Left to govt: Confiscate black money in Swiss Bank accounts

The Left parties today asked thegovernment to confiscate the black money allegedly stashed in Swiss Bank accounts and make the names of the account-holderspublic.

"Government should not only obtain full details of theseaccounts, but also make the names of the account-holderspublic and bring the money back to the country for investmentin social projects," party leader Sitaram Yechury toldreporters here.

In a statement, the CPI(M) Politburo said the "laxity"of the UPA Government in unearthing black money stashed inSwiss Bank accounts and other tax havens "has been exposed bythe recent observations of the Supreme Court".

It said the "unaccounted and ill-gotten wealth, amassedthrough tax evasion, money laundering and other illegal means,parked in these Swiss Bank accounts should be directlyconfiscated by the Union Government from the Swiss Banks.

"These monies should be brought back to India and thedetails of the account holders must be made public," it said,adding that any delay in undertaking these steps would beunacceptable.

Earlier, CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan had said,"What is the secrecy about black money? Why are they notrevealing the names? Why are they keeping them (names) undersealed cover? We want to know who they are".

He had said that those who had kept money stashed inSwiss bank accounts had done so to evade taxes. "They are taxevaders. They have committed a crime. The fund should beconfiscated."

The Left parties'' demand came after the apex court pulledup the government for witholding information on black moneystashed in foreign banks, saying it was not just limited totax evasion but was a "mind boggling crime" amounting to"theft" and "plunder" of national wealth having securityramifications.

Earlier, a Swiss bank staffer had handed over details of2,000 secret Swiss bank accounts to whistle-blowing siteWikileaks, claiming the list, contained in two compact discs,included names of about 40 politicians, multinationalcompanies and financial institutions from Asia, Europe and theUnited States.

Maintaining that the website would publish the list infuture, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said he wanted theworld to know the truth about money concealed in offshoreaccounts, how they evaded taxes and the systems in place tokeep this secret.

Source: OneIndia

Tunisians, Swiss Target Family Cash

Bank accounts, properties and holdings owned by Tunisia's ousted leader and his family came under scrutiny Wednesday in Tunisia and Europe, intensifying what promises to be a long battle over assets that activists and Tunisians officials say the family illegally gained during the ex-president's 23-year rule.

Tunisian officials said Wednesday they had opened an investigation into allegations that former president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali and his relatives illegally transferred assets and currency overseas, according to the state news agency. The probe targeted Mr. Ben Ali, his wife, Leila Trabelsi, and dozens of their relatives.

Federal authorities in Switzerland announced Wednesday an immediate freeze of all Swiss assets belonging to Mr. Ben Ali, his wife and about 40 family members.

In France, anticorruption activists said they filed a complaint with Paris prosecutors Wednesday, urging judicial officials to freeze French assets of Mr. Ben Ali and about 12 family members—which they say includes bank accounts and real estate in Paris and the French Riviera—alleging misappropriation of Tunisian public funds and money laundering.

Mr. Ben Ali and an unknown number of his relatives fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia on Friday. Their surprise exit followed a month of popular protests against the president that included allegations that their lavish lifestyle was funded by corruption.

The exact whereabouts of Mr. Ben Ali and his wife in Saudi Arabia weren't known. Mr. Ben Ali has made no public statements since fleeing to Saudi Arabia. It is unclear whether Mr. Ben Ali or other relatives have engaged legal representation. Calls to several Tunisian businesses owned by Mr. Ben Ali’s relatives went unanswered.

Tunisian state television reported Wednesday that authorities in Tunisia's new caretaker government have arrested 33 members of Mr. Ben Ali's extended family. It wasn't immediately clear who the individuals were, when they were arrested or why they were detained.

Members of Mr. Ben Ali's immediate family control stakes in at least three major banks and hold significant shares in at least two Tunisian cellphone companies and at least one airline, according to local lawyers, officials and others with knowledge of the businesses. Holding companies controlled by family members have partnerships with foreign firms operating in Tunisia, which include branches of European car makers and retailers, these people say.

Daniel Lebègue, head of the French arm of anticorruption group Transparency International, estimated Mr. Ben Ali and his clan controlled an estimated 35% of Tunisia's economy. Tunisia's gross domestic product reached an estimated $44 billion last year. Mr. Lebègue's estimate wasn't immediately verifiable.

The Tunisian actions represents the latest in a series of decrees by the North African country's new caretaker government aimed at meeting public demands for widespread political reform and justice. On Tuesday, Tunisia's former ruling party revoked the membership of Mr. Ben Ali, its founder. On Wednesday, the caretaker government started work, with multiple members taking oaths of office.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced commissions to investigate corruption and alleged illegal enrichment by Tunisians during Mr. Ben Ali's rule, a position that became clearer with Wednesday's government's announcement that authorities were looking into alleged transfers of assets and currency overseas.

"An investigation in illegal acquisition of personal property, real estate and stock-market investments abroad has been opened by the Public Prosecutor," the statement said, according to state news media.

Switzerland's immediate freeze covers assets that belong to Mr. Ben Ali and dozens of members of his extended family. The Swiss government said it doesn't have a precise picture of these assets but that its order binds bankers, traders or real-estate agents to take note when they come into contact with suspected Ben Ali assets. "We've ordered all financial intermediaries not to touch this money; they must also declare it," said Valentin Zellweger, a director at the Swiss Foreign Ministry.

Anti-corruption activists in France say their complaint with Paris prosecutors urges judicial authorities to freeze Ben Ali family assets in France. The complaint's aim is to return these assets to their owners—the Tunisian state, in most cases—said Mr. Lebègue of Transparency International, which filed the complaint.

An official at Paris prosecutor's office said she had not yet seen the complaint. The French government has said it was standing by to assist Tunisia in recovering any of Mr. Ben Ali's assets found in France and deemed fraudulent.

Much of the public outrage against the old regime focused on the president's wife and a son-in-law, Sakker el-Materi. Protesters last week hurled insults against Mrs. Ben Ali and over the weekend, people looted mansions that neighbors said belonged to Mr. El-Materi.

The Central Bank has placed under administrative control a bank owned by Mr. El-Materi, Bank Zitouna, according to the state news agency. Mr. El-Materi's whereabouts aren't known.

A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by the website WikiLeaks included a diplomat's description of a home of Mr. El-Materi, which its author said was staffed by at least a dozen people—an expensive rarity, the cable noted—and was home to a caged tiger named Pasha that ate four chickens a day.

"The situation reminded the Ambassador of Uday Hussein's lion cage in Baghdad," the author wrote, referring to the late son of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

"The opulence with which El Materi and [his wife] Nesrine live and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali's family are disliked and even hated by some Tunisians," the author wrote. "The excesses of the Ben Ali family are growing."

Separately Wednesday, Moody's Investor Service Inc. downgraded Tunisia's sovereign rating by one notch, to Baa2 from Baa3, and changed the country's outlook to negative from stable, citing political instability.

By MARGARET COKER in Tunis and DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS in Paris

Write to Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com and David Gauthier-Villars at David.Gauthier-Villars@wsj.com

Source: The Wall Street Journal

France Investigating Money Laundering Linked To Ben Ali, Mubarak

By Joe Palazzolo

Public prosecutors in Paris are investigating suspected organized money-laundering linked to Tunisia’s ousted president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, AFP reported.


The Paris prosecutor’s office told the news agency it opened the probes on Tuesday. The move followed a request by non-governmental organizations Sherpa and Transparency International-France earlier this month for a preliminary investigation of assets linked to Ben Ali and his clan.

France has been searching for assets belonging to Ben Ali since he fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia in mid-January amid protests. The U.S. is also looking for assets in its jurisdiction belonging to Mubarak, Ben Ali and their associates.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Spain freezes assets of Mubarak associate

Spanish police said Friday they have frozen more than 30 million euros in bank accounts and properties valued at 10 million after arresting a close associate of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on fraud charges.

Hussein Salem, detained along with his son and a suspected frontman, was accused of money laundering, fraud, bribery and corruption, police said in a statement.

Police said they froze suspected illicit gains of 32.5 million euros ($46 million) in bank accounts, two buildings in Madrid and seven in the southern resort of Marbella, a popular destination for wealthy people, worth a total of about 10 million euros, and five luxury cars.

A court in Madrid set bail for Salem at 12 million euros, six million for his son and 18 million for his associate.

An Egyptian security official said Salem was accused of corruption in a gas deal and of giving properties to Mubarak and his family in return for huge swathes of land in Sinai.

Spanish police alleged the suspect and his family had received more than 17 million euros in funds he had obtained illegally in Egypt.

Egypt's prosecutor general's office said Friday it had sent the foreign ministry a full dossier on the investigation of Hussein Salem.

The file must now be sent to Spanish police before they can hand Salem over to Egyptian authorities.

The prosecutor general's office said Salem had "acquired Spanish citizenship despite dual nationality being illegal under Spanish law".

Magdi al-Shafei, Interpol's Egyptian bureau chief, was quoted by Egyptian state television as saying Salem's dual nationality could make it "very complicated" to try him in Egypt.

Source: AFP

US report salutes Maghreb counter-terror efforts

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) represents the main terrorist threat in the Greater Sahara and Sahel region, according to a terrorism report recently released by the US State Department.

The Middle East and North Africa overview in the 2009 Country Reports on Terrorism, released to the public on August 5th, found that AQIM was mainly active out of the north-eastern part of Algeria and northern Mali. Al-Qaeda members moved across the Arab Maghreb and Sahel region – especially between Mali, Niger, and Mauritania to mount attacks.

Ransoms for the release of kidnapped foreign hostages provided AQIM with its main source of funding, the report noted. Although governments in the region have tried in the past to confront AQIM, they still need foreign support in building military and law enforcement capabilities, the analysis said.

AQIM operations along "under-governed borders", however, have "posed a challenge" for state responses, Ambassador-at-Large Daniel Benjamin, the co-ordinator for counter-terrorism at the State Department, explained at an August 5th press conference in Washington.

Benjamin called on states in the Arab Maghreb region and around the world to adopt a "no-concession policy" with kidnappers so that their funding flow can be stopped.

Operations by Algerian security services and public rejection of terrorism "have reduced al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)'s overall effectiveness during the past two years", the new report said.

"Algerian security forces have done a very good job [in defending] Algeria proper and as a result, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is pushing to the south in the Sahel: Mauritania, Niger and Mali… increasing the number of attacks there," National Counterterrorism Centre deputy director Russ Travers pointed out at the press conference.

The report noted a decrease in the number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Algeria in 2009, although low-level terrorist activities continued in rural areas in the form of roadside bombs and ambushes laid for security forces.

The document stressed that Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which now calls itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), does not have any popular support.

As a result of declining numbers, AQIM has been hard at work trying to win the media war, as witnessed by the organisation's ability to conduct an attack and claim responsibility via communiqué within hours.

The report stressed the need for Algerian security forces to adapt continuously to AQIM's changing tactics.

Algeria's efforts to confront terrorist activities were also noted by the report. Algiers recently hosted a meeting of military chiefs of staff from Mali, Libya, Mauritania, and Niger to develop a regional counterterrorism strategy and establish a regional command centre in Tamanrasset. In addition, the Algerian government instituted a programme to hire 100,000 new police and gendarmes, reinforce the borders, augment security at airports, and increase the overall security presence in major cities.

AQIM poses the main terrorist threat to Mauritania, analysts found. The report reviewed a number of attacks that targeted foreign interests and nationals in 2009, the most prominent of which was the suicide attack near the headquarters of the French Embassy in Nouakchott.

Regarding Morocco, the document stated that the government pursued a comprehensive counterterrorism approach that emphasised neutralising existing terrorist cells through traditional intelligence work, pre-emptive security measures and collaboration with regional and international partners.

Building on popular rejection of terrorism, the Moroccan government has worked to reduce extremism, dissuade individuals from becoming radicalised and promote moderate and peaceful religious viewpoints.

Morocco also addressed terrorist financing and money laundering operations through the Financial Intelligence Unit created in April 2009.

Moroccan authorities were able to dismantle a number of terrorist cells. However, the report added, the mere presence of these groups stresses the need to continue to be cautious and vigilant.

The report noted that the Government of Tunisia placed a high priority on combating extremism and terrorism. In addition to using security and law enforcement measures, the Tunisian government also used social and economic programmes, including health care and public education, to ameliorate the conditions that terrorists exploit for recruitment and propaganda purposes.

As to Libya, the US Department of State report noted that the Libyan government continued to co-operate with the United States and international community to combat terrorism and terrorist financing after Tripoli's decision to renounce terrorism and its weapons of mass destruction programs.

The report reviewed statements by Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure on July 20th, 2009 in which he confirmed that Libya, Algeria, and Mali planned to co-ordinate military and intelligence efforts to fight security threats linked to AQIM in the Trans-Sahara region.

The report noted Libya's reconciliation and rehabilitation effort sponsored by the Kadhafi Development Foundation to convince the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), previously affiliated to al-Qaeda, to renounce violence and terrorism. Six leading members of LIFG, held in the Abu Salim prison, issued a document renouncing violence and claiming to adhere to a more sound Islamic theology.

The report said that LIFG's 417-page document, "Revisionist Studies of the Concepts of Jihad, Verification, and Judgment of People", gave detailed interpretations of the "ethics and morals to jihad". It included the rejection of violence as a means to change the political situations in Muslim majority countries whose leaders are Muslim, and condemned the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics, and the like. Reducing the notion of jihad to fighting with the sword is an error, it added.

The US State Department report added that Libyan authorities released about 144 former LIFG members and 60 members of other jihadist groups from prison after completing their rehabilitation program.

Finally, the report also indicated that the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) has been successful in building the capacity of Sahara and Sahel region countries and co-ordinating efforts, despite political setbacks over the years caused by coup d'états, ethnic rebellions, and extra-constitutional actions.

The TSCTP is a multi-faceted, multi-year strategy designed to combat violent extremism, and marginalize terrorist organisations by strengthening individual-country and regional counterterrorism capabilities, enhancing and institutionalizing co-operation among the region's security and intelligence organisations, promoting democratic governance, and discrediting terrorist ideology.

The overall goals of the initiative are to enhance the indigenous capacities of governments in the pan-Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Niger, as well as Nigeria, Senegal, and Burkina Faso); to confront the challenge posed by terrorist organisations in the trans-Sahara; and to facilitate co-operation between those countries and US partners in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia).

Source: Magharebia

US workshop in Jordan builds support to battle money laundering

The U.S. government organized a workshop in Jordan to teach officials from the Arab countries how to detect and investigate the smuggling of money.

The U.S. has been working with Jordan and other Arab countries to ensure that banking institutions are subject to appropriate oversight and that they have effective programs in place to prevent money-laundering and terrorist financing.

Participants, including representatives from Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen, examined anti-money laundering standards used by the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based inter-government body set up in 1989 by the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

This week, U.S. federal prosecutors said two NY residents were indicted on charges of trying to smuggle $500,000 (euro323,000) from the U.S. to Jordan.

Authorities said a grand jury in Hartford, Connecticut returned an indictment charging 35-year-old Hassan Abuzaitoun and 33-year-old Mohammad Alazzam with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to smuggle bulk cash from the United States. Both are naturalized U.S. citizens from Jordan residing in Yonkers, New York.

Jordanian authorities have often asserted that Jordan was free of money laundering because of its strict monetary regulations and practices.

In 2004, three different groups of families of suicide bombing victims in Israel filed suits in a Brooklyn, N.Y. federal court against Jordan's largest financial institution _ Arab Bank _ alleging that it moved donations from Saudi Arabia to militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The bank denied the allegation. It later decided to close down its New York branch saying it was pursuing its strategy to focus on operations in the Arab world and Europe.

http://www.amlosphere.com/america/legislation/us-workshop-in-jordan-builds-support-to-battle-money-laundering.html