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Thread: New York governor resigns for involving in "prostitution ring"

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[quote=MARRIE,275902]Prosecution sources said last week they had no idea at first that the money was related to prostitution. Even after a second bank, HSBC, reported suspicious activity at QAT’s account – and a link was found to Spitzer – it was at first assumed that the money might be related to corruption or improper use of political campaign funds.

The case was initially turned over to the section of the Manhattan prosecutor’s office that deals with political corruption. The ensuing investigation duly established QAT was banking payments to a prostitution network and that Spitzer was a client.

When the case against the one man and three women accused of running the international network reached court earlier this month, it was the presence of a federal prosecutor from the political corruption squad that first alerted New York Times reporters to the possibility that a politician might be involved.

It has since been established that both North Fork and HSBC were on the receiving end of Spitzer investigations in his days as attorney-general. In 2003 North Fork was obliged to refund $20,000 to dozens of home-owners after Spitzer claimed that the bank had been charging illegal fees.

No evidence has been produced that the bank reporting of Spitzer’s transactions was maliciously intended, yet Dershowitz and other commentators have noted that the system was designed to ferret out drug dealers, the mafia, terrorists and major financial fraud.

“Once federal authorities concluded that the ‘suspicious financial transactions’ attributed to Mr Spitzer did not fit any of [these categories], they should have closed the investigation,” said Dershowitz.

Instead, they went after Spitzer with the raw, relentless enthusiasm that the governor had so often displayed towards his own targets in the past. And although his speedy resignation defused much of the political tension in New York, many questions remain about how a man so familiar with the politics of personal destruction exposed himself to inevitable ruin.

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