A top lawyer who has represented figures including former finance minister Avraham Hirchson, and businessmen Arkady Gaydamak and Michael Chernoy was charged Thursday with accepting a bribe and money laundering.
According to the indictment served in the Tel Aviv District Court, the attorney, Ya'acov Weinrot, was hired by senior Tax Authority official Yehoshua Vita for a reduced fee, and in exchange, Vita gave tax breaks to some of Weinrot's clients, including Gaydamak and Chernoy.
Vita himself was charged with violating public trust and the fraudulent receipt of goods.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
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Rabu, 06 Juni 2012
Kamis, 31 Mei 2012
FBI agents in town help fight cross-border crime
By Marie Magleby, Special to Gulf News
Published: May 31, 2008, 23:44
Abu Dhabi: Gary Price and Ernest Herbert carry FBI badges, but their job descriptions are significantly different here than in the US.
Instead, the duo are go-betweens for local and US law enforcement. He said, "We work closely with UAE government officials to share information that protects the two countries."
They also offer training at the request of local authorities. The training involves many aspects of law enforcement, including ways to combat white-collar crime, violent crime, forensics and counter-terrorism.
In addition, the agents coordinate the Middle East Law Enforcement Training Centre in Dubai, which offers week-long courses for law enforcement personnel from around the Gulf.
Local authorities choose the topics and dates, and FBI specialists come from the US to teach the courses. Since its establishment in 2001, the centre, co-sponsored by the FBI and Dubai police, has conducted about 40 courses dealing with money laundering, computer crimes, intellectual property rights, kidnapping, auto theft, homicide, financial institution fraud, terrorist financing, hostage negotiations and more.
The globalisation of crime, especially financial and internet crime, places the agents in a pivotal position. "The UAE is an important crossroads for business and, as a result, also for crime," Price said of the potential for fraud or abuse in the banking system. With the help of local officials, they routinely seek to investigate bank records and track financial transactions linked to the US.
When internet crime is traced back to the US, the agents are also able to help. Just months ago, a prominent UAE citizen received a cyber threat from a location in the US.
Local law enforcement officials contacted Price and Herbert, who enlisted agents in the US to conduct an investigation. The man was arrested, charged and is now facing imprisonment.
About working with local authorities, Price said: "I truly enjoy working with the Emiratis. They are professional and very gracious." There are, however, obstacles. According to Price, a federal law that regulates "international judicial cooperation" is often misinterpreted to be a roadblock to investigations. "There is not a timely, quick way for law enforcement response because of the bureaucratic process," he said.
Law enforcement mechanisms do not always translate across cultures and borders, Herbert said in a similar vein. "Things are run differently here than in the US, so we have to do things differently."
When FBI agents are on international assignment, they assume the title of Legal Attaché in their respective embassies. Price and Herbert are successors to three other agents since the Abu Dhabi office opened in December 2003. They cover both the UAE and Oman. In the region, the FBI also has agents posted in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
During his tenure, former FBI director Louis Freeh pushed to expand the bureau's international presence. It now has offices in 62 countries. This worldwide network of agents is a necessary countermeasure against the growing nexus of international crime. "Just as there are no borders for crime and terrorism, there can be no borders for justice and the rule of law," current director Robert Mueller told the US Senate in March.
Progress
"Twenty years ago, the idea of regularly communicating with our law enforcement counterparts around the world was as foreign as the internet or the mobile phone. Today, advances in technology, travel and communication have broken down walls between countries, continents and individuals," Mueller added. Price and Herbert embody this prog-ress.
Mueller became the dir-ector one week prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The FBI began as a special agent force in 1908 and received its current title in 1935. Since its genesis, the FBI has seen its share of success and failure. Though it has successfully foiled numerous plots, conspiracies and espionage attempts, it has been criticised for shoddy investigation tactics and ignoring intelligence reports that could have prevented past attacks. Regardless, it has survived a century of challenges.
- The writer is a journalist based in Abu Dhabi.
Source: GulfNews
ISRAEL: Money changer guilty of laundering for funds transfer to Bishara
Jerusalem District Court on Sunday convicted Firas Asila, a 29-year-old money changer from East Jerusalem, of money laundering for transferring $390,000 from an unnamed Arab country to former Balad MK Azmi Bishara.
Bishara, who fled the country over six months ago, is suspected of financial and security-related crimes.
The conviction followed a plea agreement between Asila and the State Prosecutor's Office financial crimes department. According to the agreement, Asila Brothers Ltd., which is partly owned by Asila, was removed from the indictment and will not face legal action.
The prosecution will ask the court to sentence Asila to eight months in prison as well as a suspended term, while the defendant will ask for six months of community service and a suspended term. The state also confiscated several thousand skekels from Asila.
According to the indictment, in 2006, Bishara asked Asila to help him transfer funds from an Arab country through Jordan. Asila agreed and approached a money changer he knew in Amman.
Bishara asked Asila to conceal the fact that he was the recipient of the money, and therefore asked Asila to tell the Jordanian that the money was intended to him and not to ask the courier about the source of the funds.
At Bishara's request, Asila gave him the funds directly in bills. When Bishara wanted the money in shekels, they agreed he would tell Asila he wanted the "books in Hebrew."
A Balad statement said in response that the conviction constitutes a "dirty deal" meant to harm Bishara. "It shows how far the Shin Bet is willing to go when it comes to political persecution," party members said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/939796.html
Bishara, who fled the country over six months ago, is suspected of financial and security-related crimes.
The conviction followed a plea agreement between Asila and the State Prosecutor's Office financial crimes department. According to the agreement, Asila Brothers Ltd., which is partly owned by Asila, was removed from the indictment and will not face legal action.
The prosecution will ask the court to sentence Asila to eight months in prison as well as a suspended term, while the defendant will ask for six months of community service and a suspended term. The state also confiscated several thousand skekels from Asila.
According to the indictment, in 2006, Bishara asked Asila to help him transfer funds from an Arab country through Jordan. Asila agreed and approached a money changer he knew in Amman.
Bishara asked Asila to conceal the fact that he was the recipient of the money, and therefore asked Asila to tell the Jordanian that the money was intended to him and not to ask the courier about the source of the funds.
At Bishara's request, Asila gave him the funds directly in bills. When Bishara wanted the money in shekels, they agreed he would tell Asila he wanted the "books in Hebrew."
A Balad statement said in response that the conviction constitutes a "dirty deal" meant to harm Bishara. "It shows how far the Shin Bet is willing to go when it comes to political persecution," party members said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/939796.html
Rabu, 30 Mei 2012
Bank of China: Terror allegations 'unfounded'
By Lydia Chen
Bank of China today dismissed allegations that it helped terrorist groups by transferring millions of dollars and said the accusations are "sheer nonsense" and are "completely unfounded."
The bank has always "strictly" adhered to regulations regarding international money laundering and terrorism financing. Its internal rules also forbid providing any services to terrorist groups, Wang Zhaowen, a spokesman for the country's third largest lender said, Xinhua news agency reported.
Kent Henderson, who represents more than 100 Israelis, has alleged in a complaint filed on August 22 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, that from 2003, Bank of China conducted dozens of wire transfers worth several million dollars to Hamas and Islamic Jihad through branches in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
The banking services "caused, enabled and facilitated the terrorist attacks in which the plaintiffs and their decedents were harmed and killed," Henderson wrote in the complaint, which seeks unspecified damages.
Wang said the bank will clarify its position through legal process and reserves the right to file lawsuits or take other legal action.
"We trust that the US court will reach a fair verdict based on the facts," Wang said.
The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, which is backing the suit against Bank of China, began suing banks on behalf of victims of terrorism in May. It accused the financial institutions, including UBS AG, of providing financial services that ended up helping terrorist groups. Last month, five Lebanese banks were sued in the US and Canada.
Source: Shangai Daily
Bank of China today dismissed allegations that it helped terrorist groups by transferring millions of dollars and said the accusations are "sheer nonsense" and are "completely unfounded."
The bank has always "strictly" adhered to regulations regarding international money laundering and terrorism financing. Its internal rules also forbid providing any services to terrorist groups, Wang Zhaowen, a spokesman for the country's third largest lender said, Xinhua news agency reported.
Kent Henderson, who represents more than 100 Israelis, has alleged in a complaint filed on August 22 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, that from 2003, Bank of China conducted dozens of wire transfers worth several million dollars to Hamas and Islamic Jihad through branches in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
The banking services "caused, enabled and facilitated the terrorist attacks in which the plaintiffs and their decedents were harmed and killed," Henderson wrote in the complaint, which seeks unspecified damages.
Wang said the bank will clarify its position through legal process and reserves the right to file lawsuits or take other legal action.
"We trust that the US court will reach a fair verdict based on the facts," Wang said.
The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, which is backing the suit against Bank of China, began suing banks on behalf of victims of terrorism in May. It accused the financial institutions, including UBS AG, of providing financial services that ended up helping terrorist groups. Last month, five Lebanese banks were sued in the US and Canada.
Source: Shangai Daily
Senin, 28 Mei 2012
Israelis accuse Bank of China of funding militants
The Bank of China has brushed off accusations that it was involved in transferring money to terrorists acting against Israeli citizens as "sheer nonsense".
The statement comes in the wake of reports in the western media that over 100 Israeli victims of terrorism have filed a lawsuit in a US court against it demanding an end to the transfer of funds to terrorists. "The accusation is absolutely groundless. Bank of China is prepared to fight the suit," BOC said.
A group of Israelis have moved the US court saying the bank has put through dozens of wire transfers totalling several million dollars to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The funds had helped to finance attacks on them between 2004 and 2007. The lawsuit also said the BOC has "knowingly assisted Hamas and the Islamic Jihad," the lawsuit alleged.
Source: Times of India
The statement comes in the wake of reports in the western media that over 100 Israeli victims of terrorism have filed a lawsuit in a US court against it demanding an end to the transfer of funds to terrorists. "The accusation is absolutely groundless. Bank of China is prepared to fight the suit," BOC said.
A group of Israelis have moved the US court saying the bank has put through dozens of wire transfers totalling several million dollars to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The funds had helped to finance attacks on them between 2004 and 2007. The lawsuit also said the BOC has "knowingly assisted Hamas and the Islamic Jihad," the lawsuit alleged.
Source: Times of India
'Israel allows vast sums to reach Hamas'
The government has admitted that it is allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be transferred to Hamas in Gaza, the watchdog organization Shurat Hadin charged on Thursday.
Organization head Nitzana Darshan-Leitner quoted from a letter she received from the legal adviser of the Prime Minister's Office that said, "The transfer of funds to the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip takes place with the knowledge of the government of Israel for diplomatic reasons."
However, Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, told The Jerusalem Post that the funds mentioned in the legal adviser's letter referred to the money from customs taxes belonging to the PA in accordance with the Paris Agreement of 1994.
According to the agreement, the customs tax for goods imported to the West Bank is collected by Israel at the ports and then delivered to the PA in Ramallah.
"Not a single penny of this money goes to the Hamas," said Regev. The money is used to pay PA employees working in the Gaza Strip, he added.
However, Shurat Hadin attorney Ro'i Kochavi said that his organization's allegations were not related to these funds but to other transfers by the Bank of Israel and the Postal Authority.
"The transfer of hundreds of millions [dollars' worth] of shekels in cash (bills and coins) to the Gaza Strip has continued since the Hamas takeover of Gaza last year," wrote Shurat Hadin. "The money is transferred in armored cars from banks in Judea and Samaria by the Postal Authority and others. Some of the money is used to replace bills that deteriorated [and could not be used] and some to launder money that the Hamas smuggles into the Gaza Strip from Iran via Egypt."
Kochavi told the Post that the Iranian money was delivered in large bills. The armored cars sent by banks with branches in Ramallah and Gaza bring Israeli shekels to the Gaza-Israel border, where they switch loads with armored cars from Gaza carrying the Iranian money, he said.
Kochavi charged that Hamas was using the shekels to pay their armed forces.
Meanwhile, the Iranian money is brought to the banks in the West Bank, where it is sold to the Bank of Israel in return for shekels, he said. The cycle then repeats itself.
In a letter to Kochavi, Merav Batzri, assistant to the legal adviser of the Bank of Israel, wrote that the bank did not know anything about the facts presented in Shurat Hadin's letter. However, it added that "the Bank of Israel also serves as a professional economic adviser to the government of Israel. In this context, it is involved with the relations between banks in Israel and those operating in the areas of the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, the decision to transfer funds to the Gaza Strip is based on a wide basket of considerations aside from economic considerations, including political, security and others. These are the responsibility of the government rather than the bank."
Attorney Ronen Baharav wrote that "the Postal Bank Company, which provides services to the Postal Authority, is required from time to time to transfer money or cash checks on behalf of recipients living in the Gaza Strip. The bank's activities are carried out with the knowledge of the relevant authorities."
Darshan-Leitner wrote that she was considering petitioning the High Court of Justice, charging that the government was violating the Prohibition of Terrorist Funding Law and the Prohibition against Money Laundering Law.
Source: JPost
Organization head Nitzana Darshan-Leitner quoted from a letter she received from the legal adviser of the Prime Minister's Office that said, "The transfer of funds to the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip takes place with the knowledge of the government of Israel for diplomatic reasons."
However, Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, told The Jerusalem Post that the funds mentioned in the legal adviser's letter referred to the money from customs taxes belonging to the PA in accordance with the Paris Agreement of 1994.
According to the agreement, the customs tax for goods imported to the West Bank is collected by Israel at the ports and then delivered to the PA in Ramallah.
"Not a single penny of this money goes to the Hamas," said Regev. The money is used to pay PA employees working in the Gaza Strip, he added.
However, Shurat Hadin attorney Ro'i Kochavi said that his organization's allegations were not related to these funds but to other transfers by the Bank of Israel and the Postal Authority.
"The transfer of hundreds of millions [dollars' worth] of shekels in cash (bills and coins) to the Gaza Strip has continued since the Hamas takeover of Gaza last year," wrote Shurat Hadin. "The money is transferred in armored cars from banks in Judea and Samaria by the Postal Authority and others. Some of the money is used to replace bills that deteriorated [and could not be used] and some to launder money that the Hamas smuggles into the Gaza Strip from Iran via Egypt."
Kochavi told the Post that the Iranian money was delivered in large bills. The armored cars sent by banks with branches in Ramallah and Gaza bring Israeli shekels to the Gaza-Israel border, where they switch loads with armored cars from Gaza carrying the Iranian money, he said.
Kochavi charged that Hamas was using the shekels to pay their armed forces.
Meanwhile, the Iranian money is brought to the banks in the West Bank, where it is sold to the Bank of Israel in return for shekels, he said. The cycle then repeats itself.
In a letter to Kochavi, Merav Batzri, assistant to the legal adviser of the Bank of Israel, wrote that the bank did not know anything about the facts presented in Shurat Hadin's letter. However, it added that "the Bank of Israel also serves as a professional economic adviser to the government of Israel. In this context, it is involved with the relations between banks in Israel and those operating in the areas of the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, the decision to transfer funds to the Gaza Strip is based on a wide basket of considerations aside from economic considerations, including political, security and others. These are the responsibility of the government rather than the bank."
Attorney Ronen Baharav wrote that "the Postal Bank Company, which provides services to the Postal Authority, is required from time to time to transfer money or cash checks on behalf of recipients living in the Gaza Strip. The bank's activities are carried out with the knowledge of the relevant authorities."
Darshan-Leitner wrote that she was considering petitioning the High Court of Justice, charging that the government was violating the Prohibition of Terrorist Funding Law and the Prohibition against Money Laundering Law.
Source: JPost
Sabtu, 26 Mei 2012
ISRAEL: Rabbi indicted in tax fraud and money laundering scheme
Grand Rabbi of Spinka sect accused of helping to solicit millions of dollars in contributions to five charitable groups by promising to secretly refund up to 95 percent of the donations so contributors could falsely claim higher tax deductions
Published: 12.20.07, 12:44 / Israel Jewish Scene
The head of an Orthodox Jewish group was arrested along with several associates Wednesday, accused of operating a sophisticated tax fraud and money laundering scheme involving millions of dollars.
Naftali Tzi Weisz, 59, identified as the Grand Rabbi of Spinka, faces federal charges including conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering, according to a 37-count indictment returned Tuesday. He was expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities say Weisz helped solicit millions of dollars in contributions to five Spinka charitable groups by promising to secretly refund up to 95 percent of the donations. That way, the contributors could falsely claim higher tax deductions.
In some cases, donors received cash payments through an underground money transfer network involving business owners in Los Angeles' jewelry district, prosecutors said. Contributors also were reimbursed through wire transfers from Spinka-controlled entities into accounts secretly held at a bank in Israel, prosecutors said.
Weisz is from Brooklyn, N.Y., where the charitable organizations are based.
Also indicted were his executive assistant, Moshe E. Zigelman, 60. Six of the seven charged in the case were taken into custody as federal agents conducted searches in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday morning.
It was unclear whether the defendants had retained attorneys yet.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3484880,00.html
Published: 12.20.07, 12:44 / Israel Jewish Scene
The head of an Orthodox Jewish group was arrested along with several associates Wednesday, accused of operating a sophisticated tax fraud and money laundering scheme involving millions of dollars.
Naftali Tzi Weisz, 59, identified as the Grand Rabbi of Spinka, faces federal charges including conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering, according to a 37-count indictment returned Tuesday. He was expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities say Weisz helped solicit millions of dollars in contributions to five Spinka charitable groups by promising to secretly refund up to 95 percent of the donations. That way, the contributors could falsely claim higher tax deductions.
In some cases, donors received cash payments through an underground money transfer network involving business owners in Los Angeles' jewelry district, prosecutors said. Contributors also were reimbursed through wire transfers from Spinka-controlled entities into accounts secretly held at a bank in Israel, prosecutors said.
Weisz is from Brooklyn, N.Y., where the charitable organizations are based.
Also indicted were his executive assistant, Moshe E. Zigelman, 60. Six of the seven charged in the case were taken into custody as federal agents conducted searches in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday morning.
It was unclear whether the defendants had retained attorneys yet.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3484880,00.html
Jumat, 25 Mei 2012
Muslim Charity's Ex-Leaders Convicted
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A06
A federal jury in Dallas convicted five men with ties to a prominent Muslim charity of scores of criminal charges yesterday, handing the U.S. government a significant victory in its largest terrorism financing trial.
The verdicts against former leaders of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once ranked as the country's largest Muslim charitable organization, came only hours after a federal appeals court panel in New York upheld criminal convictions of three men accused of helping plot deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Together, the developments strengthened the Justice Department's power to choke the sources of funding that help fuel terrorist schemes -- and to use warrantless electronic surveillance to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens suspected of engaging in international conspiracies.
Yet the victories in cases first filed as long as a decade ago underscore the lengthy path through the criminal justice system, which has afforded the government a mixed record in terrorism prosecutions.
Dennis M. Lormel, a former chief of the FBI's terrorist financing operation section, said the guilty verdicts on the 108 charges in the Holy Land trial amounted to a "validation" of the government's approach and encouraged his former colleagues to aggressively pursue similar investigations.
But Lormel said the most critical, practical development may have come in December 2001, when authorities raided the charity's headquarters in Richardson, Tex., and seized its assets.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, law enforcement officials accused Holy Land of funneling more than $12 million to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The original case against Holy Land and its leaders included more than 100 unindicted co-conspirators, a status that several charities challenged as overreaching by the government.
"For many years, the Holy Land Foundation used the guise of charity to raise and funnel millions of dollars to the infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization," said J. Patrick Rowan, assistant attorney general for national security. "This prosecution demonstrates our resolve to ensure that humanitarian relief efforts are not used as a mechanism to disguise and enable support for terrorist groups."
In the course of the trial, defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had wrongfully targeted philanthropically minded people who wanted to support schools and hospitals in Palestinian territories devastated by conflict with Israel. They drew in part on arguments by civil liberties advocates, who maintain that prosecutors sometimes exploit laws designed to crack down on material support to terrorists to criminalize activities protected by the First Amendment.
The Holy Land verdicts come a year after the first case dissolved in a mistrial. The government's record in prosecutions involving the material support of terrorist networks has been checkered, as questions have arisen about the proper use of informants and whether authorities arrested suspects without enough evidence.
This time around, after enduring months of second-guessing after the Holy Land mistrial, government lawyers pared their evidence and limited the number of witnesses they presented to the jury, which deliberated for eight days.
Earlier yesterday, the convictions of three men with ties to al-Qaeda were upheld in New York. They were convicted for their roles in the 1998 bombings of embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania. The plots killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans, and injured thousands.
The panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, led by Judge José A. Cabranes, unanimously rejected defense claims of insufficient evidence and violations of the Classified Information Procedures Act. Cabranes was joined by Judges Jon O. Newman and Wilfred Feinberg.
The defendants, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali and Wadih el-Hage, are serving lengthy prison sentences in a supermax prison facility in Colorado. They were convicted in 2001.
Attorneys for Hage, who had been a close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, asserted that government investigators improperly collected evidence through wiretaps of his land-based and cellular phones from August 1996 to August 1997. They also argued that federal agents did not secure appropriate warrants to search his apartment in Nairobi. Because Hage is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the defense said, the government should have sought court permission before taking such intrusive steps.
The appeals court panel disagreed, ruling that "we see no merit in this challenge" and finding that the search was "reasonable under the circumstances presented here."
In a conclusion that legal experts say could have implications for other challenges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the panel ruled that U.S. courts could admit evidence obtained through warrantless overseas searches of American citizens, but that the searches must be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
"The decision of the Court of Appeals . . . is one further measure of justice for the victims of those attacks," U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Source: Washington Post
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A06
A federal jury in Dallas convicted five men with ties to a prominent Muslim charity of scores of criminal charges yesterday, handing the U.S. government a significant victory in its largest terrorism financing trial.
The verdicts against former leaders of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once ranked as the country's largest Muslim charitable organization, came only hours after a federal appeals court panel in New York upheld criminal convictions of three men accused of helping plot deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Together, the developments strengthened the Justice Department's power to choke the sources of funding that help fuel terrorist schemes -- and to use warrantless electronic surveillance to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens suspected of engaging in international conspiracies.
Yet the victories in cases first filed as long as a decade ago underscore the lengthy path through the criminal justice system, which has afforded the government a mixed record in terrorism prosecutions.
Dennis M. Lormel, a former chief of the FBI's terrorist financing operation section, said the guilty verdicts on the 108 charges in the Holy Land trial amounted to a "validation" of the government's approach and encouraged his former colleagues to aggressively pursue similar investigations.
But Lormel said the most critical, practical development may have come in December 2001, when authorities raided the charity's headquarters in Richardson, Tex., and seized its assets.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, law enforcement officials accused Holy Land of funneling more than $12 million to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The original case against Holy Land and its leaders included more than 100 unindicted co-conspirators, a status that several charities challenged as overreaching by the government.
"For many years, the Holy Land Foundation used the guise of charity to raise and funnel millions of dollars to the infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization," said J. Patrick Rowan, assistant attorney general for national security. "This prosecution demonstrates our resolve to ensure that humanitarian relief efforts are not used as a mechanism to disguise and enable support for terrorist groups."
In the course of the trial, defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had wrongfully targeted philanthropically minded people who wanted to support schools and hospitals in Palestinian territories devastated by conflict with Israel. They drew in part on arguments by civil liberties advocates, who maintain that prosecutors sometimes exploit laws designed to crack down on material support to terrorists to criminalize activities protected by the First Amendment.
The Holy Land verdicts come a year after the first case dissolved in a mistrial. The government's record in prosecutions involving the material support of terrorist networks has been checkered, as questions have arisen about the proper use of informants and whether authorities arrested suspects without enough evidence.
This time around, after enduring months of second-guessing after the Holy Land mistrial, government lawyers pared their evidence and limited the number of witnesses they presented to the jury, which deliberated for eight days.
Earlier yesterday, the convictions of three men with ties to al-Qaeda were upheld in New York. They were convicted for their roles in the 1998 bombings of embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania. The plots killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans, and injured thousands.
The panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, led by Judge José A. Cabranes, unanimously rejected defense claims of insufficient evidence and violations of the Classified Information Procedures Act. Cabranes was joined by Judges Jon O. Newman and Wilfred Feinberg.
The defendants, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali and Wadih el-Hage, are serving lengthy prison sentences in a supermax prison facility in Colorado. They were convicted in 2001.
Attorneys for Hage, who had been a close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, asserted that government investigators improperly collected evidence through wiretaps of his land-based and cellular phones from August 1996 to August 1997. They also argued that federal agents did not secure appropriate warrants to search his apartment in Nairobi. Because Hage is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the defense said, the government should have sought court permission before taking such intrusive steps.
The appeals court panel disagreed, ruling that "we see no merit in this challenge" and finding that the search was "reasonable under the circumstances presented here."
In a conclusion that legal experts say could have implications for other challenges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the panel ruled that U.S. courts could admit evidence obtained through warrantless overseas searches of American citizens, but that the searches must be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
"The decision of the Court of Appeals . . . is one further measure of justice for the victims of those attacks," U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Source: Washington Post
Senin, 21 Mei 2012
India warned of suspicious transactions
29 Sep 2007, 0058 hrs IST,Pradeep Thakur,TNN
NEW DELHI: The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has forwarded a list of suspicious transactions, including hundreds of cases of suspected terror financing and doubtful foreign remittances, to Intelligence Bureau and other investigating agencies.
In its first annual report released recently, the FIU identified several accounts having a common beneficiary with huge and unexplained money transfers made to them.
Tasked to keep an eye on money laundering and combating terror financing, the FIU report said many of these foreign remittances were doubtful with scant information on the source of funds and actual beneficiaries. Some such account holders were even found to be on the Interpol's watch list and were known criminals.
These suspicious transactions included "cash deposits in bank accounts at multiple locations, off-market transactions in demat accounts, fraudulent use of ATM and credit cards and unexplained activity in accounts inconsistent with what would be expected from declared business."
Banks reported the highest number (437) of suspicious transactions in the last one year while financial institutions and intermediaries accounted for 380 such reports up to March 2007.
The ease with which terrorists and their fronts have laundered money in India through formal channels of transaction raises serious doubts on the efficacy of the strict due diligence regimen imposed by the government on banks and financial institutions a few years ago.
With reports of terror outfits gaining access to stock and commodity markets and evolving ways to evade checks put in place to scan their transactions, it seems money launderers and terrorists have perfected some device to go under the radar of the due diligence mechanism.
In light of the IPO scam, the government had begun harsh punitive action and barred some multinational banks from expanding in India and opening new branches. The punitive measures included sacking dozens of employees of at least two banks. But it seems these measures had only a momentary effect.
The FIU report said India received at least 14 enquiries from abroad related to terror financing and other suspicious transactions. In two cases, some countries, including the US, Canada, Russia and Germany, assisted India in disseminating information.
FIU officials were also sent to the US, Australia, Canada and Thailand to train with the anti-money laundering mechanism put in place by these countries. In the last one year, FIU officials also attended nine joint-working groups on counter-terrorism with the US, Germany, China, Russia, Italy, Canada, Singapore and Israel.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_warned_of_dubious_transactions/articleshow/2412984.cms
NEW DELHI: The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has forwarded a list of suspicious transactions, including hundreds of cases of suspected terror financing and doubtful foreign remittances, to Intelligence Bureau and other investigating agencies.
In its first annual report released recently, the FIU identified several accounts having a common beneficiary with huge and unexplained money transfers made to them.
Tasked to keep an eye on money laundering and combating terror financing, the FIU report said many of these foreign remittances were doubtful with scant information on the source of funds and actual beneficiaries. Some such account holders were even found to be on the Interpol's watch list and were known criminals.
These suspicious transactions included "cash deposits in bank accounts at multiple locations, off-market transactions in demat accounts, fraudulent use of ATM and credit cards and unexplained activity in accounts inconsistent with what would be expected from declared business."
Banks reported the highest number (437) of suspicious transactions in the last one year while financial institutions and intermediaries accounted for 380 such reports up to March 2007.
The ease with which terrorists and their fronts have laundered money in India through formal channels of transaction raises serious doubts on the efficacy of the strict due diligence regimen imposed by the government on banks and financial institutions a few years ago.
With reports of terror outfits gaining access to stock and commodity markets and evolving ways to evade checks put in place to scan their transactions, it seems money launderers and terrorists have perfected some device to go under the radar of the due diligence mechanism.
In light of the IPO scam, the government had begun harsh punitive action and barred some multinational banks from expanding in India and opening new branches. The punitive measures included sacking dozens of employees of at least two banks. But it seems these measures had only a momentary effect.
The FIU report said India received at least 14 enquiries from abroad related to terror financing and other suspicious transactions. In two cases, some countries, including the US, Canada, Russia and Germany, assisted India in disseminating information.
FIU officials were also sent to the US, Australia, Canada and Thailand to train with the anti-money laundering mechanism put in place by these countries. In the last one year, FIU officials also attended nine joint-working groups on counter-terrorism with the US, Germany, China, Russia, Italy, Canada, Singapore and Israel.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_warned_of_dubious_transactions/articleshow/2412984.cms
Kamis, 17 Mei 2012
PA crackdown has Hamas reducing cash transfers to West Bank
By Avi Issacharoff
Hamas has dramatically reduced its money transfers to various charitable organizations in the West Bank formerly linked to the group, as the Palestinian Authority continues to assert its control over those organizations.
Hamas had used the charities to transfer money to its operatives in the West Bank and to strengthen its standing among the Palestinian public. Since the beginning of this year, the PA has systematically installed new managements at the charities, which then transferred the organizations' assets to the PA itself.
In addition, the PA has appointed religious leaders affiliated with the Ramallah government to the Waqf Islamic religious trust, which was previously run by clerics identified with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas' parent movement. This leadership change has forced Hamas to stem the flow of money to the charities it once funded.
The global economic downturn has also slowed the money flow, as major donors in the Persian Gulf have transferred smaller amounts into Hamas' coffers. Tighter Israeli supervision of the charities and more familiarity with Hamas' money-laundering techniques also played a role in the reduction.
In addition, Palestinian security services recently seized several million shekels destined for Hamas-affiliated social services organizations.
Source: Haaretz
Hamas has dramatically reduced its money transfers to various charitable organizations in the West Bank formerly linked to the group, as the Palestinian Authority continues to assert its control over those organizations.
Hamas had used the charities to transfer money to its operatives in the West Bank and to strengthen its standing among the Palestinian public. Since the beginning of this year, the PA has systematically installed new managements at the charities, which then transferred the organizations' assets to the PA itself.
In addition, the PA has appointed religious leaders affiliated with the Ramallah government to the Waqf Islamic religious trust, which was previously run by clerics identified with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas' parent movement. This leadership change has forced Hamas to stem the flow of money to the charities it once funded.
The global economic downturn has also slowed the money flow, as major donors in the Persian Gulf have transferred smaller amounts into Hamas' coffers. Tighter Israeli supervision of the charities and more familiarity with Hamas' money-laundering techniques also played a role in the reduction.
In addition, Palestinian security services recently seized several million shekels destined for Hamas-affiliated social services organizations.
Source: Haaretz
Cocaine trade fuels Euro laundering
A cocaine boom in Europe and the continent’s strong currency have combined to fuel a thriving industry: euro laundering.
With the euro approaching $1.50 and soaring demand for cocaine in countries like Spain and Italy, Europe has become a far more lucrative place to do business for Latin American drug cartels than in previous years.
To obscure the origins of the funds, and escape government scrutiny in the process, the cartels use a complex system to launder their proceeds – much of which is landing on U.S. shores.
In late March, U.S. authorities arrested a man carrying a leather duffel bag who had just landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Santiago, Chile. Inside the bag was more than $1.9 million in cash, mostly in bundles of 500 euro and 200 euro notes.
U.S. and Chilean law enforcement officials believe the man was at the end of a money–laundering trail that begins in Europe. Over a period of four and a half years, he and his associates flew to the U.S. from Latin America some 280 times, openly toting more than $244 million worth of euros into the country, according to documents in a case brought by federal authorities in U.S. District Court in New York.
The big bills have become so symbolic of the lush life that they have recently crept into pop culture: The rapper Jay–Z’s video for Blue Magic – the debut single from his new album ’’American Gangster’’ – features a suitcase full of 500 euro notes and someone thumbing through a stack of them as Jay–Z raps the words, ’’the kilo business.’’ Hype Williams, director of the music video, said that he and Jay–Z chose euros because they are ’’more valuable’’ and because they wanted to ’’one–up’’ their hip–hop competitors by showing ’’the things people are into now.’’
The wads of euros carried by people like the man arrested at LAX are often the spoils of Europe–bound cocaine shipments – many of which transit through Africa, law–enforcement officials say.
Consumption of the drug has soared in much of Western Europe, according to a report released last year by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. In Italy, use of the drug rose to 2.1 percent of the general population in 2005 from 1.1 percent just four years earlier. In France, it tripled from 2000 to 2005, from 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent of the adult population. Cocaine use in England doubled from 1998 to 2006, according to Britain’s National Health Service, to 2.4 percent among adults.
Some narco–euros are laundered directly in Europe. But officials say the lion’s share is routed back to South America as cash and eventually ends up in the U.S.
’’This is still a cash business,’’ says Donald Semesky, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s head of financial–crimes investigations.
The first step is to convert small bills accumulated from thousands of street sales into 500 euro notes, which are easy to transport. Obtaining large quantities of these conspicuous notes, though, isn’t easy. So drug traffickers turn to specialized criminal rings – whose members are often involved in banking and real estate – to gain access to them, says Jose Manuel Alvarez Luna, chief of the money–laundering section of the Spanish police.
Spain is the center for such aggregation, according to authorities. A high–level Spanish banking official says a disproportionate share of the euro zone’s 500 euro notes, known as Bin Ladens for their scarcity, circulate in Spain.
The purpose of money–laundering is to disguise the criminal origins of ill–gotten gains so the funds appear legitimate. In most cases, laundering also helps criminals escape the notice of tax collectors and law–enforcement officials, boosting the value of their illegal proceeds.
Particularly since 9/11, tightened antilaundering regulations, known by banks as ’’know your customer’’ rules, have forced drug cartels to use more circuitous routes to circulate their funds around the globe.
For starters, the drug cartels do not themselves bring their narco–euros to the U.S. Instead, they usually sell their euros to South American black–market currency brokers or to foreign–exchange houses, known in Spanish as casas de cambio. The casas’ business as currency–exchange houses gives them a natural cover for moving large amounts of cash.
But in South America, there are few if any legitimate buyers for the huge sums of euros that the casas obtain – directly or indirectly – from the traffickers. So the casas funnel most of the narco–euros, sometimes via middlemen, through a chain of exchange houses in countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile, says the DEA’s Mr. Semesky.
Often, the drug traffickers will sell their euros for Colombian pesos, and then the euros entering the U.S. no longer belong to the drug cartels but to the casa de cambio. In other cases, says Mr. Semesky, traffickers pay the casas to move funds into one of their U.S. bank accounts. These funds aren’t usually intended for withdrawal, but rather to pay various debts. This is achieved by wiring funds to the account of whomever the trafficker wishes to pay.
On a recent night at a bar on Madrid’s bustling Gran Via, a shirtless, tattooed waiter served tables and a buxom drag queen in a nurse’s uniform worked the crowd. In the trendy venue was a man in his 30s who talked by cellphone with his dealers. A few minutes later, he stepped outside, leaned into the window of a small car and handed over 60 euros, or about $90. For that sum, he received one gram of cocaine.
Such street sales have surged. Spain now has a larger percentage of its population (3 percent) using cocaine than the U.S. (2.3 percent), the previous top per–capita consumer, according to United Nations figures. In the first half of 2007, a kilo of cocaine sold for 33,000 euros, or about $43,900, in Madrid, more than triple the $12,500–$14,600 it fetched in Los Angeles and far more than the $13,000–$26,000 it sold for in New York, according to the Spanish police and the DEA.
Last year, seven European countries banded together to form the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center–Narcotics, or MAOC–N, an international agency dedicated to stopping drug traffic over the Atlantic. Already, the center is helping to make major busts.
In October, on the high seas off West Africa, Spanish authorities – acting on a tip from MAOC–N – seized an aging, cockroach–infested trawler. Called the Opnor, it allegedly had more than three metric tons of cocaine hidden below the floor of its cargo hold. Apparently registered in Panama, the vessel was captained by a grizzled Dutch man in his late 60s and is believed to have been heading toward Senegal.
The boat was following a typical pattern, authorities say. They surmise that, if it hadn’t been seized, its cocaine would have been warehoused in West Africa, where crushing poverty, weak law enforcement and, often, rampant corruption make for an ideal way station. The traffickers would have then sent the drugs to Europe by boat, either directly or via North Africa. Increasingly, say Spanish and American authorities, cocaine is also being flown from North Africa in small planes landing in Spain and Portugal on clandestine airstrips.
The traffickers were forced to take those routes because Spanish, Portuguese and British authorities were intercepting boats coming to Europe directly from South America.
Spain is a favorite entry point because of its proximity to Africa, its long coastline and its language, which it shares with Colombia and most other South American countries. Spanish officials say they seized almost 100 metric tons of cocaine in 2005 and 2006. According to United Nations statistics, Spain seized more cocaine than any European nation between 1999 and 2005.
Authorities suspect that Europe’s thriving cocaine business likely provided the euros in the duffel bag of Mauricio Mazza–Alaluf, the man arrested at LAX in March. Along with a cousin, Luis Mazza–Olmos, he ran an exchange house in downtown Santiago, Chile, according to U.S. and Chilean law–enforcement officials.
The probe into the Mazzas began in August 2004, says Christian Caamano, an investigator for the Investigative Police of Chile. The tip–off was a Peruvian passenger on a flight from Colombia who arrived at the Santiago airport carrying a backpack stuffed with 600,000 euros, according to Mr. Caamano. Alarmed, Chilean authorities began monitoring such couriers and noticed that they dropped off their bags full of euros at the Mazzas’ exchange house.
Later, the Mazzas’ routine evolved: A courier from Colombia, allegedly carrying European proceeds, would deliver cash at the Santiago airport to an armored–car service. Personnel would count the money in a parked truck and turn it over to the Mazzas or one of their associates, says Hernan Penafiel, the lead prosecutor in a parallel case brought in Chile against the Mazzas. One of the Mazzas or their associates would then board a U.S.–bound flight with the money, Mr. Penafiel says.
Once on U.S. soil, according to authorities, the Mazzas allegedly moved their euros with breathtaking openness. Their main tactic was to dutifully fill out paperwork at customs points and financial institutions, using real family and business names, according to law enforcement officials and court documents from the U.S. case.
After the Mazzas or their associates cleared customs at Los Angeles International Airport, they would transfer their cash to Associated Foreign Exchange Banknotes Inc., a currency–exchange firm headquartered in Encino, Calif. AFEX Banknotes then converted the euros into dollars and wired the dollars to U.S. bank accounts the Mazzas had opened, according to law–enforcement officials and two AFEX Banknotes employees.
The Mazzas had accounts with at least three banks in the U.S., according to the court documents from the New York case: Israel Discount Bank of New York; Harris Bank in Chicago; and J.P. Morgan Chase in Dearborn, Mich. In opening each account, the Mazzas gave their company’s real name and openly described it as a tourism and currency–exchange agency.
The Mazzas proceeded to move huge sums of money through these accounts, according to the court documents, often after receiving faxed instructions, intercepted by Chilean authorities, from people or entities with suspected ties to Colombian traffickers.
In a single year, according to court documents, the Mazzas wired $133 million into the Harris Bank account and $117 million out. At their J.P. Morgan Chase account, they wired $35.5 million in and $34 million out in less than three months, and their IDB checking account recorded more than 2,500 transactions totaling more than $29 million during 2003 and 2005, according to the court documents.
Asked to comment, Harris Bank said in a written statement that it ’’identified suspicious activity’’ after conducting its own investigation and ’’closed the account in accordance with banking regulations.’’ IDB said in a statement that the events outlined in the New York case ’’occurred under former management’’ and it no longer maintains accounts for unlicensed money transmitters, including the Mazzas’ casa de cambio. Chase declined to comment.
AFEX Banknotes compliance officer Andrew Scherer says his company is ’’mortified’’ that it may have helped facilitate illegal activity, but added that it has strong anti–money–laundering policies and has taken ’’substantive measures’’ to improve its anti–money–laundering policies in the wake of the Mazza case. He declined to be more specific, citing security concerns.
When Mr. Mazza–Alaluf landed at LAX on March 31, he didn’t attempt to conceal his money. Like he and his associates had done hundreds of times before, he filled out the standard declaration forms, a requirement for passengers entering the U.S. carrying more than $10,000 worth of currency. But this time, he was immediately arrested. The 55–year–old Chilean maintained his innocence.
Mr. Mazza–Alaluf has pleaded not guilty to federal felony charges of conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money–transmitting business. His attorney, Bernard Alan Seidler, calls the charges ’’a classic case of the government overreaching.’’
Chilean authorities nabbed members of the Mazza clan and their associates in a coordinated operation. They are now in jail in Santiago, facing money–laundering charges. Their lawyer, Yieninson Yapur, says they are all innocent. In an email sent via Mr. Yapur, Mr. Mazza–Olmos said he is a legitimate businessman and has done nothing illegal.
The U.S. investigation of the Mazza case was conducted by a multi–agency task force based in New York and led by the DEA and the Internal Revenue Service. Officials tout it as an important success. But it’s unlikely to significantly restrict the flow of narco–euros gushing out of Europe.
On a recent afternoon, far from the glitz of the night life on Gran Via, a homeless addict walked around in a northern Madrid shantytown with a syringe hanging out of his forearm.
Even as police tore down the surrounding shacks to make way for a new development, residents hammered away, rebuilding their wood and cardboard houses. ’’The demand for cocaine is huge, so knocking these shacks down does nothing,’’ says Gema Bautista, a social worker with Fundacion Atenea Grupo GID, which runs a mobile clinic and needle–exchange program. ’’The shacks just pop up again.’’
http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1027901
With the euro approaching $1.50 and soaring demand for cocaine in countries like Spain and Italy, Europe has become a far more lucrative place to do business for Latin American drug cartels than in previous years.
To obscure the origins of the funds, and escape government scrutiny in the process, the cartels use a complex system to launder their proceeds – much of which is landing on U.S. shores.
In late March, U.S. authorities arrested a man carrying a leather duffel bag who had just landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Santiago, Chile. Inside the bag was more than $1.9 million in cash, mostly in bundles of 500 euro and 200 euro notes.
U.S. and Chilean law enforcement officials believe the man was at the end of a money–laundering trail that begins in Europe. Over a period of four and a half years, he and his associates flew to the U.S. from Latin America some 280 times, openly toting more than $244 million worth of euros into the country, according to documents in a case brought by federal authorities in U.S. District Court in New York.
The big bills have become so symbolic of the lush life that they have recently crept into pop culture: The rapper Jay–Z’s video for Blue Magic – the debut single from his new album ’’American Gangster’’ – features a suitcase full of 500 euro notes and someone thumbing through a stack of them as Jay–Z raps the words, ’’the kilo business.’’ Hype Williams, director of the music video, said that he and Jay–Z chose euros because they are ’’more valuable’’ and because they wanted to ’’one–up’’ their hip–hop competitors by showing ’’the things people are into now.’’
The wads of euros carried by people like the man arrested at LAX are often the spoils of Europe–bound cocaine shipments – many of which transit through Africa, law–enforcement officials say.
Consumption of the drug has soared in much of Western Europe, according to a report released last year by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. In Italy, use of the drug rose to 2.1 percent of the general population in 2005 from 1.1 percent just four years earlier. In France, it tripled from 2000 to 2005, from 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent of the adult population. Cocaine use in England doubled from 1998 to 2006, according to Britain’s National Health Service, to 2.4 percent among adults.
Some narco–euros are laundered directly in Europe. But officials say the lion’s share is routed back to South America as cash and eventually ends up in the U.S.
’’This is still a cash business,’’ says Donald Semesky, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s head of financial–crimes investigations.
The first step is to convert small bills accumulated from thousands of street sales into 500 euro notes, which are easy to transport. Obtaining large quantities of these conspicuous notes, though, isn’t easy. So drug traffickers turn to specialized criminal rings – whose members are often involved in banking and real estate – to gain access to them, says Jose Manuel Alvarez Luna, chief of the money–laundering section of the Spanish police.
Spain is the center for such aggregation, according to authorities. A high–level Spanish banking official says a disproportionate share of the euro zone’s 500 euro notes, known as Bin Ladens for their scarcity, circulate in Spain.
The purpose of money–laundering is to disguise the criminal origins of ill–gotten gains so the funds appear legitimate. In most cases, laundering also helps criminals escape the notice of tax collectors and law–enforcement officials, boosting the value of their illegal proceeds.
Particularly since 9/11, tightened antilaundering regulations, known by banks as ’’know your customer’’ rules, have forced drug cartels to use more circuitous routes to circulate their funds around the globe.
For starters, the drug cartels do not themselves bring their narco–euros to the U.S. Instead, they usually sell their euros to South American black–market currency brokers or to foreign–exchange houses, known in Spanish as casas de cambio. The casas’ business as currency–exchange houses gives them a natural cover for moving large amounts of cash.
But in South America, there are few if any legitimate buyers for the huge sums of euros that the casas obtain – directly or indirectly – from the traffickers. So the casas funnel most of the narco–euros, sometimes via middlemen, through a chain of exchange houses in countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile, says the DEA’s Mr. Semesky.
Often, the drug traffickers will sell their euros for Colombian pesos, and then the euros entering the U.S. no longer belong to the drug cartels but to the casa de cambio. In other cases, says Mr. Semesky, traffickers pay the casas to move funds into one of their U.S. bank accounts. These funds aren’t usually intended for withdrawal, but rather to pay various debts. This is achieved by wiring funds to the account of whomever the trafficker wishes to pay.
On a recent night at a bar on Madrid’s bustling Gran Via, a shirtless, tattooed waiter served tables and a buxom drag queen in a nurse’s uniform worked the crowd. In the trendy venue was a man in his 30s who talked by cellphone with his dealers. A few minutes later, he stepped outside, leaned into the window of a small car and handed over 60 euros, or about $90. For that sum, he received one gram of cocaine.
Such street sales have surged. Spain now has a larger percentage of its population (3 percent) using cocaine than the U.S. (2.3 percent), the previous top per–capita consumer, according to United Nations figures. In the first half of 2007, a kilo of cocaine sold for 33,000 euros, or about $43,900, in Madrid, more than triple the $12,500–$14,600 it fetched in Los Angeles and far more than the $13,000–$26,000 it sold for in New York, according to the Spanish police and the DEA.
Last year, seven European countries banded together to form the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center–Narcotics, or MAOC–N, an international agency dedicated to stopping drug traffic over the Atlantic. Already, the center is helping to make major busts.
In October, on the high seas off West Africa, Spanish authorities – acting on a tip from MAOC–N – seized an aging, cockroach–infested trawler. Called the Opnor, it allegedly had more than three metric tons of cocaine hidden below the floor of its cargo hold. Apparently registered in Panama, the vessel was captained by a grizzled Dutch man in his late 60s and is believed to have been heading toward Senegal.
The boat was following a typical pattern, authorities say. They surmise that, if it hadn’t been seized, its cocaine would have been warehoused in West Africa, where crushing poverty, weak law enforcement and, often, rampant corruption make for an ideal way station. The traffickers would have then sent the drugs to Europe by boat, either directly or via North Africa. Increasingly, say Spanish and American authorities, cocaine is also being flown from North Africa in small planes landing in Spain and Portugal on clandestine airstrips.
The traffickers were forced to take those routes because Spanish, Portuguese and British authorities were intercepting boats coming to Europe directly from South America.
Spain is a favorite entry point because of its proximity to Africa, its long coastline and its language, which it shares with Colombia and most other South American countries. Spanish officials say they seized almost 100 metric tons of cocaine in 2005 and 2006. According to United Nations statistics, Spain seized more cocaine than any European nation between 1999 and 2005.
Authorities suspect that Europe’s thriving cocaine business likely provided the euros in the duffel bag of Mauricio Mazza–Alaluf, the man arrested at LAX in March. Along with a cousin, Luis Mazza–Olmos, he ran an exchange house in downtown Santiago, Chile, according to U.S. and Chilean law–enforcement officials.
The probe into the Mazzas began in August 2004, says Christian Caamano, an investigator for the Investigative Police of Chile. The tip–off was a Peruvian passenger on a flight from Colombia who arrived at the Santiago airport carrying a backpack stuffed with 600,000 euros, according to Mr. Caamano. Alarmed, Chilean authorities began monitoring such couriers and noticed that they dropped off their bags full of euros at the Mazzas’ exchange house.
Later, the Mazzas’ routine evolved: A courier from Colombia, allegedly carrying European proceeds, would deliver cash at the Santiago airport to an armored–car service. Personnel would count the money in a parked truck and turn it over to the Mazzas or one of their associates, says Hernan Penafiel, the lead prosecutor in a parallel case brought in Chile against the Mazzas. One of the Mazzas or their associates would then board a U.S.–bound flight with the money, Mr. Penafiel says.
Once on U.S. soil, according to authorities, the Mazzas allegedly moved their euros with breathtaking openness. Their main tactic was to dutifully fill out paperwork at customs points and financial institutions, using real family and business names, according to law enforcement officials and court documents from the U.S. case.
After the Mazzas or their associates cleared customs at Los Angeles International Airport, they would transfer their cash to Associated Foreign Exchange Banknotes Inc., a currency–exchange firm headquartered in Encino, Calif. AFEX Banknotes then converted the euros into dollars and wired the dollars to U.S. bank accounts the Mazzas had opened, according to law–enforcement officials and two AFEX Banknotes employees.
The Mazzas had accounts with at least three banks in the U.S., according to the court documents from the New York case: Israel Discount Bank of New York; Harris Bank in Chicago; and J.P. Morgan Chase in Dearborn, Mich. In opening each account, the Mazzas gave their company’s real name and openly described it as a tourism and currency–exchange agency.
The Mazzas proceeded to move huge sums of money through these accounts, according to the court documents, often after receiving faxed instructions, intercepted by Chilean authorities, from people or entities with suspected ties to Colombian traffickers.
In a single year, according to court documents, the Mazzas wired $133 million into the Harris Bank account and $117 million out. At their J.P. Morgan Chase account, they wired $35.5 million in and $34 million out in less than three months, and their IDB checking account recorded more than 2,500 transactions totaling more than $29 million during 2003 and 2005, according to the court documents.
Asked to comment, Harris Bank said in a written statement that it ’’identified suspicious activity’’ after conducting its own investigation and ’’closed the account in accordance with banking regulations.’’ IDB said in a statement that the events outlined in the New York case ’’occurred under former management’’ and it no longer maintains accounts for unlicensed money transmitters, including the Mazzas’ casa de cambio. Chase declined to comment.
AFEX Banknotes compliance officer Andrew Scherer says his company is ’’mortified’’ that it may have helped facilitate illegal activity, but added that it has strong anti–money–laundering policies and has taken ’’substantive measures’’ to improve its anti–money–laundering policies in the wake of the Mazza case. He declined to be more specific, citing security concerns.
When Mr. Mazza–Alaluf landed at LAX on March 31, he didn’t attempt to conceal his money. Like he and his associates had done hundreds of times before, he filled out the standard declaration forms, a requirement for passengers entering the U.S. carrying more than $10,000 worth of currency. But this time, he was immediately arrested. The 55–year–old Chilean maintained his innocence.
Mr. Mazza–Alaluf has pleaded not guilty to federal felony charges of conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money–transmitting business. His attorney, Bernard Alan Seidler, calls the charges ’’a classic case of the government overreaching.’’
Chilean authorities nabbed members of the Mazza clan and their associates in a coordinated operation. They are now in jail in Santiago, facing money–laundering charges. Their lawyer, Yieninson Yapur, says they are all innocent. In an email sent via Mr. Yapur, Mr. Mazza–Olmos said he is a legitimate businessman and has done nothing illegal.
The U.S. investigation of the Mazza case was conducted by a multi–agency task force based in New York and led by the DEA and the Internal Revenue Service. Officials tout it as an important success. But it’s unlikely to significantly restrict the flow of narco–euros gushing out of Europe.
On a recent afternoon, far from the glitz of the night life on Gran Via, a homeless addict walked around in a northern Madrid shantytown with a syringe hanging out of his forearm.
Even as police tore down the surrounding shacks to make way for a new development, residents hammered away, rebuilding their wood and cardboard houses. ’’The demand for cocaine is huge, so knocking these shacks down does nothing,’’ says Gema Bautista, a social worker with Fundacion Atenea Grupo GID, which runs a mobile clinic and needle–exchange program. ’’The shacks just pop up again.’’
http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1027901
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