Daily Archives: February 13, 2017

Trump Sanctions VP of Venezuela, Finally

Posted on by

U.S. Hits Venezuelan Vice President With ‘Kingpin’ Act Sanctions

  • Tareck El Aissami is highest-ranking Venezuelan on list
  • People on Treasury Department list have assets blocked
 
Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, right, waves to attendees while accompanied by Tareck El Aissami, Venezuela’s vice president, before the start of his annual address at the Supreme Court in Caracas on Jan. 15, 2017. Photographer: Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg

Bloomberg: The Trump administration imposed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, after years of investigation by U.S. authorities into his alleged participation in drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Treasury Department announced the move Monday, placing El Aissami and another Venezuelan on a U.S. list of foreign nationals with suspected ties to drug trafficking. El Aissami has consistently denied all allegations against him. His office declined to comment on the U.S. decision after it was announced.

“He facilitated shipments of narcotics from Venezuela, to include control over planes that leave from a Venezuelan air base, as well as control of drug routes through the ports in Venezuela,” according to a Treasury Department statement. “He also facilitated, coordinated, and protected other narcotics traffickers operating in Venezuela.”

El Aissami is the highest-ranking Venezuelan hit by U.S. sanctions and the most-senior government leader of any country on the so-called Specially Designated Nationals list, according to a U.S. official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity. Those listed have their assets blocked and U.S. citizens, institutions and companies are prohibited worldwide from dealing with them, according to the Treasury Department.

The sanctions mark an extraordinary step against the second-in-command of a foreign government and are sure to lead to a further deterioration of U.S. relations with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who appointed El Aissami as vice president on Jan. 4 amid a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis.

Business Associate

The U.S. also listed Samark Lopez Bello, a Venezuelan citizen with no public government affiliation, who’s considered to be El Aissami’s business associate. According to the official, El Aissami facilitated shipments of more than 1,000 kilograms of drugs on multiple occasions from Venezuela to U.S. and Mexico, and used Lopez Bello to acquire properties on his behalf.

“Lopez Bello is a key frontman for El Aissami and in that capacity launders drug proceeds,” according to the Treasury statement.

Sanctions were also imposed on eight companies based in Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the U.K. The U.S. also froze assets of five U.S.-based companies with real estate holdings in Miami, according to the statement. Together, the actions are designed to freeze tens of millions of dollars in assets, said the U.S. official.

While U.S. officials were gathering evidence under President Barack Obama and prior to El Aissami’s ascent to the vice presidency, action stalled until now. The designations didn’t require President Donald Trump’s personal approval, and Trump has not been involved in the discussions, according to another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Any Tool

“It is not a political message, an economic message, it is not a message between governments,” said William R. Brownfield, assistant U.S. secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs and a former ambassador to Venezuela between 2004-2007. “It is not even a message of diplomacy. It is a message that says that we will in fact use any tool, any legal and lawful tool in our inventory, to go after those that are engaged in international drug trafficking.”

The measures are being imposed under the the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999. It has targeted approximately 2,000 individuals since 1999, including eight Venezuelan officials, U.S. officials said.

Brownfield, who has served in his position since 2011, said in his experience the evidence behind the planned designations “is as tight an evidence package as I have seen.”

El Aissami, the son of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, has long been one of Venezuela’s most controversial and feared politicians. In just over a decade, the 42-year-old climbed government ranks from a student leader in rural Venezuela, to interior minister, to his previous post as the governor of Aragua state.

Decree Powers

In the weeks since becoming vice president, El Aissami received wide-reaching decree powers from Maduro, who tapped him to lead a newly formed “commando unit” against alleged coup plotters and officials suspected of treason. Among the slew of arrests since the unit’s formation is a substitute legislator from a hard-line opposition party and a retired general who, years before, broke ranks with the government.

The sanctions are coming less than a week after a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called for further measures against Maduro’s government. In a Feb. 8 letter to Trump, 34 members of Congress including Senators Ted Cruz and Robert Menendez cited El Aissami’s appointment and urged the U.S. to “take immediate action to sanction regime officials.”

The measures promise to worsen a relationship long strained by mistrust and Venezuelan accusations that Washington supported a failed attempt to overthrow then-President Hugo Chavez in 2002. In the years following the attempted coup, Chavez aggressively criticized U.S. ties to Latin America, helped lead rallies around South America against “Yankee aggression” and nationalized investments by companies including U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp.

Oil Prices

“It is obviously a decision for the government of Venezuela and its constitutional authorities to determine what steps they will take and how they will react to this designation,” Brownfield said.

Even under Obama, who generally avoided engaging publicly with Chavez or Maduro, ties between the two nations remained strained. In March 2015, Obama expanded U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan officials and declared worsening relations with the South American nation to be a national emergency as Maduro attempted to stifle dissent.

With the drop in oil prices that began in 2014, Venezuela’s economy collapsed. A nation that just a few decades ago was the wealthiest in Latin America has become synonymous with dysfunction, with consumers forced to wait in hours-long lines for basic goods, including medicine. An informal inflation index compiled by Bloomberg shows that prices are rising at almost 1,200 percent annually, the fastest rate in the world.

Political Network

It is in this context that El Aissami, nicknamed “the narco of Aragua” by Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition, has thrived. Critics allege he has used his vast political network to help turn the country into an international hub for drugs. The State Department, in its 2015 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, described the Caribbean nation as a “major cocaine transit country,” citing “endemic corruption throughout commerce and government, including law enforcement.”

The vice president’s ties to the nation’s civil registry services before he became interior minister have also fueled accusations by U.S. investigators that he’s aided Middle Eastern extremists by allowing them to create Venezuelan identities and a web of front companies to move money outside the country’s borders.

El Aissami has previously denied any alleged drug ties, saying they are little more than media slander, and has offered to hand himself over to authorities if anyone could produce proof.

El Aissami has been investigated by the Homeland Security Department and Drug Enforcement Administration since at least 2011 for alleged money laundering to the Middle East, specifically Lebanon, according to two people familiar with the probe.

As the number two official in Venezuela, El Aissami would be in line to replace Maduro should he cede to opposition pressure to step aside because of the country’s economic implosion and social unrest. Maduro has so far quashed the opposition’s attempt to hold a referendum on his removal before his term ends in about two years.

***

Hat tip to Infodio for the summary dated 2013.

Hugo Chavez’s soft spot for terrorists wasn’t reserved to Basques only. For there’s extensive documentation (link is external) proving Chavez’s association, and support to Colombia’s narco-terrorists from FARC (link is external). With regards to Middle Eastern terrorists there’s been much in the way of talk but little proof. It has been said that Margarita Island in Venezuela is a Hezbollah hotbed. Others have claimed, without much evidence, that Venezuela has “sent shipments” of Uranium to Iran. However, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced in June 2012 that it was targetting a money laundering network related to Hezbollah and its operations in Colombia and Venezuela (link is external). And here’s where things get interesting.

Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (DOB 12 Nov. 1974, ID. 12.354.211) is the current chavista Governor of Aragua state in Venezuela. He is one of five children of Zaidan Amin El Aissami El Musfi and May Maddah de El Aissami, a Muslim couple of Lebanese origin. El Aissami (TEAM) has had a meteoric rise within chavismo, owing to his excellent relations with Adan Chavez, brother and mentor of the late Hugo, whom he met while reading law in Universidad de los Andes. Despite his young age, El Aissami has been appointed to sensitive roles, such as Head of ONIDEX: Venezuela’s equivalent to the Home Office, responsible for identification and immigration.

The most interesting aspect of El Aissami’s operation however, is not money laundering by his proxies, but rather abuse of his station at ONIDEX to give Venezuelan IDs to a number of internationally wanted criminals / terrorists. The news from OFAC linked above reveal that Hezbollah operatives in South America got Venezuelan IDs under El Aissami’s “watch”. While in charge, ONIDEX created new identities for a number of people. Intelligence reports sent to us claim that as many as 173 individuals believed to be collaborating with terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering were either naturalised, or got Venezuelan visas and IDs using fake names. Abbas Hussein HARB, for instance, identified by OFAC as part of a money laundering network related to Hezbollah and Ayman Saied JOUMAA, has two Venezuelan IDs (21495203 and 26405022). As of this writing both are valid. Kassem Mohamad SALEH, also designated as Hezbollah collaborator, has a valid Venezuelan ID (22075502), as shown in electoral records. Read the full summary here, excellent work.

Dear President Trump, Please Stop It

Posted on by

Remember the circle jerk where the Federal government gives Planned Parenthood $500 million a year for subsidizing the organizations low cost healthcare for women? Planned Parenthood has a political action committee that has donated to members of Congress….so Federal dollars get cycled right back to member of Congress. Some like this for 2016/ House: Total to Democrats: $534,489  Total to Republicans: $7,500

(See the recipients here)  Related reading: Planned Parenthood workers, PACs donated $25M to Dems since 2000

Essentially the same model is used for corporate subsidies….hold on to you oh sh*t bar for this one:

First examine the Export Import Bank shall we? Authorization to fund the ExIm Bank in 2015 was stopped by Congress and corporations freaked out. Why you ask? Well one reason dealt with an investigation from 2014: The U.S. Export-Import Bank has suspended or removed four officials in recent months amid investigations into allegations of gifts and kickbacks, as well as attempts to steer federal contracts to favored companies, several people familiar with the matter said. More here from the WSJ.

The Export Import Bank was designed to give small business a better edge in competing on national and global markets. So…how has that worked out?

Using a report published in 2015:

Using a dataset that the US Export-Import Bank recently made available to the public, one can see which foreign companies are among the top purchasers of American exports financed by the bank’s subsidy programs. The following table shows the top 10 foreign buyers, based on the total amount of financing authorized from fiscal years 2007 through 2013.

**

The number one buyer was the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, which has a market capitalization of $416 billion but has somehow needed more than $7 billion in US-taxpayer-backed financing to facilitate deals with American exporters in recent years. Such assistance from the federal government to Pemex, along with other oil companies on the list, raises eyebrows, particularly considering that the current administration, which supports the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, hasn’t exactly been pro-fossil fuels.

Other top buyers include foreign airlines that purchased aircraft from Boeing, which isn’t surprising given that Boeing is, by an overwhelming margin, the chief beneficiary of export assistance from the bank. Emirate Airlines, which has benefitted from $3.4 billion in US-backed financing, proudly boasts on its website that it has “recorded an annual profit in every year since its third in operation.”

The table further undermines the claim made by the Ex-Im Bank’s defenders that it provides critical support to US small businesses. Instead, it provides evidence that the biggest beneficiaries of the Ex-Im Bank’s largesse are large multinational corporations, here and overseas.

*** Okay, that is just the Export Import Bank…let us move on to other federal subsidies some of which during the campaign trail Senator Ted Cruz advocated for termination. He was right. How so?

From 2015: *(See any small companies listed below?) Read more here.  Note the numbers below are BILLIONS.

Now the private and free enterprise system and corporations should have success. But are these companies standing on their own or just part of another circle jerk for political favors? Hah….rhetorical question until you see who is participating. How about Google….the most profitable and successful tech company out there. Well yes but… Besides Intel, Google is the top tech company that receives government subsidies, picking up more than $630 million from states like Oregon, North Carolina and a few others. What does a multi-billion dollar company that controls the majority of the world’s Internet need with more than $630 million in government subsidies, you ask? Well, you know, for things like property taxes and training reimbursements. What, do you all think that money just grows on trees?! Also, don’t even think about googling “Google government subsidies” because THEY WILL KNOW ABOUT IT. How about WalMart?

Yup, Walmart, the retail giant also benefits greatly from more than 260 different grants from multiple states totaling nearly $150 million. With that kind of money, it’s no wonder they can manage to sell anything and everything in their stores.

Seems Goldman Sachs had the red carpet to the cash the check here door too.

Remember that company that essentially caused the whole recession a few years ago and then managed to get billions in bailout money from the federal government because the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve were both stacked with the company’s former CEOs and high-level employees? Well, just so you know, they also do pretty well in the subsidies department. Goldman Sachs has raked in over $660 million, mostly from their home state of New York, but with some help from New Jersey, Utah and Michigan as well. Hooray! More here from PolicyMic.

Are we sure all these corporations including Disney or Intel are told to get these subsidies, they must hired American employees? Nope…hardly…but shouldn’t that be a stipulation? Disney has apparently survived a scandal by hiring foreign workers replacing Americans. It was just reported last year that Intel fired 12,000 employees only to be replaced by foreigners. Domestic corporations are getting big money from various federal programs and then abuse the H1B visa system.

Convoluted right? Where is the outrage? Hey President Trump….stop it all please…Please?

 

 

Operation Blockbuster: Lazarus Group Hacks Again

Posted on by

Why should you care? There was a long investigation in separate yet concentrated efforts by both government and private/independent cyber corporations as it related to the hack of Sony. Enter the Lazarus Group, an applied name to hackers that have hit industries such as government, military, financial and entertainment. Few countries are really exempt, as their signature malware has also been found in Japan, India and China.

Image result for lazarus group cyber

Lazarus Group has been active since 2009 and to date cannot be attributed to any single actor or country.

For the comprehensive report, go here. Operation Blockbuster: Image result for operation blockbuster cyber

Recent malware attacks on Polish banks tied to wider hacking campaign

Hackers targeted more than 100 organizations in more than 30 countries

ComputerWorld: Malware attacks that recently put the Polish banking sector on alert were part of a larger campaign that targeted financial organizations from more than 30 countries.

Researchers from Symantec and BAE Systems linked the malware used in the recently discovered Polish attack to similar attacks that have taken place since October in other countries. There are also similarities to tools previously used by a group of attackers known in the security industry as Lazarus.

The hackers compromised websites that were of interest to their ultimate targets, a technique known as watering-hole attacks. They then injected code into the websites that redirected visitors to a custom exploit kit.

The exploit kit contained exploits for known vulnerabilities in Silverlight and Flash Player; the exploits only activated for visitors who had Internet Protocol addresses from specific ranges.

“These IP addresses belong to 104 different organizations located in 31 different countries,” researchers from Symantec said in a blog post Sunday. “The vast majority of these organizations are banks, with a small number of telecoms and internet firms also on the list.”

In the case of the targeted Polish banks, it’s suspected that the malicious code was hosted on the website of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the government watchdog for the banking sector. The BAE Systems researchers found evidence that similar code pointing to the custom exploit kit was present on the website of the National Banking and Stock Commission of Mexico in November. This is the Mexican equivalent to the Polish Financial Supervision Authority.

The same code was also found on the website of the Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay, the largest state-owned bank in that South American country, according to BAE Systems.

Included in the list of targeted IP addresses were those of 19 organizations from Poland, 15 from the U.S., nine from Mexico, seven from the U.K., and six from Chile.

The payload of the exploits was a previously unknown malware downloader that Symantec now calls Downloader.Ratankba. Its purpose is to download another malicious program that can gather information from the compromised system. This second tool has code similarities to malware used in the past by the Lazarus group.

Lazarus has been operating since 2009, and has largely focused on targets from the U.S. and South Korea in the past, the Symantec researchers said. The group is also suspected of being involved in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh last year. In that attack, hackers used malware to manipulate the computers used by the bank to operate money transfers over the SWIFT network.

“The technical/forensic evidence to link the Lazarus group actors … to the watering-hole activity is unclear,” the BAE Systems researchers said in a blog post Sunday. “However, the choice of bank supervisor and state-bank websites would be apt, given their previous targeting of central banks for heists — even when it serves little operational benefit for infiltrating the wider banking sector.”

 

The Other NSA Thief Indicted, Worse than Snowden?

Posted on by

What is going on at the NSA? Or is it really the NSA contractor, Booz, Allen and Hamilton? Either way…this is beyond dangerous.

Bring in Harold Martin…..  Image result for harold martin nsa NBC

Read the full indictment here.

According to an indictment released Wednesday, the information stolen by Harold Martin, a former NSA contractor who was arrested in August of last year, may be far more damaging to the U.S. intelligence community than anything taken by Edward Snowden.

On October 5, the New York Times broke the story that the FBI had arrested an employee of the intelligence community over suspicions the worker had stolen highly classified computer code.

From that report:

“The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin III of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August and unsealed Wednesday. Mr. Martin, who at the time of his arrest was working as a contractor for the Defense Department after leaving the NSA, was charged with theft of government property and the unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents.”

According to the Times, a neighbor saw “two dozen FBI agents wearing military-style uniforms and armed with long guns” storm Martin’s home and later escort the man out in handcuffs.

At the time, there was speculation that Martin could be connected to stolen NSA code that found its way into the hands of a group called the Shadow Brokers — for a period, Martin worked for the elite NSA unit from which the data was taken — but even now, authorities can’t prove he actually passed on any information.

But the mere fact that he possessed such highly sensitive material is enough to put Martin away for the rest of his life, as the recently released indictment indicates.

“For more than two decades,” Business Insider wrote on Thursday, “Martin allegedly made off with highly-classified documents that were found in his home and car that included discussions of the US military’s capabilities and gaps in cyberspace, specific targets, and ‘extremely sensitive’ operations against terror groups, according to an indictment released Wednesday.”

The indictment gives the public a much clearer look at the type of data Martin allegedly stole. And next to Edward Snowden, whose security clearance limited the documents he took to mostly training materials, it appears Harold Martin’s reach went far further into the national intelligence community.

Martin is charged with 20 counts of having unauthorized possession of classified material. The government alleges that over this long intelligence career, the 51-year-old took material from the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, U.S. Cyber Command, and even the CIA.

Some of the items allegedly taken, according to text from the indictment, include:

A 2008 CIA document containing information regarding foreign intelligence collection sources and methods, and relating to a foreign intelligence collection target.

A USCYBERCOM document, dated August 17, 2016, discussing capabilities and gaps in capabilities of the US military and details of specific operations.

A description of the technical architecture of an NSA communications system.

An outline of a classified exercise involving real-world NSA and US military resources to demonstrate existing cyber intelligence and operational capabilities.

Martin’s first court appearance is set for February 14. If found guilty, he faces up to 200 years in prison. More here.

***

Meanwhile, Putin is allegedly considering returning Edward Snowden to the United States as a goodwill gesture. If so, it is a double game as Putin would never do anything out of kindness without something attached. If Snowden does stand trial for treason/espionage or theft, the United States would then have to offer up classified material and reveal sources and methods which is likely what Russia wants. The Kremlin extended the visa for Snowden until 2020.

*** Image result for edward snowden

In part from NBC: Snowden’s ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told NBC News they are unaware of any plans that would send him back to the United States.

“Team Snowden has received no such signals and has no new reason for concern,” Wizner said.

Snowden responded to NBC’s report on Twitter and said it shows that he did not work with the Russian government.

“Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel,” Snowden said. “No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they’re next.”

Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, reacted to the report with dismay.

“There are no reasons to extradite Edward Snowden to the U.S.,” Kucherena said, according to TASS, the state-owned news agency. “This is some kind of speculation coming from so-called US special service sources. I think this topic was and remains on the political plane in the U.S., but it’s American special services that are puppeteering this story with sporadic information plants.”

“There is not the slightest reason to raise or discuss this topic in Russia,” Kucherena said.

Russia, he said, does not sell people. “The Snowden issue cannot be a bargaining chip on any level, neither political nor economic,” he said, according to the news agency.

Former deputy national security adviser Juan Zarate urged the Trump administration to be cautious in accepting any Snowden offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“For Russia, this would be a win-win. They’ve already extracted what they needed from Edward Snowden in terms of information and they’ve certainly used him to beat the United States over the head in terms of its surveillance and cyber activity,” Zarate said.