Green File

The Green File documents the US Treasury B-Series bonds (CUSIP 912810BU1) — $4.224 billion in face value, issued May 15, 1975, at 8.25% interest, with a scheduled call date of May 15, 2000, and maturity of May 15, 2005. The bonds were held in book-entry form at Bankers Trust, New York, from issuance until 1993, when a Power of Attorney was granted by the Estate of David Green (also known as Ronald George Martin) to the file's principal researcher.

The research follows the bonds through a chain of financial institutions — Bankers Trust's acquisition by Alex Brown & Sons (1997), the bank's guilty plea for escheatment fraud (1998), its acquisition by Deutsche Bank ($10.1 billion, 1999), and the subsequent formation of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown in Europe. It documents the Treasury's call for redemption in January 2000, the $240 billion in securities removed from Deutsche Bank's systems on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the $553 million non-prosecution agreement between Deutsche Bank and the Department of Justice in December 2010 that the research argues closed the file.

The Green File connects this financial architecture to the Exchange Stabilization Fund, IMF operations in Russia during the 1990s, the Bank of New York money-laundering investigation, the 2000 presidential election, and the September 11 attacks. It represents 53 volumes of documentary research conducted between 1993 and 2011, supported by correspondence, Treasury records, court filings, and contemporaneous media sources.

Genesis.

The bonds were discovered to have remained unclaimed from their issuance date, held in book-entry form at Bankers Trust, New York. In 1993, a Power of Attorney was granted by the Estate of David Green (also known as Ronald George Martin) to the file's principal researcher, John Schoeman. The Treasury confirmed the validity of the securities and their CUSIP number in 1994, while advising that book-entry instruments held by a bank or dealer in securities were not recorded in the Bureau of the Public Debt's systems. A proposed settlement of the claim in 1994 — sanctioned at the level of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Comptroller of the Currency, State Department, and CIA — was cancelled at the last moment following a midnight telephone call from Washington on February 28, 1994.

The Banking Chain.

The research tracks the bonds through a sequence of custodial transitions: Bankers Trust (1975-1997) → Bankers Trust Alex Brown (1997-1998) → Deutsche Bank (1999 onward). Bankers Trust's acquisition by Deutsche Bank followed the bank's guilty plea for institutional fraud — the failure to escheat dormant customer accounts and un-cashed dividend and interest checks to the State of New York, a practice under which the bank credited abandoned property as operating income. The formation of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown in Europe followed. The head of Alex Brown, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, was appointed Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in March 2001 — six months before the September 11 attacks.

The Call and Its Aftermath.

On January 14, 2000, the Treasury announced the call for redemption of the bonds, to be executed on May 15, 2000 — the instrument's scheduled call date. Of the $4.224 billion outstanding, $2.047 billion was held by private investors; the balance was held in governmental agency accounts. The Treasury subsequently declared a $166 billion surplus for fiscal year 2000. On the morning of September 11, 2001, minutes before the first aircraft struck the World Trade Center, the records of the B-Series bonds — together with securities valued at $240 billion — were removed from Deutsche Bank's computer systems. On December 21, 2010, Deutsche Bank entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, paying $553 million to resolve a federal tax shelter fraud investigation. The Green File argues that this settlement closed the investigation into the B-Series bonds.

Broader Architecture.

The Green File connects the B-Series bonds to the Exchange Stabilization Fund (the Treasury Secretary's discretionary account, documented in a Policy Analyses monograph as holding over $40 billion); to IMF operations in Russia during the 1990s, including the 1998 Russian economic collapse and the London Club debt restructuring of May 2000; to the Bank of New York money-laundering investigation; and to the financial operations that the research argues were conducted using the unclaimed bond surplus. The corpus also documents a separate line of inquiry into the U.S. Dollar / Russian Ruble Private Stabilization Fund, a private bi-currency vehicle overseen in the 1990s.

Scope.

The Green File includes Treasury press releases, Federal Reserve correspondence, court filings, the Deutsche Bank non-prosecution agreement, the Deed of Release certified under United Kingdom law and at Carlton Fields, Tampa, Florida, the Green File Summary 2000, the Green File Synopsis 2011, and an indexed library of source works ranging from the Trilateral Commission reports of 1973-75 to the contemporary records of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It spans five presidential administrations and three decades of documentary research.