Dawood targets the poor for money mule scheme

Dawood Ibrahim, the international fugitive, terrorist financier, and underworld kingpin, is reportedly opening bank accounts in India through unsuspecting depositors. Dawood and his “D-Gang” agents are offering money to poor people in rural areas to open new bank accounts under their own names, then turn their ATM cards back over to Dawood’s operatives. Compliance standards at rural banks are considered to be less stringent than big city bank standards. This suggests that the rural banks are not as likely to file suspicious activity reports with India’s financial regulatory authority. D-Gang has managed to launder 59,000 crore Indian rupees (940 million USD) through such schemes.

From OneIndia News on Mar. 16 (h/t Arun):

…How is the money deposited in banks:

The Enforcement Directorate which has been probing a series of such cases has found that most of the money is parked in the nationalized banks.

Out of the 1600 branches in which the money has been parked, 900 branches belong to the nationalized banks, an ED official informed Oneindia.

The money which is earned through various illegal means such as drug and arms trade and even lottery scams are parked directly into the nationalized banks by agents of the underworld.

These agents never open accounts in their own name. They target people who are in need of money and ask them to deposit the money into their accounts.

It has been found during the investigation that persons in need of money are asked to first open accounts and they are paid a sum for the same.

They are then given money and asked to deposit the same. For every transaction of Rs 100,000, the original account holder is paid a sum of Rs 5,000.

The ATM cards are handed over to the agents who use it to draw the money when ever they like…

“Whenever they like” meaning for whatever purpose or plot Dawood intends.

The money behind the jihad: suggested reading

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• The Union of Arab Banks is concerned that U.S. courts will allow even more cases to be brought against them for facilitating terrorism… more>>

• A human rights lawyer decries the Salafi business cartels that have taken over Somalia… more>>

• Congressman wants answers on whether CENTCOM attempted to make a payment for the release of Bowe Bergdahl from its $5 million fund … more>>

Lawsuit: sanctions evasion helped kill U.S. troops

Many of the attacks during the Iraq insurgency that left over 4,000 American troops dead were carried out by Sunni militants funded by and aligned with Al Qaeda, former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Gulf monarchies, or combinations of all three. But a new lawsuit by veterans and the families of our war dead is pointing out that a lot of the killing of coalition forces also came from Shia terrorists trained and funded by Iran. Iran was able to fund the trainers of those terrorists partly because of Iran’s access at the time to the international financial system as allowed by major banks with branches in the U.S. despite the sanctions against Iran throughout the 2000s.

From Reuters earlier this month (h/t El Grillo):

U.S. veterans sue banks, claim they should pay for Iraq attacks

Wounded U.S. veterans and family members of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq sued five European banks on Monday, seeking to hold them responsible for shootings and roadside bombings because they allegedly processed Iranian money that paid for the attacks.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, named Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Standard Chartered.

Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS and Standard Chartered declined to comment. HSBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit was brought under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, a 1992 law that permits victims to bring private suits against alleged financiers of militant operations.

The lawsuit alleges the banks conspired with Iranian banks to mask wire transactions in order to evade U.S. sanctions. The Iranian banks then funneled more than $100 million to militant groups that operated in Iraq at Iran’s direction, according to the suit.

The militant groups included a Shi’ite militia in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah, as well as Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the suit says.

Since 2009, the five banks have agreed to pay about $3.2 billion to the U.S. government to resolve allegations that they handled money in violation of sanctions against nations such as Iran, Libya and Cuba. All the banks signed deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. Justice Department in addition to settlements with U.S. banking regulators…

Financial war on terror: recommended reading

• Time for a good old-fashioned asset freeze, arms embargo, and international travel ban against 6 ISIS terrorists… more>>

• The beltway chatter is that the U.S. can’t do much to stop the financing of ISIS because it makes millions locally, which is harder to interdict that international funds transfers. Newsmax disagrees… more>>

• ISIS may be behind high-profile cyber-hacks against Tony Blair, P-Diddy, and banks in order to finance their terror in Iraq… more>>

• A British mosque will host a fundraiser with a speaker from the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir… more>>

• U.S. taxpayer dollars fund UNRWA, a UN agency in the Palestinian territories staffed by a Hamas-run labor union whose members’ salaries are siphoned by Hamas as union dues… more>>

• The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the main civilian airport is Iran has been transformed into a “hub of terror” for arms shipments by the IRGC to Hezbollah… more>>

• The feds will force 21,550 banks to mine more data on 8 million accounts a year. The American Bankers Association asks, “Once you have that information, what do you do with it?” more>>

HSBC closes accounts: 2 Islamic nonprofits and 1 mosque

HSBC has closed the accounts of the Islamic charity Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT), the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, and an Islamic advocacy group called the Cordoba Foundation. The closures are part of the British bank’s effort to improve compliance with U.S. and British regulations and after being heavily criticized and fined in 2012 for being too lax about the customers and correspondent banks it chose to do business with.

UWT’s accounts were closed by Barclays in 2009. A student group has reported that UWT has conducted projects together with the Al-Salah Islamic Association, a Hamas front. The Finsbury Park Mosque was formerly pastored by hate preacher and jihadist Abu Hamza. The Cordoba Foundation advocates for Palestinian causes, invited a guest to speak from the radical group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and is run by a member of Britain’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Alex Brummer, city editor of the Daily Mail, offers this insightful analysis of HSBC’s move:

The notion that HSBC is closing down the bank accounts of Muslim groups and charities because of some kind of Islamophobia could not be more wide of the mark.

Britain’s biggest and most international bank is engaged in a determined effort to clean up its reputation and preserve its banking licenses in the United States after settling charges of money laundering and sanctions busting brought by the US Justice Department.

A coruscating 2012 report by the powerful Senate sub-Committee on Investigations found that HSBC had exposed the US ‘financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-laundering controls’.

The bank subsequently agreed to pay £1.12billion ($1.9billion) in fines to settle the claims and was given a five year probationary period to clean up its act.

Under the chairmanship of the redoubtable Scotsman Douglas Flint, who has been in charge of HSBC since 2010, it has rigorously sought to eliminate the risks of further money laundering charges that might put in danger its American banking licenses.

It has ruthlessly closed down branches, cancelled relationships with overseas banks and shut down the accounts of customers that might conceivably be regarded as risky because of links to money laundering, sanctions busting or potential terrorist activities.

In the troubled Middle East alone, it has doubled the number of compliance officers—internal enforcers—to 3,500 over the two years since it reached a settlement with the American authorities…

Improving the bank’s standards has been hugely expensive, with the global cost of the internal enforcement operation climbing to £296million ($500 million) a year…

Among the relationships that HSBC has severed, as it has gone about its task, is that with the Vatican Bank, recently renamed the Institute for the Works of Religion, because of its past association with money laundering. Such a move involving a prominent Roman Catholic institution strongly suggests Muslim causes and accounts have not been singled out as HSBC seeks to rebuild its reputation in Washington…

If HSBC could be accused of anything it is of being over-cautious in its dealings with the authorities and its elimination of potentially risky clients.

Thanks to Rushette for sending in the news.

Financial mischief: recommended reading

• “We should bleed America economically,” says Zawahiri…  more>>

• It was a lot of fun laundering $1.4 million for terrorist guerrillas, until he got caught… more>>

• The Muslim Brotherhood created international sharia-compliant finance, and still controls it… under Saudi supervision.  More>>

• If Muhammad Atta II waltzed into SunTrust today, would he qualify for a bank account?  More>>

• Uzi Shaya could prove to be a crucial witness in the terror finance trial against the Bank of China—if Israel lets him testify… more>>

Financial data mining yields no gold nuggets

Financial privacy is becoming a fading memory of the past due to aggressive regulations by Western governments that require bankers to serve as snitches against their own customers for transactions that may or may not be criminal in nature. These regulations are costly for the banks to comply with (costs which are ultimately passed on to customers), and they carry a price for citizens’ privacy as well.

All that might be forgiven if the invasive policies actually result in stopping terrorists, their financial transactions, or their operations.  But according to new research being conducted in the European Union, the results of such programs are “meager and sometimes debatable.” The government holds the data while you’re left holding the bag.

A tip of the hat to Andrew S. Bowen for sending this over:

Terrorism financing barely traceable using data analysis

28 August 2013

Doctoral research by Mara Wesseling has shown that the data analyses being performed as part of the European fight against terrorism financing are of little use for preventing terrorism. Wesseling will receive her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) on 3 September.

Immediately following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the European Union created the EU Action Plan for Combating Terrorism, which included action against terrorism financing as a ‘core component’. Politicians, policymakers and legal experts stress the importance of combating terrorism financing, as they see money as a crucial element in the propagation of terrorism. Specific programmes have been set up to address the problem.

‘My research shows that it cannot yet be demonstrated whether these programmes have had much success with regard to tracking down suspected terrorists or preventing terrorist attacks. In light of the meagre and sometimes debatable results of both programmes, the question arises whether the social and political changes instituted as part of the data-analysis-driven fight against terrorism are (still) desirable or justified,’ Wesseling says.

Terrorist Finance Tracking Program

In her research, Wesseling analysed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP – better known as the SWIFT programme in the wake of the ‘SWIFT affair’) and the Third European AML/CFT directive. These two programmes constitute the most significant initiatives in the European fight against the financing of terrorism.

It has been shown that risk analyses carried out by banks as part of the Third European AML/CFT directive have revealed virtually no patterns that point to terrorism financing. Wesseling goes on to say that the preventive power of the TFTP to detect terrorist networks at an early stage is also limited…

Pakistan scrambles to get off FATF’s gray list

The world’s leading financial standards body, FATF, alerted the international community earlier this summer that Pakistan and 11 other countries have failed to make sufficient progress in preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.

The newspaper Pakistan Today notes that if Pakistan fails in “coming up with proper and combating the financing of terrorism and anti-money laundering legislations the country may face severe financial sanctions that may affect its financial deals with the World bank, the Asian Development Bank and other top financial institutions” (h/t Zia Ur Rehman).  Pakistan should make reforms prior to FATF’s next meeting in October to avoid such sanctions.

Not so coincidentally, Pakistan’s central bank has rolled out a new requirement for Pakistani financial institutions to adopt nationwide software by Sept. 30 that will facilitate the filing of suspicious activity reports by bank employees.  When a certain customer or transaction is regarded as suspicious, the financial institutions would use this software to report their observations back to the central bank.

Anybody familiar with new software deployments, even under the best circumstances in well-developed high-tech nations, will recognize that this is an overly ambitious timetable to for implementation.  Widespread training and adoption of the software is unlikely to be complete by FATF’s deadline, but the stated goal may be enough to persuade FATF that Pakistan is moving in the right direction.

Pakistan has been cited before by the Financial Action Task Force for its financial regulatory deficiencies.  Despite the history of shortcomings, Western nations have continued to saturate Pakistan with foreign aid.  Without adequate money laundering an CFT controls in place, there is a high risk of any such military and development aid being abused by malicious actors without fear of detection or prosecution.

Lights out for terror-funding Islamic charity

Canadian nonprofit ceases operations after bank closes account

Once again pointing to the power of tax authorities to expose and defang dangerous front charities, a Muslim nonprofit in Canada has stopped accepting donations after its bank closed its account.  The bank’s decision followed an audit and finding by tax officials that IRFAN was no longer eligible for tax-exempt status, largely because of its role in funding Hamas.

The bank account closure and operational suspension is also a victory for Canada’s taxpayers, who will no longer see their money being channeled through a network of smaller Islamic charities and mosques for distribution by IRFAN.

From the National Post; thanks to Gisele for sending this in:

Relief organization that allegedly supported Hamas suspends operations after CIBC closes bank accounts

Stewart Bell | 13/07/15

A humanitarian relief organization that lost its charity status two years ago over its alleged support for Hamas said Monday it was suspending operations after the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce won court approval to close its accounts.

The CIBC gave notice in May that it intended to stop providing banking services to the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy — Canada. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld that decision, which went into effect on Monday.

Without a bank, the Toronto-based relief group, which spent $9-million on charitable activities in 2009, said it could no longer transfer money abroad for programs that include the support of orphans in the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Sudan.

“IRFAN-Canada is choosing not to accept donations at this time because they are unable to transmit funds to the intended destinations,” the group’s lawyer, Naseer Syed, told the National Post. “Therefore, without donations, they will be forced to suspend their humanitarian relief programs”…

Formed in 1998, IRFAN-Canada was mostly active in the Muslim world but it ran afoul of federal regulators, who revoked its charity status in 2011. The Canada Revenue Agency said an audit had determined the group was an “integral part” of an international fundraising effort that supported Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group…

Hezbollah bank fined

The fine of $102 million against Lebanese Canadian Bank is far less than the $1.9 billion settlement with HSBC or the $600+ million settlements with ING and Standard Chartered last year.  It also appears that nobody from the bank will ever face prosecution for aiding Hezbollah, and the extradition of one of their big-time money laundering clients, Ayman Joumaa, appears to have stalled.

From Agence France Presse (h/t El Grillo):

US fines ‘Hezbollah’ bank $102 mn for laundering

(AFP) – Jun 25, 2013

WASHINGTON — A Lebanese bank accused of laundering money from drugs and other operations for clients tied to Hezbollah militants agreed Tuesday to pay US authorities $102 million to settle the charges.

Beirut-based Lebanese Canadian Bank was singled out in February 2011 for allegedly moving hundreds of millions of dollars for criminal groups and traffickers operating in Latin America, West Africa and the Middle East.

Some of the customers it served were closely linked to Hezbollah, which Washington has blacklisted as a “terrorist organization.”

US authorities had already taken control of $150 million the bank set aside for a possible penalty as it was being bought in 2011 by another Beirut bank, Societe Generale de Banque au Liban…

Barclays severs ties with Somali wire service over terror finance, money laundering concerns

The international company in question is Dahabshiil—the same money transfer service that has exhibited worrisome shortcomings in its anti-money laundering and counter-terror finance compliance programs.  It is also the same company that has been subjected to alleged extortion demands from the terrorist group al-Shabaab in exchange for remaining in business in Somalia.

Thank goodness Barclays has acknowledged the warning signs.  Thanks to El Grillo for sending over this Jun. 25 article from the AP:

Terror financing fears stop transfers to Somalia

By ABDI GULED and JASON STRAZIUSO

Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — When a bank transfers money to Somalia, can it be sure it’s not sending money to terrorists? That question is forcing one of Britain’s largest banks to cut ties with the largest cash transfer bank in Somalia, a company that brings in the majority of the country’s $1.2 billion in yearly remittances.

Many in Somalia are in desperate need of money. Payments from family and friends overseas are how many get by, and that’s why more than 100 aid workers and Somalia experts signed a letter this week pleading with the British government to find a solution.

Barclays bank will no longer allow customers to send money to Somalia via the Somali bank Dahabshil. A financial power-house in Somalia, Dahabshil describes itself as “the most trusted money transfer company for many immigrants willing to support their families and friends.” But anti-terror laws hold banks – like Barclays – responsible if they transfer money to criminal or terror elements. As a result, fewer are willing to send money into Somalia.

Such transactions for Somalis in the United States became more difficult in late 2011, when a bank in Minnesota closed accounts that facilitated such transfers. Sunrise Community Banks decided to halt the transactions after two women were convicted of sending money to the terrorist group al-Shabab.

“It is recognized that some money service businesses don’t have the proper checks in place to spot criminal activity and could therefore unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing,” Barclays said in a statement. “We want to be confident that our customers can filter out those transactions, because abuse of their services can have significant negative consequences for society and for us as their bank.”

Abdirashid Duale, chief executive of Dahabshiil, noted that his company is one of a number of transfer businesses affected by of Barclays’ decision.

“Naturally, Dahabshiil is appealing this decision and would like to emphasize that to date Barclays’ has acknowledged that our Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing policies are fully compliant with industry regulations,” he said.

Dahabshiil, he said, remains operational while it explores alternative banking arrangements.

The group of aid workers and researchers said the decision at stake here “is a lifeline that provides essential support to an estimated 40 percent of the population of Somalia.” The group said it has seen firsthand the impact remittances have on families in the Horn of Africa.

“My son is in the U.K. He sent us money every month for our sustenance and school fees for the children. Where are we going to get the money to pay our bills?” said Dahabo Afrah, a longtime customer of Dahabshil in Mogadishu. “This is unfair to us and will affect hundreds of thousands of Somali people.”

Many big banks in the U.S. have already stopped handling transfers to Somalia, saying the federal requirements designed to crack down on terrorism financing were too complex and not worth the risk. Last April, U.S. Bank confirmed it is working with Dahabshil to allow Somalis in Minnesota to send money back home. U.S. Bank spokeswoman Teri Charest said Monday that the bank is working closely with Dahabshil but the transactions have not yet started.

Barclays said it remains happy to maintain a relationship with businesses that have anti-financial crime controls…