MSNBC exclusive: Document shows Tunisian with alleged al-Qaida links gave information to Italians two years ago
A Tunisian-born terrorism suspect placed two weeks ago on Washington‘s list of most-wanted militants confessed two years before to Italian police that he helped run an elaborate arms smuggling ring that aided Islamic militants, but it‘s not clear whether Italian and U.S. officials acted on the information. The case, revealed in a confidential document obtained by MSNBC.com, raises new questions about intelligence gathering in the war on al-Qaida.
At a time when Americans are concerned about corporate fraud and corruption, another sort of corporate lawbreaking has been revealed in a report prepared for The Hague war crimes trial of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic: the violation of an international U.N. arms embargo.
According to U.N. investigators, on June 5, 1998, Serbia paid $154,785 to Bell Helicopter Textron, a Texas company, for spare parts for the maintenance of Bell helicopters. At the time, Serbia was under a U.N. arms embargo”in February, more than a year before NATO bombing began, it had commenced attacks against Kosovo”but it was in dire need of helicopters and other war supplies.
Bell Helicopters of Texas sold parts to Serbia during a U.N. arms embargo, a report to the war crimes trial of ex-president Slobodan Milosevic shows. The Milosevic regime, writes PNS investigative reporter Lucy Komisar, paid through a secret offshore financial network that included a byzantine web of global tax havens.
At a time when Americans are concerned about U.S. corporate corruption, a tribunal in The Hague has revealed another shadowy deal with international reverberations. Bell Helicopters of Texas sold parts to Serbia during a U.N. arms embargo, when Serbia was involved in a genocidal war using helicopters. The regime of ex-president Slobodan Milosevic paid through a complex, secret offshore financial network.
An aggressive European investigation of international crime has revealed alleged Russian mafia leaders operating in the United States. The U.S. Justice Department dropped the ball three years ago during the Bank of New York scandal, which now threatens to explode.
NEW YORK–Nearly three years ago, the Justice Department called the Bank of New York (BoNY) money-laundering scandal just a Russian tax-evasion scheme. Now, European investigations show that BoNY was a channel for organized crime. And according to a document obtained by Pacific News Service, some of the alleged Russian mafia leaders have operated freely in the United States.
New York, Aug 6, 2002 — Nearly three years ago, the Justice Department called the Bank of New York (BoNY) money-laundering scandal just a Russian tax-evasion scheme. Now, European investigations show that BoNY was a channel for organized crime. And according to a document obtained by Pacific News Service, some of the alleged Russian mafia leaders have operated freely in the United States.
The widening scandal reveals Washington’s dangerous reluctance to confront international criminal networks.
Corporate corruption scandals roil the United States, dragging down with them the reputations of the major accounting firms that signed off on–or even designed–fraudulent financial practices. These global auditors were supposed to keep corporations honest. But a closer look at Switzerland, the birthplace of financial legerdemain, shows that accounting deceit is nothing new. Western financial managers cut their teeth designing systems for Third World dictators to loot their countries.
Perhaps the most notorious example is Ferdinand Marcos, who is suspected of stealing at least $10 billion from the Philippines before being overthrown in February 1986. The Philippine government has spent more than 15 years trying to track and recover the money, some of which was secreted away by Swiss bankers and stashed in offshore havens.
The world‘s biggest banks and multinational corporations have set up a shadowy system to secretly move trillions of dollars”a system that can be exploited by tax evaders, drug runners and even terrorists.
In the tax haven of Luxembourg, a little-known outfit called Clearstream handles billions of dollars a year in stock and bond transfers for banks, investment companies and multinational corporations. But a former top official of this “clearinghouse” says Clearstream operates a secret bookkeeping system that allows its clients to hide the money that moves through their accounts.
A previously unpublished list reveals that backers of a bank that the U.S. says helped fund al-Qaida include prominent members of the Arab world.
According to an unpublished list obtained by the author, the Al Taqwa bank, part of a network of financial companies named by the Bush administration as a major source and distributor of funds for Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations, has shareholders that include prominent Arab figures from numerous countries in the Middle East. Among the shareholders are the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates and prominent families in the UAE and Kuwait. Two sisters of Osama bin Laden are also on the list, undermining the bin Laden family’s claim that it separated itself from his terrorist pursuits after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994.
How did top executives of Enron do it? How did they cause the world’s biggest bankruptcy while making off with millions of dollars?
They used the same financial tools as Osama bin Laden.
To attack the Osama bin Laden financial network, the Bush administration knew right where to look – in offshore secrecy havens, including the Bahamas, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Dubai and Panama.
How did Enron executives cause the world’s biggest bankruptcy while making off with millions? By using the same secret money system used by terrorists and financial swindlers — an offshore financial system that U.S. officials must rein in.
NEW YORK–How did top executives of Enron do it? How did they cause the world’s biggest bankruptcy while making off with millions of dollars?
They used the same financial tools as Osama bin Laden.
Top executives of Enron caused the world’s biggest bankruptcy while making off with millions of dollars by using the same financial tools as Osama Bin Laden.
The Bush administration knew right where to look when it wanted to shut down Bin Laden’s financial network ” offshore secrecy havens. The system moves money for people with something to hide. Sometimes they are terrorists. Sometimes they are financial swindlers.
U.S. investigators had to use muscle to get the Bin Laden information. When a Bahamas bank refused to open its records, the U.S. had it cut off from the world’s wire transfer systems and the bank changed its mind within hours. Offshore revelations on Enron should make the public and policymakers question the continued existence of the world’s financial services system for criminals.
Von Lucy Komisar*, Beat Kraushaar Und Henry Habegger, Mitarbeit: Laurent Duvane SonntagsBlick (Zurich) 9 Dezember 2001 BERN – 600 Kilo nukleares Material wollten Ex-SVP-Nationalrat Bernard Rohrbasser und Notar R. verkaufen – an die Saudis. Verwickelt in den dubiosen Handel ist auch das Departement für auswärtige Angelegenheiten. Jetzt ermittelt die Bundesanwaltschaft. Diesen Mittwoch erhielt die Bundesanwaltschaft […]
When tracking down the terrorist money trail, Washington will inevitably wind up in Switzerland. Swiss banks have long been used by shady characters worldwide to launder money. One of them might be a good starting point for U.S. investigators seeking terrorist funding sources and illicit bioweapons trade.
GENEVA–To protect America from terrorist attack, the United States must investigate illicit trade in biological weapons and trace the movement of terrorist money. A good starting point is a controversial Swiss bank that may have facilitated the sale of hazardous biological materials to Islamic militants.
GENEVA– As the U.S. searches for the culprits who let loose an anthrax attack on America and for the money trail of Islamic terrorists believed to have plotted the attack on the World Trade Center, key questions are: How does the illicit trade in biological weapons operate and how is terrorist money moved?
For answers to both those questions, the U.S. ought to zero in on a Swiss bank that handled a sale from a known Russian biological weapons producer, Biopreparat, to a company, Interplastica, with links to Islamic militants.
Offshore banking has helped Citibank clients hide millions.
Citibank Citibankis leading a fight by American banks to gut the anti-moneylaundering laws currently being considered in Congress”laws that could significantly change the way banks do business for their wealthiest clients.
Citibank is seeking an exception to a proposed ban on doing business with shell banks, which have no physical presence and are situated “virtually” in offshore zones to avoid taxes and regulations. The banks are used to hide and launder perhaps billions of dollars a year.
NEW YORK–A controversial European book that might help authorities track terrorist funding sources remains unpublished and relatively unknown in the United States.
”Entitled Revelation$,it exposes a secret banking system that might be used by terrorists. At the center is a clearinghouse in Luxembourg called Clearstream, which transfers money for international banks and major companies.
Written by a former high-ranking Clearstream official and a French journalist, its publication last February by Les Arenes in Paris triggered the firing of Clearstream’s top officials, a judicial inquiry in Luxembourg, and invitations to the authors to address members of the European Parliament and the French parliamentary commission on financial crime and money-laundering.
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world’s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers’ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it helps worldwide networks of terrorists.
Terrorists need a way to finance operations in dozens of countries around the globe, to pay for houses, salaries, transport, weapons and explosives.
For years the banking laws of the United States and its allies have protected money laundering, which makes money for banks and the wealthy, and has even helped Washington fund freedom fighters. But the system also provides funds and cover for terrorists; the system must be dismantled with new laws.
The global money-laundering system used by terrorists has also served the U.S. government and banks for years, creating wealth and occasionally supporting U.S. political interests abroad. Changing U.S. bank secrecy laws to pierce that laundering system is as essential to stopping terrorism as military force and diplomatic moves.
Global money laundering made easy by loose rules on secret accounts
Terrorists work the levers of global banking laws to move money that finance their efforts from phony banks to real ones, like Britain’s Barclays Bank, which Osama bin Laden allegedly used.
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world‘s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers‘ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it aids and abets worldwide networks of terrorists.
For Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, 53, called Taivanchik (the Taiwanese) because of his Asian features, the plot to get an Olympic gold medal for Russia’s top figure-skaters was small-time.
The Russian mafia don who was arrested July 31 for fixing skating contests at the Salt Lake City summer Olympics reminds one of Al Capone, who was put away for tax evasion, because the government couldn‘t get enough evidence against him for murder, extortion and criminal racketeering.
When Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said after the February meeting of the top industrialized countries, known as the G-7, that a European initiative to clamp down on money laundering is not about dictating to any country what should be the appropriate level of tax rates, it was clear that the game was over.
For about eighteen months the United States had signaled that it was serious about joining the Europeans in modest efforts to deal with the tide of illicit money that washes around the world. Now, the Bush Administration was saying that it was backing off the US commitment to reform the offshore banking system. Instead, the tough on crime Republicans would stand shoulder to shoulder with the shady characters in Nauru, Aruba, Liechtenstein and elsewhere who offer state-of-the-art financial services for crooks.
Money: The wealthy hide a bundle of their dollars in banks that can keep a secret.
The Bush tax cut for the top 1 percent of richest Americans is worth $69 billion, nearly 38 percent of the total. People who protested that are virtually ignoring another Republican policy that saves the rich the same amount. Experts estimate that $70 billion in taxes are lost annually because many wealthy Americans hide money in tax havens, but Republicans in Congress and the White House are blocking efforts to stop this tax evasion.
In the first salvo of an international effort to disable the system of shell companies used widely by criminals, corrupt officials, and tax cheats, the OECD Council of Ministers on May 10th adopted a report on what countries should do to pierce shell company secrecy. Called “Misuse of Corporate Vehicles for Illicit Purposes,” it is part of a campaign by the world‘s financial powers against the illicit offshore bank and corporate secrecy system. It was written by OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance made up of experts from member countries‘ finance and securities ministries.
