Blacklisting fallout. Swiss blame Bahamian authorities

by C. E. Huggins
CARIBBEAN NET NEWS

NASSAU, The Bahamas: Swiss authorities recently blamed The Bahamas for the failure of an investigation into Al Taqwa Management Organisation now Nada Management Organisation. The investigation goes back to 9/11 when US authorities discovered that a bin Laden (not that bin Laden) was associated with Al Taqwa.

In December 2000 the government of The Bahamas created legislation that it believed would remove it from the OECD’s blacklist

As part of this exercise Bahamian regulators decided they would no longer entertain banks that had no physical presence in The Bahamas. Scores of banks, derogatorily known as brass plate banks, did their homework and decided to close shop.

According to Al Taqwa’s Bahamian attorney and representative Sean Hanna, Youssef Nada, Al Taqwa’s founder, had decided that their Bahamian operations did not warrant the added expense of a physical presence and had decided to wind up the operation. The Central Bank had given a grace period for such banks to make the necessary arrangements.

Then 9/11 came along. The Government of The Bahamas in a show of support for the US, seized accounts of persons and or organisations, including those of Al Taqwa, that according to information supplied by US authorities, were either of suspect origin or demonstrated strong terrorism connections. Bahamian authorities determined that none of the frozen funds (over $30 million) or any of the individuals had had any connections with or support for known terrorists or their organisations.

Al Taqwa found itself the subject of investigations by both Swiss and Bahamian regulators. As can best be determined, the investigations arose because some Al Taqwa investors bore the unfortunate last name of bin Laden. It is alleged that the gentleman was one of the scores of siblings of the world’s most wanted man Osama bin Laden.

The Swiss authorities conducted an investigation; this was in 2001, and concluded that Al Taqwa’s operations in Switzerland were well within the prescribed boundaries of fiduciary responsibility.

As Mr. Hanna stated at the time, the only change required of Al Taqwa Management Organisation by the Swiss banking regulatory body, was a name change. The Swiss felt this would avoid any possible confusion between the banking operations in The Bahamas and the Management operation in Switzerland.

Al Taqwa Management Organisation in Switzerland became the Nada Management Organisation named after the founder.

In 2002 the Central Bank of The Bahamas issued a press release in which it stated that Al Taqwa’s licence to operate a bank in The Bahamas was being revoked for security reasons.

Mr. Hanna disputed the Central Bank’s suggestion that Al Taqwa Bank in The Bahamas had been asked to close its operations because of security risks.

According to documents provided by Mr. Hanna at the time, the Central Bank, in all its assessments, had not only found Al Taqwa’s conduct acceptable but also specifically stated that the bank was a welcome member of the community of banks and trusts in The Bahamas.

Indeed the Central Bank not only offered to extend the period required for non-resident banks to become resident if they so wished but also praised the bank as a outstanding member of the banking community, and expressed the wish that the bank would become a resident bank.

Now Swiss authorities, unable to find the smoking gun among Al Taqwa’s operations, claimed that Bahamian regulators had not given “a usable response” to their request for judicial assistance, hence the suspension of their investigations against Al Taqwa.

The record will show however that Al Taqwa’s Bahamian operations were wound up in the first half of 2002.

Central Bank documents stated that Al Taqwa was an acceptable member of the jurisdiction.

Acceding to the OECD’s blacklisting requirements, may have helped the jurisdiction but it also made it possible, as it appears to be in this instance, for authorities to blame the failure of investigations on Bahamian regulators.

Co-Defendants in Fla. Deny Ties to Conspiracy

By John Mintz
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A02

TAMPA, June 7 -- Three co-defendants of accused terrorist leader Sami al-Arian, a former Florida university professor on trial here, staunchly deny any connection to the Palestinian terrorist group at the heart of the case, their lawyers said in court Tuesday.

"This is a case of no evidence," said Bruce Howie, attorney for Chicago dry cleaner Ghassan Zayed Ballut. After scouring six years of his client's computer use and all his bank records, "the government came up with nothing."

There is a vast discrepancy between the gravity and detail in the charges against al-Arian, and those against the other three on trial, whom the prosecution calls rank-and-file members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization, which sponsors suicide attacks on Israelis, according to court documents.

Some defense attorneys said outside the courtroom in recent days that the three defendants -- Ballut, former university student Sameeh Taha Hammoudeh and Illinois charity manager Hatim Naji Fariz -- were swept into the case because of prosecutors' need to build a criminal case of conspiracy -- in this case, conspiracy to kill and maim hundreds of Israelis since the 1980s.

Legal experts said that the U.S. government had little choice but to craft a conspiracy case. The vast bulk of their evidence, derived from years of secret wiretaps and monitoring of faxes, centers on the early to mid-1990s, before al-Arian's offices and home were searched and he became more circumspect over the telephone.

But the statute of limitations allows the prosecution to charge someone for crimes going back only five years -- unless the charge is conspiracy, in which case the government can bring in allegations going back decades, as it has done in this trial.

The problem for the prosecution, defense attorneys said, is that those secretly monitored wiretaps and faxes show al-Arian discussing intimate details of PIJ's operations not with his three co-defendants but with five other men.

All of those five men were top PIJ leaders with al-Arian for years, U.S. prosecutors said, and all of them have been charged with him with conspiracy to murder -- but they are overseas and will not be tried in this case.

Defense attorneys and criminal lawyers who have observed the case said the government was in a jam -- how could it put on a trial for criminal conspiracy and have only one conspirator at the defense table?

"The three defendants on trial with al-Arian are basically stage props," said Steve Crawford, a former federal prosecutor who has followed the case and who recently represented Hammoudeh's wife on an unrelated fraud charge. "The government didn't have enough of the big guns [from PIJ] here to give a visual showing of a conspiracy, so they sweep in the poor mopes at the bottom."

Defense lawyers and prosecutors declined to comment. U.S. District Judge James Moody has barred them from speaking about the case outside the courtroom.

The five overseas defendants who are not on trial now were caught in hundreds of phone calls and faxes discussing the key strategic issues then facing PIJ -- deep internal struggles, the disappearance of millions of dollars, how to placate its angry financial backers in the Iranian government, and whether to merge with the Islamic Resistance Movement, a competing militant Palestinian group.

The five are Ramadan Shallah, who worked at an al-Arian think tank at the University of South Florida and who now runs PIJ from Syria; Abd al Aziz Awda, PIJ's original spiritual leader; al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar; leading Muslim scholar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khatib, the group's alleged treasurer.

Lawyer Stephen Bernstein said in court that his client, Hammoudeh, was not part of any criminal conspiracy and staunchly believes in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, although PIJ bitterly opposes them. "His views are the antithesis of PIJ," he said.