Before April 7, 1972: Nixon Finance Director Uses Mexican Money Laundering System to Collect Illegal Donations

Maurice Stans. [Source: Southern Methodist University]In a last campaign fundraising swing before April 7, when the new campaign finance laws go into effect, Maurice Stans, the financial chief for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), launches a final fundraising swing across the Southwest on behalf of Richard Nixon. Stans solicits contributions from Republicans and Democrats alike, and tells reluctant contributors that if they do not want their donations traced back to them, their anonymity can be ensured by moving their contributions through Mexican banks. Mexico does not allow the US to subpoena its bank records.
Laundering - “It’s called ‘laundering,’” Miami investigator Martin Dardis later tells Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein on August 26, 1972. “You set up a money chain that makes it impossible to trace the source. The Mafia does it all the time. So does Nixon.… This guy Stans set up the whole thing. It was Stans’s idea.… Stans didn’t want any way they could trace where the money was coming from.” The same money-laundering system allows CREEP to receive illegal contributions from corporations, which are forbidden by law to contribute to political campaigns. Business executives, labor leaders, special-interest groups, even Las Vegas casinos can donate through the system. Stans uses a bank in Mexico City, the Banco Internacional; lawyer Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre handles the transactions. Stans keeps the only records.
Confirmed by Lawyer - Lawyer Robert Haynes confirms the setup for Bernstein, and says breezily: “Sh_t, Stans has been running this operation for years with Nixon. Nothing really wrong with it. That’s how you give your tithe.” Haynes calls the fundraising trip “Stans’s shakedown cruise.” Stans uses a combination of promises of easy access to the White House and veiled threats of government retaliation to squeeze huge donations out of various executives; Haynes says: “If a guy pleaded broke, [Stans] would get him to turn over stock in his company or some other stock. He was talking 10 percent, saying it was worth 10 percent of some big businessman’s income to keep Richard Nixon in Washington and be able to stay in touch.” Haynes represents Robert Allen, who runs the Nixon campaign’s Texas branch; Allen is merely a conduit for the illegal campaign monies. It is from the Banco Internacional account that Watergate burglar Bernard Barker is paid $89,000 (see April-June 1972) and the “Dahlberg check” of $25,000 (see August 1-2, 1972). [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 54-56]