Re: [iwar] [fc:Following.the.money] - Related?

From: Tony Bartoletti (azb@llnl.gov)
Date: 2001-09-25 18:42:40


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From: Tony Bartoletti <azb@llnl.gov>
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Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 18:42:40 -0700
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Subject: Re: [iwar] [fc:Following.the.money] - Related?
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Although hawala/hundi financial transactions may make a complete paper 
trail impossible, I would wager that there are many ancillary parties who 
helped finance, coordinate, or profit from terrorist acts, who are 
"western" and cannot so easily hide their trail.  The unusual put-orders on 
selected airlines, or re-insurers, comes to mind.

Also, I recall watching a TV special in August on the upcoming EU 
conversion to the "Euro", and how it would make all previous currencies 
"non-legal-tender" after (what seemed to be) a relatively short time.  This 
report described how this upcoming currency conversion was "flushing" all 
manner of hoarded (and often illegal) fortunes out of the woodwork.  Folks 
who had amassed fortunes in cash to avoid paying taxes or registering 
transactions were desperate to move the currencies across borders, etc., 
either to take advantage of more forgiving exchange provisions, or to make 
purchases and convert the cash to material goods.  Total valuation of these 
"suspicious cash hoards" was estimated in billions $US.

Perhaps it is unrelated to the 9-11 attack, but money is money, and so I 
wonder.

____tony____

[snip]


>That could prove to be the real difficulty in tracing money back to
>those responsible for the US attacks - especially if Bin Laden really is
>behind them.
>
>The secret lies in an alternative banking system hundreds of years old,
>known in India as hawala and in Pakistan - and Afghanistan and the
>Middle East - as hundi.
>
>According to Prof Barry Rider, director of the Institute of Advanced
>Legal Studies in London and an expert on financial crime, the
>trust-based hundi system is entirely normal, and prevalent wherever
>there is a South Asian or Middle Eastern diaspora.
>
>"Say I'm working in the UK and want to sent money back to a village in
>Pakistan," he said.  "I could get a bank transfer, but that's going to
>be at the official exchange rate.  And what good will it do my family in
>a village with no bank?"
>
>Instead, he says, you find the hundi broker - often a local small
>businessman - give him the money, and after a short time his contacts
>back home will deliver the money, at the black market rate, in local
>currency and minus a handling fee, to your relatives.
>
>No paper trail, no fuss.  And no money ever crosses a border -
>discrepancies in the two-way flow are settled up at the end of the
>month, or perhaps every half year.


[snip]

Tony Bartoletti 925-422-3881 <azb@llnl.gov>
Information Operations, Warfare and Assurance Center
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA 94551-9900





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