More Details on Panama Papers and Implications

Posted on April 4, 2016April 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Fusion: It’s being called the “Panama Papers” — a trove of 11.5 million leaked internal documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, showing how hundreds of thousands of people with money to hide used anonymous shell corporations across the world. Fusion’s investigative unit was one of the more than 100 media organizations that dove into the files — and found drug dealers, arms traders, human traffickers, fraudsters. We also found no shortage of politicians or their family members.

Here is a listing of current and former world leaders connected to the files. Check out Dirty Little Secrets, Fusion’s full investigation into the leak and the underworld it exposes.

For additional information on these names and more, read “The Power Players,” an interactive presentation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), from which much of this information is gleaned.

MAURICIO MACRI

President of Argentina
Macri — who as president has vowed to fight corruption — is listed, with his Italian tycoon father Francisco and brother Mariano, as a director of Fleg Trading Ltd., incorporated in the Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved in January 2009 — a financial connection Macri didn’t disclose on asset declarations when he was mayor of Buenos Aires. His spokesman said didn’t list Fleg Trading Ltd. as an asset because he had no capital participation in the company. The company, used to participate in interests in Brazil, was related to the family business group. “This is why Maricio Macri was occasionally its director,” he said, reiterating that Macri was not a shareholder.

AYAD ALLAWI

Former Iraqi PM

A wealthy Iraqi exile who helped lead the push for war with Saddam Hussein, Allawi returned to Iraq to serve as prime minister in 2004. He also served as vice president s recently as last year. From 1985 to 2013, Mossack Fonseca helped run his Panama-registered company I.M.F. Holdings Inc. I.M.F. owned a house in Kingston upon Thames, England worth roughly $1.5 million, and another offshore company of his, Moonlight Estates Ltd., held a property in London. Representatives for Allawi confirmed that he “is the sole director and shareholder of Foxwood Estates Limited, Moonlight Estates Limited and IMF Holdings Inc.,” adding that he ran many of his house purchases through anonymous offshores “in light of an assassination attempt on him.” Indeed, he survived an attempt on his life in 1978, presumably by Saddam Hussein.

SIGMUNDUR DAVID GUNNLAUGSSON

PM of Iceland

A radio personality who led the Progressive Party to victory after the financial crisis of 2008, Gunnlaugsson and his wealthy wife owned a British Virgin Islands shell company called Wintris Inc., that held nearly $4 million in bonds in Iceland’s three major banks. He failed to declare his ownership of Wintris on entering the Parliament in 2009. In March, a TV interviewer asked Gunnlaugsson if he had ever owned an offshore company. “Myself? No,” he said, adding: “Well, the Icelandic companies I have worked with had connections with offshore companies.” A spokesman told the ICIJ that Gunnlaugsson and his family had followed all Icelandic laws.

KING SALMAN BIN ABDULAZIZ BIN ABDULRAHMAN AL SAUD

King of Saudi Arabia

Through a series of British Virgin Islands shell companies, the Saudi king appears to have taken out several luxury mortgages for houses in London — at least $34 million worth — and held “a luxury yacht the length of a football field.” The king did not answer the ICIJ’s requests for comment.

PETRO POROSHENKO

President of Ukraine

Known as Ukraine’s billionaire “chocoloate king,” Poroshenko swept into office in 2014 vowing reforms that have not yet come. He became the sole shareholder of Prime Asset Partners Limited in 2014, as Russian troops invaded Eastern Ukraine. The following year, Poroshenko vowed to sell most of his assets; news reports said they ultimately ended up in “Prime Asset Capital.” His spokesman told the ICIJ said that “creation of the trust and related corporate structures had no relation to political and military events in Ukraine,” adding that his assets held by an independently managed fund — Prime Asset Capital.

RAMI AND HAFEZ MAKHLOUF

Cousins of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad

“For years, any foreign company seeking to do business in Syria had to be cleared by Rami, who controlled key economic sectors such as oil and telecommunications. Hafez, a general in charge of Syria’s intelligence and security apparatus, has been suspected of helping his older brother intimidate business rivals.” The cousins have been subjected to international financial sanctions and appear to have used multiple offshore accounts to siphon wealth from Syrian industry and avoid freezes on their assets. In early 2011, emails show employees at Mossack Fonseca discussing U.S. sanctions and allegations of bribery and corruption made against members of the Makhlouf family. By that June, Mossack had cut its ties with the Makhloufs.

KOJO ANNAN

Son of ex-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan

Then only son of former U.N. head Kofi Annan courted controversy in 1998, when a firm of his won a big contract under the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food humanitarian program in Iraq. An inquiry eventually cleared father and son of any corruption in the deal. Internal Mossack Fonseca documents show Koji Annan has held several offshore shell companies, using one to purchase a half-million-dollar apartment in central London. A spokesman for Annan said his business was for “normal, legal purposes of managing family and business matters and has been fully disclosed in accordance with applicable laws.”

FAMILY OF NAWAZ SHARIF

PM of Pakistan

For years, Sharif, a longtime presence in Pakistani politics, has had to answer questions about his family’s “riches from a network of businesses that include steel, sugar and paper mills and extensive international property holdings,” ICIJ says. Mossacks’ documents show a series of offshore companies operated by Sharif’s children, Mariam, Hussein and Hasan, including one to hold “a UK property each for use by the family” and others that moved million in assets. Mossack Fonseca resigned from a company Hasan directed in 2007, calling him “a politically exposed person.” The Sharif family did not respond to the ICIJ’s requests for comment.

ARKADY AND BORIS ROTENBERG

Lifelong friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin

The billionaire brothers grew up with Putin and have benefited richly from his turns as Russia’s president and prime minister. The U.S. has sanctioned their wealth over alleged corruption, particularly allegations they profited over contracts from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. They ran at least seven British Virgin Islands shell companies “involved in everything from investing in a major pipeline construction company… to buying equipment for the construction of an Italian villa in Tuscany for Arkady’s son.”

SERGEY ROLDUGIN

Close persona friend of Putin

Widely known as one of the world’s better cellists, Roldugin has been close to Putin since the 1970s, when the future president worked in the Soviet KGB. Documents show Roldugin owned three shell companies, two of which were funded by a Russian organ that the U.S. government calls “Russia’s ‘personal bank for senior officials.’” Through those companies, Roldugin appears to hold significant shares of Kamaz, Russia’s largest truckmaker, and a major state media corporation.

IAN CAMERON

Father of David Cameron

The father of Great Britain’s current Conservative Prime Minister died in 2010, having amassed a fortune in smart investments. According to the documents, “Cameron helped create and develop Blairmore Holdings Inc. in Panama in 1982 and was involved in the investment fund until his 2010 death.” Blairmore was valued at $20 million in 1998 and was promoted to investors in brochures as “not liable to taxation on its income or capital gains.” The promotional literature added that Cameron’s fund “will not be subject to United Kingdom corporation tax or income tax on its profits.”

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Analysis: The security implications of the Panama Papers

IntelNews: Aside from their immediate shock value, the Panama Papers reveal the enormous extent of tax evasion on a worldwide scale. This unprecedented phenomenon is inextricably tied with broader trends in globalized finance-capitalism that directly threaten the very survival of the postwar welfare state. National intelligence agencies must begin to view offshore tax evasion as an existential threat to the security of organized government and need to augment their economic role as part of their overall mission to protect and secure law-abiding citizens.

THE BACKGROUND OF THE LEAK

The source of the Panama Papers leak —the largest in history— is apparently a single individual who contacted the widely respected German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung over a year ago. After receiving assurances that his or her anonymity would be safeguarded, the source proceeded to provide the paper with what eventually amounted to over 11.5 million files. They include company emails, banking transaction records, and files of clients that span the years 1977 to 2015. The source asked for no financial compensation or other form of reimbursement in return, saying only that he or she wanted to “make these crimes public”.

Faced with the largest data leak in recorded history, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reporters contacted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which is the international arm of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity. With ICIJ acting as an umbrella group, the German reporters were eventually joined by 370 journalists representing 100 news outlets from 76 countries. On Sunday, following a year-long analysis of the data, the reporting partners began publishing revelations from the Panama Papers, and say they will continue to do so for several days to come.

THE ROLE OF MOSSACK FONSECA

The documents are from the internal records of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in Panama City, Panama, with offices in 42 countries. The company is one of the world’s most prolific registrars and administrators of shell companies in offshore locations. It has created more than 300,000 shell companies throughout its history, most of them in offshore tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, or Guernsey. Its clients are offered the ability to incorporate a generic-sounding company and headquarter it in an offshore tax haven. In exchange for an annual fee, Mossack Fonseca provides the company with a sham director and shareholders, thus concealing the true owner and actual beneficiary of the business.

The power of the leaked documents is that they reveal the actual owners of 214,000 offshore shell companies managed by Mossack Fonseca. The long list of names includes dozens of current and former heads of state, as well as hundreds of politicians, public figures and celebrities. Many of these individuals have failed to declare their earnings from their shell companies in their annual tax statements, which means they have not been paying taxes in their country of citizenship or residency. Thus, there are now thousands of Mossack Fonseca clients in over 100 countries who are preparing to face the legal consequences of tax evasion.

SECURITY IMPLICATIONS

Equally importantly, however, the leaked documents reveal that Mossack Fonseca’s clients appear to include at least 33 individuals and companies that are involved in organized crime or have close contacts with terrorist organizations. This sheds light on the increasingly disappearing line that once separated illicit activities such as tax avoidance and tax evasion, from money laundering, organized crime and terrorism. This phenomenon is assisted by unscrupulous companies like Mossack Fonseca, which act as anonymizing platforms for wealthy celebrities, criminals and terrorists alike.

The leak also shows the extent to which national governments have been unable to stem the tide of unfettered finance-capitalism, which today threatens the stability and cohesion of developed and developing economies alike. Moreover, the sheer scale of offshore capital funds, which, according to one expert, amount to as much as $32 trillion, threaten the economic security of nation states and must be viewed as an existential threat to the ability of states to fund public expenditures though taxation. The political arrangement that led to the creation of the postwar welfare state is today being directly threatened by the inability or unwillingness of organized states to monitor the largely unregulated flow of capital to offshore tax havens.

Today, entire economies, including much of southern Europe, the Balkans, as well as Latin America, are crumbling under the fiscal weight created by mass-scale tax evasion and organized crime. Organized criminals are now actively working closely with the banking sector, thus creating even more opportunities for money laundering and other financial illegality on an unprecedented scale. The Süddeutsche Zeitung revelations demonstrate that the line that separates legitimate economic activity from the rogue underbelly of global capitalism is exceedingly thin. It is high time that Western intelligence agencies viewed this worrying development as an asymmetrical threat against the security of law-abiding societies and began dealing with offshore tax havens with the same intensity that they have displayed against terrorist safe havens since 9/11.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis

World’s Elite and the Panama Papers

Posted on April 3, 2016April 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

The Putin Connection: Cronies of Russian President Used Shady Companies to Funnel $2 Billion

Suspect payments made by Putin associates were in some instances designed to pay bribes, leaked documents suggest.

Haaretz: On February 10, 2011, an unknown company by the name of Sandalwood Continental Ltd. of the British Virgin Islands lent $200 million to a similarly unknown company from Cyprus by the name of Horwich Trading Ltd.

The following day, Sandalwood transferred the rights to collect the loan payments, including the interest, to Ove Financial Corp., another mysterious Virgin Islands firm. Ove paid $1 for the rights.

But the money trail didn’t end there.

That same day, Ove transferred its rights to collect the loan payments to a Panamanian firm, International Media Overseas, for which it too paid $1. Within 24 hours, the company traversed three continents, two banks and four other firms — on paper — and virtually obliterated the traces of the loan in the process.

There were many reasons why those who carried out the transaction might have wanted to disguise it. One, and not the least of the reasons, was that the money trail came too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Rossiya Bank of St. Petersburg, an institution whose chairman and majority shareholder has been dubbed one of Putin’s “cashiers,” set Sandalwood up and directed the flow of cash.

International Media Overseas, which ultimately received the interest payments on the $200 million, is controlled — on paper — by Sergei Roldugin, one of Putin’s most longtime friends, a classical cellist and the godfather to Putin’s elder daughter.

The $200 million loan was one of a dozen transactions that collectively involved at least $2 billion discovered in the files of Mossack Fonseca involving individuals or companies with a connection to Putin. They were part of a Rossiya Bank undertaking that gained indirect influence over a major shareholder in Russia’s largest truck manufacturer and secretly amassed a large numbers of shares in an important Russian media outlet.

Suspect payments made by Putin’s friends were in some instances designed to pay bribes, perhaps in return for contracts or help from the Russian government. From secret leaked documents, it can be assumed that a considerable portion of the loan was originally received from a bank in Cyprus, a large portion of which at the time belonged to VTB Bank, which is controlled by the Russian government.

A Kremlin spokesman has told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists he will not respond to questions on the matter. In a public statement on March 28, the Kremlin said that the ICIJ and the newspapers that work with it are preparing a misleading “information assault” against Putin and his associates.

Is this story collaborated? Yes it is, there are more details.

Guardian:

What is Mossack Fonseca?

It is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include wealth management.

Where is it based?

The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and in the British crown dependencies Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

How big is it?

Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services. It has acted for more than 300,000 companies. There is a strong UK connection. More than half of the companies are registered in British-administered tax havens, as well as in the UK itself.

How much data has been leaked?

A lot. The leak is one of the biggest ever – larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. There are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database.

Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?

No. Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from “raids” by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions. Others use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning.

Are some people who use offshore structures crooks?

Yes. In a speech last year in Singapore, David Cameron said “the corrupt, criminals and money launderers” take advantage of anonymous company structures. The government is trying to do something about this. It wants to set up a central register that will reveal the beneficial owners of offshore companies. From June, UK companies will have to reveal their “significant” owners for the first time.

What does Mossack Fonseca say about the leak?

The firm won’t discuss specific cases of alleged wrongdoing, citing client confidentiality. But it robustly defends its conduct. Mossack Fonseca says it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and carries out thorough due diligence on all its clients. It says it regrets any misuse of its services and tries actively to prevent it. The firm says it cannot be blamed for failings by intermediaries, who include banks, law firms and accountants.

ISIS Stealth European Operations, on Display

Posted on March 24, 2016March 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

AtlanticCouncil: Even though Belgian authorities have been on high alert for several months, attackers were able to strike Brussels in three separate but seemingly coordinated attacks, killing at least 31 people on Tuesday.

Part of the challenge for security officials in Belgium, where home-grown radicalization is a major problem, is the lack of information-sharing between intelligence agencies and “numerous types of local law enforcement,” according to Jorge Benitez, an international security expert at the Atlantic Council.

Brussels is home to 19 different municipalities, two intelligence agencies, and six police zones in a city home to only around 1 million people.

“Even in the tightest-wound societies in terms of security services, you can still hide in nooks and crannies,” Tom Sanderson, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Mashable. “And in Belgium, the nooks and crannies are huge.”

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FC: Jake Wallis Simons writes on the March 23, 2016 Daily Mail Online, that “the seeds of the terror blasts that shook Europe, were planned by a brotherhood of childhood friends who grew up just a few doors away from each other in a part of Brussels dubbed “the crucible of terror.” “Police following the trail of the terrorists murderers behind the atrocities in France and Belgium have repeatedly arrived at a single block of housing in Molenbeek, a district of Brussels known as a hotbed of jihadism.”

“The center of the deadly network is the Abdelslam family home, a first floor apartment on Gemeenplaats, behind the police station — and just around the corner from the home of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ‘brains’ behind the Paris attacks,” Mr. Simons wrote. “Questions remain,” he adds “about how a gang of young men, all of whom were Belgian citizens,” were “transformed into death-loving monsters, showing loyalty to each other; but, [demonstrating] a profound hatred of their country and fellow citizens.”

“Belgian authorities were so focused on Molenbeek, known as the hotbed of jihadism, that they were unaware that Europe’s most wanted man was forming a new terror network in Schaerbeek, another Muslim-dominated area just three miles down the road,” Mr. Simons wrote. “The local community there views police with contempt,” the locals told The Daily Mail Online, “and are unlikely to report terrorists to the authorities, even if they do not have jihadist sympathies themselves.” “Frankly, I wasn’t surprised,’ a policewoman who wished to remain anonymous told The Daily Mail Online. “Nobody takes what happens in the district seriously. Every day, we arrest well known criminals, and the next day they are back on the street. It is frustrating that we are doing our work; but, the justice system doesn’t back us up. These people aren’t being prosecuted, or fined, they are just being released. We arrest them,and nothing happens. One or two hours later they smile and mock us, believing they are on the winning side. The lack of respect for police and for Belgium in the local multicultural community meant that the terror cell could operate without fear of being reported. This made Schaerbeek — which has been ‘off the radar’ for terror police — the ideal place for the terror jihadi to hideout. We have been asking for the higher authorities to take this district more seriously; but, it hasn’t happened,” she said. The Daily Mail Online added that the policewoman’s commanding officer, who also wanted to remain anonymous, agreed with her observations. “We have not been blind to the fact that something serious has been going on here.”

**** What is there to be cultivated is real and handy:

SkyNews: Buried in the midst of thousands of Islamic State files passed to Sky News we discovered a spreadsheet different to the rest of the documents.

The names of Islamic fighters, their pseudonyms, their countries of origin and contact numbers for family members, we had seen before.

What marked this file out was its title: The Martyrs.

Previously unheard of, this was a totally secret brigade. A brigade made up of men who had joined Islamic State to die as suicide bombers.

The files revealed the names of 123.

They came from a variety of countries: France, German, Spain, Tunisia and Egypt.

What is interesting in the files is the number of times that Belgium or Belgian cities are mentioned.

We can reveal that 25 Belgians are identified.

There are 48 references to Belgian nationals within the registration papers.

There are 70 references to the country which include their sponsors who guaranteed their entry to the terror group, family members and telephone numbers.

Islamic State, like many previous jihadi groups, has used suicide attackers to overrun their enemies’ positions from Libya to Pakistan and Afghanistan. All in traditional war zones. What marks this brigade out as different is that it appears to have been made up, in the large part, by killers trained to carry out attacks in the peaceful cities of Europe and beyond.

Death squads sent out to attack away from Syria and Iraq, away from the battlefield.

The files we have published over the past week or so list all the fighters’ intended specialisms.

Fighter, infiltrator and Martyr were standard pieces of information requested. All these men ticked the Martyr box. In translation it is suicide attacker.

The registration form of Mohammed Belkaid, first reported by Sky News from our files after he opened fire on police in Brussels last week and was killed, showed that he too was part of the Martyrs’ Brigade.

In Syria he is likely to have joined one of the training camps and the Islamic State training programme in their stronghold of Raqqa.

Sky News has previously revealed the existence of these foreigners’ camps, which train fighters to carry out attacks outside Syria and Iraq.

Counter Terrorism expert Professor Andrew Silke said ISIS seeks out recruits for its martyrs’ brigade that have a series of qualification.

He said: “One of the things that the movements are interested in is ‘have we got a candidate who is willing and able to carry out a suicide attack? Because there’s a value in that.

“Another issue … is ‘could this person operate in the West? Have they got the language skills? Do they fit in with the culture? Do they come from that particular region, because if they do, their ability to go back and operate (there) … is much greater than sending somebody from the Middle East.”

Some of the Belgians we can easily identify.

Redwana Mohammed Hajaoui also known as Abu Khalid al Maghribi, crossed into Syria in February 2014. He later appeared in an Islamic State propaganda video.

Mesut Cankarturan also known as Abu Abdullah al Beljiki from Bruges, crossed into Syria in March 2014. He later died near Deir ez-Zor.

During our investigations Sky News has learned from former ISIS members that the recruits were trained not just to carry out attacks but to be trainers as well, raising the specter of further developing terror cells.

The analysis of these files will take a long time; certainly the security services are gearing up for a long fight against Islamic State and its terror gangs.

Secret: EU to Deport 80,000

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Foreign militants fighting under the black flag of ISIS are conquering territory in northern Afghanistan, terrorizing residents and outmatching the Taliban’s brutality, villagers and local officials told NBC News.

The development suggests ISIS is expanding its sphere of influence beyond the Middle East and North Africa, and are moving into areas previously controlled by the Afghan Taliban.

Most of the fighters hail from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Caucuses — and are even more brutal than the Afghan Taliban, according to local lawmakers, police and residents interviewed.

America’s 14-year project to defeat the Taliban and build a stable Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of failure, according to a sobering report Friday by a government watchdog.

The Taliban controls more of the country than at any time since U.S. troops invaded in 2001, notes the quarterly report to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The fragile economy is worsening. One of the few bright spots of the troubled reconstruction effort — getting more girls in school — has been tainted by allegations of fraud.

“The lack of security has made it almost impossible for many U.S. and even some Afghan officials to get out to manage and inspect U.S.-funded reconstruction projects,” wrote John Sopko, the inspector general.

Secret EU plan to deport 80,000 Afghans

Revealed: Confidential EU discussion document proposes using aid summit as ‘leverage’ for removal of migrants to Afghanistan, as Brussels relies on chequebook diplomacy to curtail the crisis

Telegraph: More than 80,000 Afghans will need to be deported from Europe “in the near future” under a secret EU plan, amid warnings of a new influx as parts of the country fall back under Taliban control.

The European Commission should threaten to reduce aid that provides 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP unless the “difficult” Kabul government agrees to the mass removal of tens of thousands of failed asylum migrants, a leaked document suggests. It admits the threat, if carried through, could result in the collapse of the fragile state.

The Afghan elite will be rewarded with university places in Europe, under a new EU strategy to use aid and trade as “incentives” to secure deportation agreements for economic migrants from “safe” areas of Afghanistan.

The plan is revealed in a joint “non-paper” discussion document, marked EU Restricted, which was prepared by the European Commission and its foreign policy arm, the External Action Service, and sent to national ambassadors on March 3.

Record violence amid a Taliban insurgency, with 11,000 civilian casualties last year, and economic failure means there is a “high risk of further migratory flows to Europe,” it warns. There are 1.1 million internally displaced Afghans and 5.4 million sheltering in Pakistan and Iran, whose situation is “precarious without reliable long-term perspectives.”

A man from Afghanistan carrying a baby cries during a demonstration at the Greece-Macedonia border near the village of Idomeni, northern Greece Photo: AFP

In October, the European Union is hosting an international donor summit for Afghanistan, with the intention of raising enough aid for the period 2017-20 to keep flows at their current levels.

Jean-Claude Juncker’s officials propose using the summit as “leverage” to secure a deportation deal, noting that the EU has pledged more to Afghanistan than any other country with €1.4 billion earmarked until 2020.

“The EU should stress that to reach the objective of the Brussels Conference to raise financial commitments ‘at or near current levels’ it is critical that substantial progress has been made in the negotiations with the Afghan Government on migration by early summer, giving the member states and other donors the confidence that Afghanistan is a reliable partner able to deliver,” it says.

Under a section entitled “Afghan interests,” it says President Ghani’s government is “highly aid dependent”. “Without the continued high levels of international transfers… [it] is unlikely to prevail, as it is being faced by multiple security, economic and political challenges”.

An Afghan migrant girl holds the hand of a woman as they arrive on a beach on the Greek island of Kos Photo: AFP/Angelos Tzortzinis

Some 176,000 Afghans claimed asylum in the EU last year, with around six in ten eligible, a rate that has risen as the security situation deteriorates. They make up a quarter of refugees landing in Greece.

The paper, which was first obtained by the Statewatch civil liberties website, says the EU’s co-operation with Afghanistan so far has been “difficult and uneven”. Despite President Ghani’s public statements, “other members of the Government do not appear to facilitate the return of irregular migrants, while attempting to re-negotiate conditions to restrict the acceptance of returnees.”

In exchange for accepting “forced returns” of economic migrants from designated “safe areas” of the country, European universities could offer places to Afghan students and researchers under the Erasmus+ scholarship scheme, the paper says under a section entitled: “Possible components of EU incentives package”.

The document cautions, however, that “the risk that those students apply for asylum once in the EU and make their outmost not to return is however very high, as demonstrated by several cases recently.”

The CAPD development deal, which commits the EU to help in rural development, health, education and counter-drugs programs for a decade, could also be used as a bargaining chip to get a deportation agreement, the document says.

The EU will also provide training and healthcare to those who are deported.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (R) shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron during a press conference at the Presidential palace in Kabul. The Ghani government is being “difficult”, the report says. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

It admits that identifying the safe areas of Afghanistan when processing asylum claims is “not obvious, given the rising insecurity in many provinces”.

The plan also suggests using the laissez passer, a legally controversial deporting document issued by the EU to migrants who have lost or destroyed their own papers.

The EU has publicly embraced a strategy of chequebook diplomacy as it struggles to contain the biggest migrant crisis since 1945.

The proposed deal appears similar to a gambit rejected by African leaders in Malta last year, in which the EU offered €1.8 billion in aid , university places and looser conditions for holders of diplomatic passports in exchange for accepting the forcible deportation of hundreds of thousands of African economic migrants. In the end, leaders settled on a voluntary scheme of returns.

It follows a controversial deal on Friday with Turkey, which was awarded €6 billion and visa liberalisation in exchange for the near-automatic return of all asylum seekers reaching the Greek islands.

Earlier this month Theresa May won a Court of Appeal case to resume deportations to Afghanistan under a separate arrangement. Judges ruled that while several provinces are dangerous, Kabul is safe enough for returns.

Germany, a major destination for Afghan migrants, is pushing hard for its own deportation agreement.

He is Missing, Bank Hack of $90 Billion

Posted on March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

HackerNews: Tanvir Hassan Zoha, a 34-year-old security researcher, who spoke to media on the $81 Million Bangladesh Bank cyber theft, has gone missing since Wednesday night, just days after accusing Bangladesh’s central bank officials of negligence.

Zoha was investigating a recent cyber attack on Bangladesh’s central bank that let hackers stole $81 Million from the banks’ Federal Reserve bank account.

Though the hackers tried to steal $1 Billion from the bank, a simple typo prevented the full heist.

During his investigation, Zoha believed the Hackers, who are still unknown, had installed Malware on the bank’s computer systems few weeks before the heist that allowed them to obtain credentials needed for payment transfers.

With the help of those credentials, the unknown hackers transferred large sums from Bangladesh’s United States account to fraudulent accounts based in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

However, at the same time, Zoha accused senior officials at Bangladesh central bank of gross negligence and weak security procedures that eventually facilitated the largest bank heist in the country.

The Central bank’s governor Atiur Rahman, along with two of his deputy governors, had to quit his job over the scandal, hugely embarrassing the government and raising alarm over the security of Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves of over US$27 Billion.

However, when the investigation was still going on, Zoha disappeared Wednesday night, while coming home with one of his friends, according to sources close to Zoha’s family.

While speaking to media in the wake of the massive cyber attack, Zoha identified himself as the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Division’s cyber security expert who had worked with various government agencies in the past.

Soon after Zoha’s disappearance, the government officials put out a statement but did not provide more details besides the fact that they opened an investigation.

Zoha’s family members suspect that the comments Zoha made about the carelessness of bank’s officials on the Bank heist to the press on March 11 are the cause of his disappearance.

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Exclusive: SWIFT to advise banks on security as Bangladesh hack details emerge

(Reuters) – The SWIFT messaging system plans to ask banks to make sure they are following recommended security practices following an unprecedented cyber attack on Bangladesh’s central bank that yielded $81 million, a spokeswoman for the group told Reuters on Sunday.

Brussels-based SWIFT, a cooperative owned by some 3,000 global financial institutions, will issue a written warning on Monday asking banks to review internal security, the spokeswoman said.

SWIFT staff will also begin calling banks to highlight the importance of reviewing security measures after the attack in Bangladesh, she added.

“Our priority at this time is to encourage customers to review and, where necessary, to reinforce their local operating environments,” the spokeswoman added.

Unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and in early February attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements. Some attempted transfers were blocked, but $81 million was transferred to accounts in the Philippines in one of the largest cyber heists in history.

SWIFT has so far said little about the attack, except that it was related to “an internal operational issue” at Bangladesh Bank and that there was no compromise in its core messaging system.

SWIFT prepared a summary of previously issued recommendations for implementing security measures to thwart hackers, which advises members to pay close attention to best practices, the spokeswoman added.

A confidential interim report on the investigation, which forensics experts submitted to the bank on Wednesday, said that attackers took control of the bank’s network, stole credentials for sending SWIFT messages and used “sophisticated” malicious software to attack the computers it uses to process and authorize transactions.

Investigators said in the report, which was reviewed by Reuters, that they believe the attackers have targeted other financial institutions.

The report was prepared by FireEye Inc and World Informatix, which were hired by Bangladesh’s central bank to investigate the massive theft.

The investigators did not identify other victims or name the hackers, but said that forensic evidence suggests they were also behind other recent cyber attacks on financial institutions.

“FireEye has observed these same suspected FIN threat actors within other customer networks in the financial industry, where these threat actors appear to be financially motivated, and well organized,” said an interim report sent to the bank last week.

Representatives of Bangladesh Bank and FireEye declined to comment on the confidential report and their probe into the Feb. 4 heist.

World Informatix Chief Executive Rakesh Asthana told Reuters via email that he could not discuss the investigation, but that he expected Bangladesh Bank to issue a news release on Monday.

Details from the confidential report were previously reported by Bloomberg News and a Bangladesh publication, The Daily Star.