U.S. targets Lebanon-based drug smuggling network

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Wednesday it was targeting a Lebanon-based drug trafficking and money laundering network suspected of doing as much as $200 million a month in business.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said it was labeling Ayman Joumaa, as well as nine people and 19 entities connected with his organization, as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers.

The action means U.S. citizens are prohibited from any commercial or financial dealings with the people or entities and that any of their assets found in the United States can be seized.

The Treasury said Joumaa coordinated the transportation, distribution and sale of shipments of cocaine from South America, laundering the money in Europe and the Middle East.

It said the group operated in Lebanon, West Africa, Panama and Colombia and had laundered as much as $200 million per month through various channels.

The Treasury's action was taken under the so-called Kingpin Act that aims to disrupt foreign narcotics traffickers by preventing them from gaining access to the international financial system. (Reporting by Glenn Somerville; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Source: Reuters

OFAC Targets Colombian Drug Traffickers Linked To Sinaloa Cartel Leader

The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday it imposed Kingpin Act sanctions on four Colombian individuals and 12 companies tied to a Colombian national linked to the head of the Mexico-based Sinaloa drug cartel.


Announced by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Colombian nationals Mauricio Barcenas Rivera, Omar Mejia Zuluaga and Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes, and dual Uruguayan/Ecuadorian national Jesus Maria Castro all had their U.S. assets frozen. The companies are spread across Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay.

The companies and individuals are all linked, according to the announcement (pdf), to Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa, who was sanctioned by OFAC in February. Villa’s organization, OFAC said, is closely tied to Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as Chapo Guzman.

Both Guzman and Villa were indicted on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges in Florida in November 2010, and Villa was separately indicted in New York in February 2011 on drug-trafficking charges, according to Treasury’s notice.

The full list of Wednesday’s designations is available here, and a chart diagramming Villa’s drug network is here (pdf).

Source: The Wall Street Journal by Samuel RUBENFELD

Money laundering in Colombia surpasses 8 billion dollars

Money laundering operations in Colombia involving funds from drug-trafficking amount to close to 8.7 billion dollars per year, authorities said Wednesday.

There were more than 42,000 suspicious operations from January 2006-December 2010, according to the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF) of the Finance Ministry.

A figure for the underground economy was calculated based on the behaviour of criminals on a global scale, said UIAF director Luis Edmundo Suarez.

Money laundering distorts the economy and pushes up inflation so that the whole country pays 'a tax created by criminals,' he said.

'This illegal business has professionals who work for them permanently, as they would for any investor, advising on whether they should invest in stock, in fuel, wherever we give them the chance,' Suarez explained.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine.

Source: Deutsche Press

David Murcia extradited to US to face money laundering charges

Former DMG director David Murcia, convicted of managing a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hundreds of thousands of Colombians, was surrendered to U.S. authorities in Bogota Tuesday to face charges of laundering drug money before a U.S. court.


Heavily armed policemen escorted the disgraced rags-to-riches businessman early Tuesday morning from the La Picota prison in Bogota to a special airbase where two U.S. airplanes were waiting to take him to New York.

Murcia received a 30-year prison sentence in December after a judge had found him guilty of money laundering and illicit enrichment.

His company, DMG, became one of Colombia's wealthiest enterprises as it convinced hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Colombians to invest their savings into prepaid cards that could later be exchanged for products worth many times more than the invested money.

The scheme collapsed in 2008 when the Government ordered the closure of the company and its activities, and arrested all the company's executives, resulting in great losses for clients of DMG. Most of the money that was "invested" in the company is still missing.

Source: Colombia Reports

Drug money laundering ring with ties to Colombia and Italy busted in Boston

By Globe Staff

A drug bust in East Boston four years ago started an undercover investigation that has led to the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in laundered drug profits, the seizure of large amounts of heroin and cocaine, and charges against alleged organized crime figures in Colombia and Italy, officials said this afternoon.

The multi-agency and multi-government investigation spanned four years, and was built on the undercover work of an unidentified Massachusetts State Police trooper who traveled the world posing as a part the drug rings who shuttled money and drugs between the US, South America and Europe.

“This investigation not only been a lengthy one, but it’s been extremely complex,’’ US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said today of the US Drug Enforcement Administration-led investigation that was dubbed “Operation Fire and Ice.’’

She said some 20 people were arrested today in Massachusetts and in Colombia who will now be tried in a Boston courthouse for allegedly laundering drug money through the region. Officials estimated they seized some $200 million in cash, and more than 1,100 kilograms of cocaine and 46 kilograms of cocaine around the world.

Signaling the significance of the investigation to law enforcement in other countries, Ortiz was joined at an afternoon press conference at the Moakley courthouse by Brigadier General Cesar Augusto Pinzon Arana, commander of an elite anti-drug unit in Colombia, and Detective Vittorio Rizzi, commander of a special investigation unit for the Italian National Police in Rome.

With the help of a Spanish interpreter, Arana said the investigation targeted the remnants of the notorious Medellin drug cartel which now operates under the name of “La Oficina de Envigado” in Colombia.

Those arrested in Colombia will face trial in the US, officials said.

Three people with ties to Massachusetts were also arrested today. They were identified as Julissa Perez, of Malden; Henderson Martinez, who is also known as “Juan,” of Boston; and Roberto Torres-Colon, also known as “Chappa,” believed to be of Lawrence.

Authorities seized several bank accounts allegedly controlled by the Massachusetts residents and seized more than $2 million in cash. They face drug trafficking and money laundering charges here.

Source: BOSTON

Montreal men face money-laundering charges

Three Montreal-area men appeared in court in New York for the first time yesterday to face charges they helped launder Colombian drug money, in a case the United States government calls a landmark investigation.

The three - Juan Carlos Ellis, 45, of Ste. Julie, and Gerardo Palma and Giovanni Di Rienzo, both of Montreal - arrived in New York on Tuesday, weeks after the Quebec Court of Appeal rejected their challenge of U.S. extradition requests filed in 2004.

The men were arrested by the RCMP on May 3, 2004, after they and 31 other individuals and companies were named in a U.S. District Court indictment alleging all were part of a complex scheme based in Bogota to launder money that Colombian drug traffickers were making in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Operation White Dollar, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into the scheme, uncovered more than $100 million U.S. in drug money that had been converted into Colombian pesos for traffickers.

Currency brokers were used to sell pesos to companies in Colombia; in exchange, the brokers received drug money in the U.S. and Canada at a favourable rate. The brokers would deposit the dirty money in various international banking systems. They sold the U.S. dollars to Colombian firms looking to avoid taxes, import duties and transaction fees.

According to the U.S. State Department, a "prominent Colombian industrialist" agreed to forfeit $20 million after the investigation found he had bought pesos through the exchange for years.

Ellis and the two others are alleged to have taken more than

$2 million in 2002 to undercover agents posing as intermediaries for a Colombian man who arranged to exchange dirty U.S. and Canadian dollars into pesos.

During the spring of 2002, an undercover agent based in New York was asked to organize the collection of $500,000 in Montreal for German Moreno-Zuluaga, a Colombian man charged in Operation White Dollar. The agent was given a pager number and the code name El Toussou.

The information was given to an RCMP undercover agent in Montreal who set up a meeting with a man, alleged to have been Ellis. The undercover RCMP agent was handed $500,000 after a second meeting in May 2002.

Using similar methods, undercover RCMP agents were sent to pick up money on three other occasions in Montreal restaurants and hotel parking lots between August 2002 and February 2004.

Palma is alleged to have helped Ellis with some of the cash deliveries. Di Rienzo is alleged to have handed over more than $400,000 in August 2002 and to have told an undercover agent he had much more money in Toronto to deal with.

The RCMP deposited the money in a Canadian bank account and it was transferred to a secret DEA account in New York so investigators could trace the funds back to Colombia.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=d4068fb8-4701-444b-a408-1e7e686c1730

Islamic Charity Charged with Terrorist Financing; Former U.S. Congressman Indicted

KANSAS CITY -- A federal grand jury in the Western District of Missouri has returned a superseding indictment that charges the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) and several of its former officers with eight new counts of engaging in prohibited financial transactions for the benefit of U.S.-designated terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The indictment also charges former U.S. Congressman Mark Deli Siljander with money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the case.

The 42-count superseding indictment returned today was announced by Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; John F. Wood, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri; Joseph Billy, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division; and Monte C. Strait, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Kansas City Field Office.

“This superseding indictment paints a troubling picture of an American charity organization that engaged in transactions for the benefit of terrorists and conspired with a former United States Congressman to convert stolen federal funds into payment for his advocacy on behalf of the charity,” said Assistant Attorney General Wainstein.

“An organization right here in the American heartland allegedly sent funds to Pakistan for the benefit of a specially designated global terrorist with ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban,” said U.S. Attorney Wood. “By bringing this case in the middle of America, we seek to make it harder for terrorists to do business halfway around the globe. The indictment also alleges that a former congressman engaged in money laundering and obstruction of a federal investigation in an effort to disguise IARA’s misuse of taxpayer money that the government had provided for humanitarian purposes.”

IARA, the Islamic charitable organization named in today’s indictment, was headquartered in Columbia, Mo., and was formerly known as the Islamic African Relief Agency-USA. IARA was officially formed in 1985 and closed in October 2004, when it was identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist organization. Mubarak Hamed, 51, of Columbia, Mo., a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sudan, served as IARA’s former executive director and is named as a defendant in the indictment.

Also charged in today’s superseding indictment is Mark Deli Siljander, 57, a former U.S. Congressman from Michigan (1981-87) who serves as the owner/director of Global Strategies, Inc., a planning, marketing and public relations company located in the Washington, D.C. area.

Other defendants named in the indictment are Ali Mohamed Bagegni, 53, formerly of Columbia, Mo, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Libya and a former member of IARA’s board of directors; Ahmad Mustafa, 55, of Columbia, a citizen of Iraq, and a former fund-raiser for IARA; Khalid Al-Sudanee, 56, a citizen and resident of Jordan, and the regional director of the Middle East office of the Islamic African Relief Agency (also known as the Islamic Relief Agency, or ISRA); and Abdel Azim El-Siddig, 51, of Palos Heights, Ill., a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Sudan, and formerly vice president for international operations for IARA.

On March 6, 2007, IARA, along with five officers, employees and associates were charged in a 33-count indictment for illegally transferring funds to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions. They were also charged with stealing government funds, with misusing IARA’s charitable status to raise funds for an unlawful purpose, and with attempting to avoid government detection of their illegal activities by, among other things, falsely denying in a nationally-televised interview that a procurement agent of Osama bin Laden had been an employee of IARA. These charges are included in the superseding indictment returned today.

New Terrorism-Related Charges Against IARA

Today’s superseding indictment adds to the original charges by alleging that IARA and its former executive director, Mubarak Hamed, engaged in prohibited financial transactions for the benefit of Specially Designated Global Terrorist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan mujahideen leader and founder of the Hezb-e-Islami-Gulbuddin (HIG), who has participated in and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Hekmatyar has vowed to engage in a holy war against the United States and international troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. government designated Hekmatyar as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on Feb. 19, 2003, thereby blocking all property and interests in property of Hekmatyar.

According to Counts Thirty-Four through Forty-One of the new indictment, IARA and Hamed knowingly and willfully engaged in financial transactions for the benefit of Hekmatyar’s organization by sending approximately $130,000 in 2003 and 2004 in numerous transactions to Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, purportedly for an orphanage housed in buildings owned and controlled by Hekmatyar.

“Sending money to benefit designated terrorists jeopardizes both U.S. national security and the security of nations around the world,” said Assistant Director Joseph Billy, Jr., FBI Counterterrorism Division. “The FBI will continue to work diligently with our partners in the law enforcement and intelligence community to pursue suspected terrorists and their supporters, whether in the United States or overseas.”

It is important to note that the indictment does not charge any of the defendants with material support of terrorism, nor does it allege that they knowingly financed acts of terror. Instead, the indictment alleges that some of the defendants engaged in financial transactions that benefited property controlled by a designated terrorist, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

New Charges Against Former Congressman

Today’s superseding indictment also names Mark Deli Siljander as a defendant on counts of money laundering, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. According to the indictment, Siljander was hired in March 2004 by defendants IARA, Hamed, and Bagegni to advocate for the removal of IARA from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of non-profit organizations suspected of being involved in supporting international terrorism.

The Senate Finance Committee placed IARA on this list of charities and published the list on Jan. 14, 2004. Siljander was to advocate for IARA’s removal from the list and reinstatement as an approved government contractor by gathering information and meeting with individuals and agencies of the U.S. government.

As compensation for the services that Siljander agreed to perform, IARA transferred roughly $50,000 in stolen federal funds to accounts that were controlled by Siljander at the National Heritage Foundation and the International Foundation. According to the indictment, the funds used to compensate Siljander for his services had previously been stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by IARA, Hamed and Bagegni. The International Foundation and the National Heritage Foundation, which is not related to the Heritage Foundation, are not charged with any wrongdoing in this case.

IARA, Hamed and Bagegni had previously entered into a series of agreements with USAID for relief projects in Mali, Africa. When USAID terminated those agreements in December 1999, the amount of money involved totaled approximately $2 million. IARA had allegedly failed to fully fund the matching contributions required to receive USAID funds. After the termination of these agreements, the indictment alleges, IARA, Hamed and Bagegni, without authorization, retained approximately $84,922 of USAID money and failed to return the funds to USAID as called for by the agreements.

According to Count Twenty-Eight of the indictment, Siljander and defendants IARA, Hamed, Bagegni and El-Siddig conspired to engage in money laundering by transferring stolen USAID funds, knowing that the transfers were designed to conceal the nature, source and ownership of the proceeds. Counts Twenty-Nine through Thirty-One of the indictment charge Siljander along with IARA, Hamed, Bagegni and El-Siddig with engaging in money laundering by transferring stolen USAID funds, knowing that the transfers were designed to conceal the nature, source and ownership of the proceeds.

Obstruction of Justice

Count Thirty-Two of the indictment alleges that Siljander obstructed the due administration of justice in the grand jury investigation in the Western District of Missouri by making false statements to FBI agents in December 2005 and to FBI agents and federal prosecutors in April 2007.

According to the indictment, Siljander told federal officials that he had not been hired to do any lobbying or advocacy work for IARA and that the money or checks he received from IARA were charitable “donations” intended to assist him in writing a book about bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity. When he made these statements, he then well knew and believed that each statement was false, the indictment alleges.

The public is cautioned that the charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, IRS-Criminal Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. AID-Office of Inspector General.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony P. Gonzalez from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri, in conjunction with Trial Attorneys Corey J. Smith, National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and Steven M. Mohlhenrich, Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

http://www.thesop.org/article.php?id=9137