Twenty-two U.S. Presidents or their families banked at Riggs, including John Tyler, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Joe Allbritton bought Washington's oldes and most prestigous bank and ran it into ground in scandal. No doubt He made a lot of money thought.

The following is from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56372-2004Jul16.html

Yesterday, Washington awoke to learn that after more than 160 years, the Riggs name will disappear, swallowed by PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Allbritton once dismissed such faceless financial conglomerates as "toothpaste banks" -- Crestar, Sovran -- and vowed never to sell out to one. But by yesterday he had no choice. His Riggs was no longer the largest or most important bank in the Washington area, and itwas enveloped in a thickening cloud of scandal over failing to guard against money laundering and catering to dictators along with presidents.

Owning the bank gave him access to the interlocking social and political circles of elite Washington. He lived large in this world -- entertaining with his wife, Barbara, at their Foxhall Road NW home (an often-featured dish: Texas chili), breaking bread with favored clients in the Riggs dining room looking over the White House, buying French Impressionist paintings for the bank and for himself, raising a winner of the Preakness on his Virginia horse farm and giving millions away to the arts, education and churches. Hebefriended presidents but was strictly bipartisan: His oldest friends belonged to the Lyndon Johnson crowd, yet he donated the official White House portrait of Ronald Reagan.

The following exerpts are from the following link:

http://forwardamerica.blogspot.com/search/label/Victor%20Bout

Viktor Vasilevich Bout ( pronounced “butt” or” bott”) has become the world’s largest dealer in illegal arms , and he achieved this status in a short period of time. Today, the US and the UN officially try to prevent people and countries from dealing with him, yet US contractors in Iraq are still using his services.

The link between Bout and Osama bin laden seems to be Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack. It seems that the plane used by his flight school double as drug running planes and Weapons running planes. ( CIA operated)

Daniel Hopsiocker, who has long investigated the Venice flight school attended by Atta, ties the seized a hereoin shipment found in the plane of one of the co-owners of the school. Puzzling over why the plane was seized but the politically connected owner was never touched, he concluded that someone with great influence in DC was buying drugs from Osama bin Laden. We know Al Qaeda sells drugs, but that connection is just a guess. It has also been suggested that he had been involved in a protected heroin smuggling operation and that this accounts for the Pentagon=s reluctance to pursue him earlier. Given the history of that airport, it is far more likely that the CIA was moving drugs through it. in 9-11

The story moves to mercenary operations that involve Blackwater, (who could have guessed?) and Riggs bank.

The killing of two American Special Forces soldiers and the kidnaping of Russian diplomats in 2006 was involved with a Bout-related black operation that seems to have gone rogue. Team 121 was comprised of Russian, Israeli, and British mercenaries and was supposed to be used combating private militias in Iraq and turning them against one another. The team was created through the combined efforts of Bout, the Olive Group ( a subsidiary of Blackwater in the United Kingdom, and the Bosnian Defense Fund, of Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. That entity works largely through the Riggs Bank and dates back to the days of the first President Bush. It has had clear links to Al Qasser and Bout .Both of these dealers were involved in the drug trade and moving arms to the Muslim rebels. It has been estimated that at one point, the Kosovo Liberation Front controlled almost 70% of the heroin moving into Europe.

Was the CIA the one responsible for restoring the drug trade in Afganistan? If so, Riggs bank would be the one to handle the deals.

Wayne Madsen, a usually reliable reporter, has been strongly hinting that Bout and the Russian-Ukranian-Israeli weapons-smuggling Mafia has ties to Richard Cheney and other people in the White House. Madsen states flatly that Richard Armitage, undersecretary of State, had been involved in shady dealings in Azerbaijan. The former NSA employee also notes that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are heavily involved in the opium trade and are moving shipments through Turkey and the Balkans with the help of the Russian Mafia and Greek criminals.

Gee, It looks like the Riggs bank has some pretty powerful friends. It is nice to know that the Reagan library is very secure and well funded.

Not much progress in 2006 on the 2004 oil revenue scandel:

http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/453/en/new_u.s._envoy_to_equatorial_guinea_must_hold_gove

Since a 2004 U.S. Senate investigation on corruption revealed over $700 million of EG government money in Riggs Bank accounts, little has changed to combat corruption. U.S. companies still refuse to disclose the amounts they pay to the government and were reported to sign new confidentiality clauses with the EG government in June. The government still holds offshore treasury accounts worth $718 million, according to the International Monetary Fund

The following note was maintained by a group intent of following the "Carlyle Group Scandle"

Enjoy!

RIGGS BANK FINED FOR LAX OVERSIGHT OF SAUDI MONEY, WHICH MIGHT HAVE GONE TO TERRORISTS PRESIDENT BUSH'S UNCLE IS A CHIEF EXECUTIVE AT RIGGS BANK

[Various sources starting with a NYT exposé, 05/18/04: The Bushes SMELL] According to the 5/14/04 New York Times, Federal regulators fined the Riggs National Corporation, the parent company of Riggs Bank, $25 million yesterday [5/13?] for "failing to report suspicious activity, the largest penalty ever assessed against a domestic bank in connection with money laundering. The fine stems from Riggs's failure over at least the last two years to actively monitor suspect financial transfers through Saudi Arabian accounts held by the bank." The 5/14/04 Wall Street Journal reported that of particular concern, Riggs failed to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." According to the 4/18/04 Washington Post, Saudi Prince Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, "may have used a Riggs account to donate money to a charity that then gave some of it to the Sept. 11 terrorists." According to the Washington Post, federal regulators "called Riggs actions a "'willful, systemic' violation of anti-money-laundering law." Riggs officials have "acknowledged years of deficiencies in reporting to law enforcement hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious financial transactions by foreign customers, particularly those connected with the embassies of Saudi Arabia."

From : http://linkthing.com/screed/carlyle_group_cluster.html