A Department of Homeland Security initiative, Operation Janus, identified about 315,000 cases where some fingerprint data was missing from the centralized digital fingerprint repository. Among those cases, some may have sought to circumvent criminal record and other background checks in the naturalization process. These cases are the result of an ongoing collaboration between the two departments to investigate and seek denaturalization proceedings against those who obtained citizenship unlawfully. USCIS dedicated a team to review these Operation Janus cases, and the agency has stated its intention to refer approximately an additional 1,600 for prosecution.
In 2009, CBP provided the results of Operation Targeting Groups of InadmissibleSubjects, now referred to as Operation Janus, to DHS. In response, the DHSCounterterrorism Working Group coordinated with multiple DHS componentsto form a working group to address the problem of aliens from special interestcountries receiving immigration benefits after changing their identities andconcealing their final deportation orders. In 2010, DHS’ Office of OperationsCoordination (OPS) began coordinating the Operation Janus working group.***
The Office of the Inspector General report on Operation Janus. So, we have our first case…appears more to come.
VOA: A federal judge last week stripped an Indian national of his U.S. citizenship in what officials described as the first case to grow out of an Obama-era federal investigation that exposed rampant fraud among citizenship applicants.
Federal prosecutors had sought the denaturalization of Baljinder Singh in September, arguing that the 43-year-old native of India had fraudulently obtained his citizenship.
According to prosecutors, Singh first entered the U.S. under a false name in 1991 and subsequently faced deportation, but he failed to disclose that information in his 2004 citizenship application.
Under U.S. law, naturalization can be revoked if it was obtained through fraud.
On January 5, Federal Judge Stanley Chesler of the District of New Jersey, where Singh lives, granted the government’s request to revoke Singh’s citizenship, reverting his status to a green card holder and potentially subjecting him to deportation, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
The judge’s order came after Singh failed to respond to the Justice Department’s denaturalization complaint and subsequent request for a summary judgment, according to court documents.
Singh could not be immediately reached.
Operation Janus
The Justice Department said the case was the first to result from Operation Janus, a Department of Homeland Security probe that identified 315,000 immigrants whose fingerprints were missing from government databases. The immigrants faced deportation or were criminal fugitives and “some may have sought to circumvent criminal record and other background checks in the naturalization process,” the Department said.
A 2016 audit by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general first disclosed the missing fingerprint data and found that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants facing deportation.
The immigrants used different names and birth dates to apply for citizenship, according to the audit.
The inspector general criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement for failing to investigate the apparently fraudulently naturalized citizens but said the agency was “now taking steps to increase the number of cases to be investigated, particularly those who hold positions of public trust and who have security clearances.”
The pace of the investigations appears to have picked up over the past year, with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reporting a “growing body of cases” to the Justice Department.
Last year, the Justice Department filed 25 civil denaturalization cases and 57 criminal cases, according to a department spokesman.
The U.S. immigration agency said it plans to refer about 1,600 additional cases uncovered by Operation Janus for possible denaturalization.
“I hope this case, and those to follow, send a loud message that attempting to fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship will not be tolerated,” USCIS Director Francis Cissna said in a statement. “Our nation’s citizens deserve nothing less.”
Denaturalization
Singh faces certain deportation, according to Amanda Frost, a professor at the American University Washington School of Law.
“Now that they’ve denaturalized him, their next move is to take away his green card and deport him,” Frost said. “If they don’t do that, I’m not sure what the purpose of this entire proceeding was.”
Chad Readler, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said Singh had “exploited our immigration system and unlawfully secured the ultimate immigration benefit of naturalization.”
“The Justice Department will continue to use every tool to protect the integrity of our nation’s immigration system, including the use of civil denaturalization,” Readler added.
The government is also seeking the denaturalization of two Pakistani nationals who are accused of concealing deportation orders from immigration officials.
In recent years, the number of denaturalization cases has been in the dozens, according to Frost. But Operation Janus suggests that the government is “putting more resources into this than it did before,” Frost said.
The U.S. government used denaturalization throughout the first half of the 20th century to take away the citizenship of people suspected of Communist sympathies or fighting in foreign wars.
But a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1967, Afroyim v. Rusk, put an end to the practice, said Frost, who researches denaturalization.
“The court made it clear that denaturalization was limited,” Frost said.
Last year, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in another denaturalization case, barring the government from denaturalizing citizens for making “non-material” false statements on their citizenship applications.
“It served to remind the government that there are many constitutional protections in this area and that denaturalization must be done carefully,” she said.
Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway
Space X Zuma Launched Failed, or did it?
Could this have been a classified payload to destroy North Korea’s own spy satellite or their next ICBM launch or Iran’s or Russia’s such that the real answers will never be forthcoming, meaning it is a ploy? Maybe even China?
photo and more information here.
Space-Track has cataloged the Zuma payload as USA 280, international designation 2018-001A. Catalog number 43098. No orbit details given. No reentry date given, but for a secret payload it might not be. Implication is Space-Track thinks it completed at least one orbit.
Related reading: Did SpaceX’s secret Zuma mission actually fail?
SpaceX’s latest rocket may have launched successfully – but the mission didn’t end as a win. The Zuma payload it was carrying, a mysterious classified piece of cargo for the U.S. government believed to be a spy satellite, was lost after it failed to separate from the second stage of the rocket after the first stage of the Falcon 9 separated as planned and returned to Earth.
The WSJ reports, and we’ve confirmed separately, that the payload is thought to have fallen back through the Earth’s atmosphere after reaching space, because of the failure to separate. The failure is one that can happen when cargo doesn’t properly detach as planned, since the second stage is designed to fall back to Earth and burn up in re-entry.
SpaceX had launched as planned on January 7 in its target window, and recovered the first stage of the booster with a landing at its Cape Canaveral facility. Because of the nature of the mission, coverage and information regarding the progress of the rocket and its payload from then on was not disclosed.
The payload, codenamed Zuma, was contracted for launch by Northrop Grumman by the U.S. government, and Northrop selected SpaceX as the launch provider. SpaceX had previously launched the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spacecraft, and was approved for flying U.S. government payloads with national security missions.
The satellite was likely worth billions, according to the WSJ, which makes this the second billion-dollar plus payload that SpaceX has lost in just over two years; the last was Facebook’s internet satellite, which was destroyed when the Falcon 9 it was supposed to launch on exploded during preflight preparations in September 2016.
This could be a significant setback for SpaceX, since these kinds of contracts can be especially lucrative, and it faces fierce competition from existing launch provider ULA, jointly operated by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
We’ve reached out to SpaceX and will update if they provide additional comment.
Update – SpaceX provided the following statement regarding the mission, which could suggest the fault lies with something provided by launch partner Northrop Grumman or the payload itself:
“We do not comment on missions of this nature; but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally.“
Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Nuclear Deal, Protests and Boeing
It is the conglomerate that the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei owns exclusively. “Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam,” or Setad.
Setad was originally sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in June 2013. The conglomerate “produces billions of dollars in profits for the Iranian regime each year,” said David Cohen, then the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, at a Senate banking committee hearing that year.
Setad, Cohen said at the time, controls “massive off-the-books investments” hidden from the Iranian people and regulators.
All entities sanctioned for being part of the Iranian government are being taken off the SDN list as part of the nuclear deal, also called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), though U.S. persons and entities will still be banned from dealing with them.
In January of 2017, a review by Reuters noted: But a Reuters review of business accords reached since then shows that the Iranian winners so far are mostly companies owned or controlled by the state, including Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Of nearly 110 agreements worth at least $80 billion that have been struck since the deal was reached in July 2015, 90 have been with companies owned or controlled by Iranian state entities, the Reuters analysis shows.
In December of 2017: Treasury Department officials must publish a report chronicling the financial assets of Iran’s top leaders, under a bill that passed the House on Wednesday.
The legislation, which passed 289-135, must still clear the Senate before President Trump can sign it into law. It’s a potential boon to Iranian dissidents against the regime, who stand to gain insight into corruption by top officials.
Related:
Podcast – Upheaval in Iran: Causes and Consequences
Meanwhile, as the protests continue in Iran against the regime and rightly so, questions arise due to not only Senate votes on sanctions but staying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, meaning the Iran nuclear deal.
Why is there even a question based on additional facts surfacing in the last year? Well, the left and those that remain with John Kerry and Barack Obama are adding new pressures to stay in the JCPOA. Further, complications arise from those countries that are also part of the deal. They too want the deal sustained.
In a story titled “U.S. security experts back Iran nuclear deal, as Trump faces deadlines,” Reuters reports that a coalition of national security experts want the president to continue the Iran deal. The report claims, without any context, that all of the people who signed a letter in favor of the deal are “national security experts.” Additionally, these “experts” are from an organization called the “National Coalition to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Weapon.”
It turns out, however, that some of those listed on the document have severe conflicts of interests, none of which were disclosed in the letter.
It also turns out that the National Coalition to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Weapon is not an actual organization. A Google search of the group turned up nothing before Monday. The group was created this week with the apparent purpose of garnering support for the nuclear deal. None of this is reported in the Reuters article. It is only revealed through the group’s statement provided on The National Interest website.
The outfit’s title also presumes its members are national security hawks, when this is far from the case.
Members of the “National Coalition” include a who’s who of the prominent organizers of the campaign to rally support for the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Tehran.
Included on the list is Joseph Cirincione, who served as the money man for President Obama’s Iran “echo chamber.” Cirincione has admitted to paying off a “network of 85 organizations and 200 individuals” who were “decisive in the battle for public opinion” over the Iran deal.
Gary Sick, another signee, was one of the chief organizers of the Iran echo chamber. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Sick created an invite-only listserv to distribute pro-Tehran talking points to Obama-friendly journalists and influential figures.
The coalition also includes Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who is a paid lobbyist for Boeing. The aviation company is attempting to secure a multi-billion-dollar jetliner deal with the Iranian regime. If the Iran deal falls through, so does Boeing’s deal.
Paul Pillar, a disgraced former CIA officer who was also on the letter, once drafted talking points arguing that it’s not a big deal if Iran is able to develop a nuclear weapon. “If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, the United States and the West could live with it, without important compromise to U.S. interests,” he wrote, according to Eli Lake of Bloomberg News.
It remains a mystery what President Trump will decide this time around. He has been troubled by Iran’s violent response to countrywide protests. The president has leveraged social media and several executive departments to raise awareness about the plight of Iranian protesters. He has also mulled enacting further sanctions against the regime.
As an aside, there too is pressure from Boeing, they want to protect the sale agreements of planes to Iran such that they have offered to ‘finance’ the payments, essentially layaway. Iran is looking for a method to make payments of $44B to both Air Bus and Boeing. Humm….but that Supreme leader has a major conglomerate remember?
DoJ’s Bruce Ohr Demoted Again, Project Cassandra?
That’s it? On second thought, keep him employed to cough up the goods on Project Cassandra. More on that below. As an aside, in late December, Jeff Sessions ordered a complete review of Project Cassandra.
FNC: A Justice Department official demoted late last year for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump “dossier” has been stripped of yet another title, Fox News has learned.
Bruce Ohr is no longer head of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
Separately, sources familiar with the discussions tell Fox News that the Justice Department is expected to comply with demands from the House Intelligence Committee to provide Ohr for an interview. He is scheduled to visit the committee on Jan. 17, sources said.
Fox News first reported in December that Ohr had been demoted from the position of associate deputy attorney general, after it was revealed he had conducted undisclosed meetings with dossier author Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that produced the salacious document.
Fox News also reported that his wife Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, specifically on research related to the dossier.
At the time of his demotion, DOJ officials told Fox News that Bruce Ohr had been “wearing two hats,” and would fall back to his other title and portfolio – as head of OCDETF.
Now, Ohr has been stripped of that role as well; former deputy director Thomas Padden is now acting director. It is unclear where Ohr has landed, only that he is still an employee with the Department of Justice.
One DOJ insider joked that Ohr might end up in “one of those offices without a phone.”
Fox News has also confirmed that Bruce Ohr, as the head of OCDETF, was directly involved with Project Cassandra, the interagency investigation spearheaded by the DEA that tracked a massive international drug and money laundering scheme allegedly run by Hezbollah.
The project recently was the subject of a critical and lengthy Politico report looking at how the Obama administration may have hampered the investigation. Those closest to Project Cassandra, including Derek Maltz, the now-retired supervisory DEA agent who was a major player in the operation, claim the project and its potential prosecutions were sidelined by senior Obama administration officials who didn’t want to upset Iran in the lead-up to the historic nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has promised to look into what happened with the investigation.
He said in a statement last month: “While I am hopeful that there were no barriers constructed by the last admission to allowing DEA agents to fully bring all appropriate cases under Project Cassandra, this is a significant issue for the protection of Americans. We will review these matters and give full support to investigations of violent drug trafficking organizations.”
Sources close to the attorney general told Fox News that he was recently made aware of Ohr’s role in Project Cassandra and that Sessions is personally involved in the review and frequently asks for updates.
The 76 page criminal complaint for Project Cassandra is here.
Hezbollah Business Affairs Component 85 tons of cocaine was sold to Los Zetas one of the most violent Mexican cartels. Bruce Ohr was head of the teams assigned to Project Cassandra.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) (2016) announced significant enforcement activity including arrests targeting Lebanese Hizballah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component (BAC), which is involved in international criminal activities such as drug trafficking and drug proceed money laundering. These proceeds are used to purchase weapons for Hizballah for its activities in Syria. This ongoing investigation spans the globe and involves numerous international law enforcement agencies in seven countries, and once again highlights the dangerous global nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism.
This effort is part of DEA’s Project Cassandra, which targets a global Hizballah network responsible for the movement of large quantities of cocaine in the United States and Europe. This global network, referred to by law enforcement as the Lebanese Hizballah External Security Organization Business Affairs Component (BAC), was founded by deceased Hizballah Senior Leader Imad Mughniyah and currently operates under the control of Abdallah Safieddine and recent U.S.-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) Adham Tabaja. Members of the Hizballah BAC have established business relationships with South American drug cartels, such as La Oficina de Envigado, responsible for supplying large quantities of cocaine to the European and United States drug markets. Further, the Hizballah BAC continues to launder significant drug proceeds as part of a trade based money laundering scheme known as the Black Market Peso Exchange.
“These drug trafficking and money laundering schemes utilized by the Business Affairs Component provide a revenue and weapons stream for an international terrorist organization responsible for devastating terror attacks around the world,” said DEA Acting Deputy Administrator Jack Riley. “DEA and our international partners are relentless in our commitment to disrupt any attempt by terrorists and terrorist organizations to leverage the drug trade against our nations. DEA and our partners will continue to dismantle networks who exploit the nexus between drugs and terror using all available law enforcement mechanisms.”
Beginning in February 2015, based on DEA investigative leads, European authorities initiated an operation targeting the network’s criminal activities in that region. Since then, law enforcement authorities, closely supported by DEA, have uncovered an intricate network of money couriers who collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East. The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers using the Hawala disbursement system. A large portion of the drug proceeds was found to transit through Lebanon, and a significant percentage of these proceeds are benefitting terrorist organizations, namely Hizballah.
This investigation is a result of leads developed during the investigation into the Lebanese Canadian Bank.
The combination of aggressive international law enforcement investigations and Treasury’s ongoing sanctions (see below) pressure shows the scope of the global commitment to diminish the ability of Hizballah and its financial supporters to move funds worldwide.
Enforcement Action
With DEA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) working closely with foreign counterparts in France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, authorities arrested top leaders of the European cell of this Lebanese Hizballah External Security Organization BAC last week. The most significant arrest was of the U.S.-designated SDGT Mohamad Noureddine, a Lebanese money launderer who has worked directly with Hizballah’s financial apparatus to transfer Hizballah funds via his Lebanon-based company Trade Point International S.A.R.L. and maintained direct ties to Hizballah commercial and terrorist elements in both Lebanon and Iraq.
The CPB National Targeting Center partnered with DEA and international counterparts such as Europol in this investigation. CBP’s continued cooperation with the DEA , and European law enforcement counterparts is a vital component in dismantling complex global drug trafficking and money laundering networks as well as enhancing the security of the United States border.
U.S. Treasury Sanctions
Separately, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced sanctions last week targeted Hizballah’s financial support network by designating Hizballah-affiliated money launderers Noureddine and Hamdi Zaher El Dine, as well as Trade Point International S.A.R.L, a company owned or controlled by Noureddine, pursuant to Executive Order 13224. This order targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Noureddine and El Dine were designated for providing financial services to or in support of Hizballah, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Trade Point International S.A.R.L. was designated for being owned or controlled by Noureddine. As a result of Treasury’s action, all assets of the designated individuals or entities that are located in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are frozen, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.
As part of its designation, Adam J. Szubin, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated that, “Hizballah needs individuals like Mohamad Noureddine and Hamdi Zaher El Dine to launder criminal proceeds for use in terrorism and political destabilization. We will continue to target this vulnerability, and expose and disrupt such enablers of terrorism wherever we find them.”
Participating offices and agencies:
DEA Philadelphia, DEA Miami, DEA Newark, DEA New York, DEA Special Operations Division, DEA Bilateral Investigative Unit, DEA country offices in Europe, as well as Bogota and Cartagena
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
EUROPOL
EUROJUST
Brazil/Petrobras: $2.95 B Settlement, Operation Car Wash
In January of 2017, a plane crashed.
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki, who was overseeing a graft investigation into scores of powerful politicians, was killed in a plane crash on Thursday, raising questions about who will take over the country’s biggest ever corruption case.
Rescuers found three bodies in the wreckage of the small, twin-prop plane that crashed off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state amid heavy rains, firefighters said. Federal prosecutors and police said they would immediately open an investigation in addition to that of aviation authorities.
Zavascki, 68, had in recent weeks been reviewing explosive testimony from executives at engineering group Odebrecht, expected to implicate an array of politicians in a vast kickback scandal centering on state-run oil company Petrobras and other enterprises. More here.
*** 
photo
Under the proposed settlement, Petrobras has agreed to pay US$ 2.95 billion to resolve claims in two installments of US$983 million and a last installment of US$984 million. The first installment will be paid within 10 days of preliminary approval of the settlement by the court. The second installment will be paid within 10 days of final approval of the settlement. The third installment will be paid by the later of (i) six months after final approval, or (ii) January 15, 2019. The total settlement amount will be recognized in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The agreement does not constitute any admission of wrongdoing or misconduct by Petrobras. In the agreement, Petrobras expressly denies liability. This reflects its status as a victim of the acts uncovered by Operation Car Wash, as recognized by Brazilian authorities including the Brazilian Supreme Court. As a victim of the scheme, Petrobras has already recovered R$1.475 billion in restitution in Brazil and will continue to pursue all available legal remedies from culpable companies and individuals.
Since the scheme was detected three years ago, prosecutors have yet to reach bottom in their investigation—and the total sum of payoffs may exceed $5 billion. The criminality may also cost Petrobras, South America’s largest corporation, $13 billion in contract losses and legal settlements, and it’s already resulted in the layoff of thousands of Petrobras workers. Meanwhile, Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant that led the bribery bacchanal, is a disgraced and crumbling conglomerate. Its boss, Marcelo Odebrecht, was sentenced last year to 19 years in prison. More here.
*** In 2014: Although President Dilma Rousseff has not been implicated in any wrongdoing related to “Operation Car Wash,” she did serve as the Chairwoman of Petrobras from 2003 to 2010, and having her name connected with a company mired in scandal likely won’t bode well for her reelection campaign. According to a recent poll, she is trailing opponent Marina Silva in Brazil’s October elections.
Rousseff has already been criticized for her role in the 2012 purchase of an extremely overpriced Texas oil refinery, a deal that began when Rousseff was still chairwoman. Brazilian investigators are looking into whether or not the purchase of the refinery could be linked to “Operation Car Wash,” although such a link would not necessarily mean Rousseff had any knowledge of the money laundering scheme. More here.