonhomie lurks the threat of super-state violence.

A simple test of Western intent is to ask when the tens of billions of dollars that Muammar Gadhafi salted away in the bank vaults in London are going to be returned to the Libyan people. The answer is never. This is a feudal system, and Thailand, like Libya, is a vassal state under Western suzerainty.

Nick Ferriman

Bangkok