After Hurricane Katrina, a Bank Turns to Money Laundering
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The scene would make a mob boss proud: workers in a windowless hallway scoop armfuls of grimy cash out of plastic garbage bags and sling them into a washing machine. Others fill the dryers and iron the clean bills. Nearby, a half-dozen women count the freshly pressed bills and bundle them into thousand-dollar wads. In an era of cashless and instantaneous transactions, this laundering operation, which has been up and running since shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, is no mirage. In fact, it is part of the recovery process for one of Mississippi’s largest financial institutions, Hancock Bank, which like most banks in Katrina’s path is still repairing its network. Hancock Bank’s branches in the worst-hit areas had no phone or data lines or power for weeks. Bank tellers could not find account balances or swap crucial information with the bank’s backup data centers in Baton Rouge, La., and Chicago. Automated teller machines were inoperable. About 90 of the bank’s 103 branches in the New Orleans area and along the Mississippi coast were damaged in some way. Many of them lost connections to the main data center in the company’s headquarters in Gulfport, which was shattered. Most branches are now functioning again, but seven were smashed and have been temporarily replaced by mobile operations in R.V.’s. More : query.nytimes.com |