IMF weighs debt relief for genocidal Sudan

The genocidal and Arab supremacist regime of Omar al-Bashir is demanding that the International Monetary Fund bailout Sudan by cancelling billions of dollars of external debt.

The Sudan has long been under international and U.S. sanctions for its bloody repression by Arab Sudanese Islamists against black Sudanese Muslims and Christians, and for historically playing host to terrorists from Carlos the Jackal to Osama Bin Laden.  Cancelling the Bashir regime’s debts would amount to aiding and abetting a state sponsor of terrorism.

The Save Darfur Coalition has rightly condemned the possible debt forgiveness in even starker terms, declaring:  “No Bailout for Sudan’s $34 Billion Debt.”  Read it all:

Save Darfur Coalition says No Bailout for Sudan’s $34 Billion Debt

Group Offers Recommendations for Dealing with Odious Debt

ISTANBUL- The Save Darfur Coalition is at the IMF and World Bank Meetings asking officials not to forgive Sudan’s debt.  Save Darfur considers Sudan’s debt to be odious, meaning it was borrowed and used against the interests of its own people, in this case, used to finance civil war in the south and genocide against the people of Darfur.

Sudan currently holds USD$34 billion in debt, owed mostly to the IMF/World Bank, western Chinese and Arab creditors. And according to a recent policy report published by the IMF, of all countries, Sudan has the most overdue arrears to the Fund – owing 75% of the USD$2.09 billion in total backpayments.  Now, with the global economic recession bringing down oil prices, Sudan’s Minister of Finance, Dr. Awad Ahmed Al-Jaz is in Istanbul asking for a debt-relief package from the IMF and the World Bank.

At the height of meetings in Istanbul, Save Darfur is offering recommendations to the World Bank, the IMF and international leaders on how to deal with odious debt and on what conditions Sudan’s debt can and should be relieved.

Save Darfur is calling on the international community to make clear that Sudan’s debt can only be forgiven if there is concrete and lasting progress toward:

• Peace in Darfur
• The full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and
• Significant structural reforms that fundamentally change the repressive systems in Sudan.

“The international community should deal simultaneously with Sudan’s economic challenges and human rights abuses. Providing debt relief to Sudan before its leaders demonstrate a commitment to peace will not serve the interests of the Sudanese people, it will only give more political legitimacy and further financial resources to the repressive regime in Khartoum,” says Save Darfur’s Senior Policy Advisor Sean Brooks.

10 years & Kuwait has no terror finance law

In 1991, the United States of America saved Kuwait from its invasion by Iraq.

Ten years later, an Islamic charity in Kuwait “returned the favor” leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the U.S. by playing a role in “anomalous” transactions by the reputed banking partner of Osama bin Laden as laid out by the 9/11 Commission’s monograph on terrorist financing.

After 9/11, the Somali-based al-Barakaat bank promptly fell under suspicion for helping fund al Qaeda’s operations.  Many members of the intelligence community perceived that Osama bin Laden was a “silent partner” in the founding of al-Barakaat with Ahmed Nur Ali Jumale.

U.S. intelligence agents had sources with personal knowledge of the situation who explained:

…at the direction of senior management, al-Barakaat funneled a percentage of its profits to terrorist groups and that UBL [Usama Bin Laden] had provided venture capital to al-Barakaat founder Ahmed Jumale to start the company. The agent believed these sources, because they had been vetted and the information they were providing was consistent with intelligence he had previously received.

Kuwait’s relations with al-Barakaat

A subsequent investigation by a U.S. team into Jumale’s records “revealed several suspicious transactions that Jumale could not adequately explain. Specifically, two NGOs made a number of unusually large deposits into the account of a Kuwaiti charity official over which Jumale had power of attorney. The funds were then moved out of the account in cash.”

The role of al-Barakaat and the nameless Kuwaiti charity have never been properly explained, although Kuwait’s al Qaeda-affiliated charity, the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), has been blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Just last month, Spanish intelligence officials have disclosed that RIHS has funded radical, separatist mosques in Catalonia, and that RIHS seeks to establish an office in Spain.

No law against terrorist financing

What is the most nauseating is that Kuwait still has no law against terrorist financing.  The State Department’s report on global terrorism in 2010, which was published late just a month ago, provided a painful update:

The Kuwaiti government lacked comprehensive legislation that criminalizes terrorist financing. Draft comprehensive anti-money laundering/counterterrorist finance (AML/CTF) legislation was first submitted to the National Assembly in December 2009. Kuwait’s parliament rejected the combined bill in November 2010, sending it back to the Council of Ministers with a request to separate terrorist finance from the AML law. By separating terrorist financing from money laundering, Kuwait made measured progress over the past year on its draft AML legislation, which remained under consideration by the Parliament.

One wonders how the State Department can count Kuwait hosting a conference on money laundering and terrorist financing 10 years after 9/11 as “measured progress.”

Last week, the International Monetary Fund warned that Kuwait could be turning into a beehive of money laundering activity.

IMF report damns useless FATF standards

The most important international anti-terror financing organization in the world, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has been ridiculed by a report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Of course, all these people are members of the global power establishment, so they use a lot of polite words, but it pretty much boils down to a comment from IMF employee Jody Myers that the modern FATF style anti-money laundering (AML) system “isn’t helping” and “why are we doing it.”

Indeed, the international system is cumbersome, anti-business, anti-bank, anti-investor, anti-consumer, and only anti-terrorist on rare, almost coincidental occasions.  Everybody who uses a bank gets treated like a terrorist, and the real terrorists escape notice through the sheer volume of bank data being transferred around the world.  Nobody wants to discuss a possible solution which involves profiling bank customers.

From MoneyLaundering.com on Aug. 2:

AML Standards Should Be Revised to Better Root Out Crime, Says IMF

By Brian Monroe

Intergovernmental evaluations of how nations fight money laundering and terrorist financing often do not accurately reflect whether those efforts are effective, the International Monetary Fund said in a report Wednesday.

The jurisdictional examinations conducted by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and other groups that follow its 49 standards “do not correlate” with whether a country is involved with narcotics trafficking, the organization said in a 97-page report.

IMF’s anti-money laundering efforts: right region, right sector?

Here is the full text of an article from The Financial on Mar. 12 called, “IMF Technical Assistance Helping African Countries Step Up Measures Against Money Laundering”:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is helping 16 African countries step up their fight against money-laundering and the use of their lucrative gold and diamond industries to fund terrorism through a range of technical assistance programs and seminars targeted at helping countries address institutional weaknesses.

In the last few years, a number of reports have raised concerns about the existence of links between the trade in precious minerals and illicit financial flows, corruption, drug trafficking, arms smuggling and the financing of terrorism.

Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism is a key focus of the IMF’s program of technical assistance for members. The work of the IMF in this area is financed in large part through a multi-donor topical trust fund on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (the AML/CFT TTF), which was launched in May 2009 with contributions from France, Kuwait, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the UK.

“In the first stage of the technical assistance, representatives from six French-speaking African countries are taking part in a five-day workshop this week in Tunis. The workshop is jointly organized by the African Development Bank and the IMF’s Legal Department, which oversees the Fund’s work on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism. Another workshop is scheduled for June, also in Tunis, for representatives of a group of English-speaking African countries. In the second phase of the assistance effort, participating countries will draw up national AML/CFT strategies with support from Fund-backed experts. IMF staff will also support continued efforts to curb money laundering and terrorist financing through long-term technical assistance programs,” IMF reported.

“Better regulation and oversight of the precious minerals sector will not only help these countries combat these phenomena, but also boost revenues and improve their fiscal situation,” said Emmanuel Mathias, an IMF Senior Financial Sector Expert involved in the program. Improved regulation will also contribute to increasing the compliance of countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the recommendations of the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Africa produces an estimated US$19 billion in gold per year and US$6 billion in diamonds. But an unknown amount is laundered or siphoned each year for criminal purposes. All countries participating in the project either produce or trade in precious metals or stones–mainly gold and diamonds. The countries taking part in the first workshop are: Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Togo.

Hmm… Africa produces $25 billion in gold and diamonds annually?  Keep in mind, businesses in the Persian Gulf region generate $25 billion annually in corporate zakat alone.

I’m glad the IMF is helping with AML in the mines of Africa, but couldn’t IMF resources be put to better use by redoubling their efforts in the Gulf?