Iran/Turkey Evade Sanctions Work, Guilty and DC

Posted on January 4, 2018January 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

If you think you can describe relationships and motivations globally and the connective tissue into Washington DC….you may need to think again.

This particular legal case decided yesterday has the makings of an HBO television documentary that includes past and present political power-brokers. We have Trump, Giuliani, Flynn, Obama, FBI, Justice, Iran, Turkey, lobbyists and even some violence.

What did the Obama administration know and why did they know it, then what?

Primer:

May 2017: MIAMI — President Donald Trump’s longtime Florida lobbyist, Brian Ballard, has expanded his practice globally and just signed a $1.5 million contract with the government of Turkey, which will be represented by the firm’s new big hire, former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler.

Ballard Partners’ Turkey contract, inked Friday, comes on the heels of two other international clients signed by the firm: A March 6 $900,000 contract with the Dominican Republic and an April 1 $240,000 contract with the Socialist Party of Albania, the ruling party in the Balkan nation. More here.

For a current list of clients for Ballard Partners, go here.

***

Just the facts and the case of GOLD below, while several are still at large.

Enter the good guys, outside of government who perform remarkable and respected investigative work.

The Biggest Sanctions-Evasion Scheme in Recent History

And the swashbuckling gold trader at its center

SchanzerYesterday, Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla was found guilty in a Manhattan courtroom for a range of financial crimes. His dramatic trial revealed that tens of billions in dollars and gold moved from Turkey to Iran through a complex network of businesses, banks, and front companies.

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The trial was a long time coming. In late October of 2016, Justice Department officials paid a visit to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Washington-based think tank where I serve as senior vice president. They wanted to talk about Reza Zarrab. A dual Iranian-Turkish national, Zarrab was the swashbuckling gold trader who had helped Iran evade sanctions with the help of Turkish banks in 2013 and 2014, yielding Iran an estimated $13 billion at the height of the efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. A leaked report by prosecutors in Istanbul in March 2014 suggested that Zarrab spearheaded a second sanctions-busting scheme involving fake invoices for billions more in fictitious humanitarian shipments to Iran that were processed through Turkish banks.

At FDD, we’d spent considerable time digging into Zarrab’s activities. Our think tank already had an established track record of identifying and exposing Iran’s malign activities. We had also just launched a new program to explore Turkey’s recent drift into Islamist authoritarianism. The more we investigated, the more we realized that Zarrab’s schemes, which could have helped Iran pocket more than $100 billion, rank among the largest sanctions evasion episode in modern history.Despite the headlines generated by the gold trade and leaked report, the Turkish government insisted that everything was above board. The Obama administration seemed to echo this sentiment, saying that the gold trade had slipped through a legal loophole (a loophole the White House inexplicably left open for an additional six months, even after the problem was flagged). We soon learned Ankara’s political motivations: The gold trade helped boost Turkey’s flagging export numbers at a moment when those numbers might have hurt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chances for reelection. Zarrab, who became fabulously wealthy by taking a percentage from every transaction (he later estimated his take at $150 million), even received a reward for his efforts from a Turkish trade association in 2015, with Erdogan applauding from the audience.

But it all came to an abrupt halt last March, when Zarrab inexplicably brought his family to America for a vacation at Disney World. With the 2015 nuclear deal in effect, he may have believed that the sanctions laws he violated before the deal were no longer in force. Some suggest that Zarrab was trying to flee Iranian justice, particularly as the regime came to grasp just how much he skimmed off the top. Either way, when he arrived in Florida, U.S. authorities arrested him for engaging in conspiracies to violate sanctions, commit bank fraud, and launder money.

It was about time. For three years, my colleagues and I had been briefing the Treasury Department, the State Department, and Congressional offices. We had tracked the export data (which, remarkably, Turkey did not hide), showing an astronomical spike in Turkish gold exports. We identified the companies and players, with the help of the 2014 prosecutor’s report. It was painstaking work, but it was all out there in open sources for a think tank like ours to document.Yet, it was an inconvenient moment to reveal unsavory truths about Iran, amid the push for the nuclear agreement. Nor did anyone, Democrat or Republican, want to touch the third rail of relations with Turkey, a NATO ally that had recently begun backing terrorist groups like Hamas (which still maintains a disturbing presence in Turkey) and a range of Sunni jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime in Syria (including al-Qaeda’s affiliate, according to senior U.S. government officials we interviewed). Stable allies in the Muslim world were scarce, and decision-makers seemed reluctant to take any chances with Ankara.

It may also have been difficult for officials to hear that the sanctions tools we have in place to prevent bad actors from moving money are just that—tools. Without intense vigilance and enforcement, there is ample opportunity for Iran and other sanctioned countries to find workarounds. But if we’re going to follow the money, we’d better be prepared to follow it to the most inconvenient places.

That’s why it was a pleasant surprise when the Justice Department came knocking on FDD’s door. It had never dawned on us that they might be interested in our work. But they were. They wanted to see what we already knew of the complex web of companies, networks, and schemes, that Zarrab employed to move money out of Turkey and into Iran. After all, even with the vast evidence they had collected, our research predated their investigation.In the weeks and months that followed, one visit begat another. Both I and Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s CEO, were asked by the assistant U.S. attorney to serve as an expert witness for the prosecution. We pored over invoices tracking the transactions that turned gold into Iranian cash. We analyzed spreadsheets detailing the dizzying trail of sales and purchases designed to obfuscate the illicit nature of the transactions. There were also photos, including one of Zarrab himself standing next to a six-foot high tower of plastic-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. The documents were privileged at the time, but will soon be made public now that the trial is over. The documents are damning, with textbook examples of money-laundering techniques like over-invoicing (charging significantly more for a given product to yield more margin) and circular invoicing (making multiple transactions involving the same funds or goods to hide a money trail or even benefit from arbitrage). The figures themselves were astounding: hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in every stack of papers we viewed.

The case took a wild turn on March 28, when, Justice Department officials from the Southern District of New York arrested Atilla, the deputy CEO and general manager at Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. They accused him of conspiring with Zarrab to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Iran. It was Halkbank that held one of the oil escrow accounts for Iran. The escrow accounts constituted a creative method of withholding petrodollars from Iran, as mandated by the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA) of 2012. In brazen defiance of U.S. sanctions, Halkbank released those funds to buy gold, which was then shipped off to Iran. Halkbank was also accused of helping to process Zarrab’s aforementioned fictitious invoices, the ones first exposed in the 2014 prosecutor’s report.

Uranium or gold

Halkbank was clearly in trouble. In September, it hired Ballard Partners, a U.S. lobbying firm that already represented the Turkish government, for a whopping $1.5 million. Separately, Zarrab hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an attempt to derail the proceedings. But the real drama came in late November when Zarrab pled out, making him a witness for the prosecution. Atilla would stand trial alone.

Related reading: Iran’s Turkish gold rush

That’s when the Turkish government got angry. They took their anger out on me and Mark Dubowitz, who testified on the first day of Atilla trial about the Iran sanctions architecture. The state media called us terrorists, alleging we were affiliated with Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen’s network, the group Erdogan blamed for the attempted coup in July of last year. Ankara also issued an arrest warrant for my colleague Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian. Turkish authorities froze his assets and even seized the apartment that his grandfather had bequeathed to the family. They said he “destroyed paperwork relating to state security” and “stole documents with the intention of using them abroad.” They also falsely identified him as being on the witness list.

But Ankara could not stop Zarrab from delivering seven days of sensational testimony. On day one, he appeared in court wearing a beige prison jumpsuit; for the remainder, he was allowed to wear a blazer. He was a natural in front of the jury, using diagrams to coolly explain how he orchestrated the scheme. He looked like a business school professor teaching a class on corruption.Here’s what Zarrab testified: The scheme began in 2010, when Iran began to feel the squeeze from U.S. sanctions for its nuclear drive. Zarrab said that around 2012 the Iranian government gave him explicit directions to conduct these illegal transactions. Turkish officials were also on the take, Zarrab said, with its economy minister allegedly taking $50 million in bribes to help facilitate the scheme. He said other Turkish officials were on the take, too—many of whom were in Erdogan’s inner circle. According to Zarrab, other Turkish banks may have been involved at the government’s behest. All this might explain why the Turkish government, even after the prosecutor’s report was leaked in 2014, killed all inquiry into the Zarrab scheme.

Testimony from David Cohen and Adam Szubin, two former Treasury Department undersecretaries would also reveal that Halkbank officials repeatedly reassured them their gold-trader clients, including Zarrab, were in compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran. (Zarrab testified that he continued his operations up until his arrest in March 2016, which meant that Halkbank would have been lying to U.S. officials.)

In the end, the trial ran long. With the judge calling for the prosecution to wrap things up quickly, I managed to avoid taking the stand. Atilla testified in a last-ditch self-defense, and the jury began its deliberations on December 20.Yesterday, after spending 11 days away for Christmas and New Years, the jury returned to deliberate again, and after only a few hours delivered their verdict: guilty on five out of six counts. Atilla’s rap sheep now includes four conspiracy counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, plus one count of bank fraud. (He was acquitted for money laundering.)

All eyes are now on the United States government and whether it issues a fine against Halkbank, particularly now that it has proven in a court of law that the bank engaged in a massive, illegal financial scheme. French Bank BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion for far lesser transgressions in 2015, for its violations of sanctions against Sudan, Cuba, and Iran.

Fine or no fine, it’s hard to envision tranquil U.S.-Turkish relations going forward. Erdogan, who now rivals Russia’s Vladimir Putin in autocratic style, has already instructed his spokesman to decry the trial as a “plot” against Turkey, while slamming “the scandalous verdict of a scandalous case.”

Then there is the question of Iran. In all likelihood, Tehran probably gave little thought to the Atilla verdict, given its ongoing domestic turmoil. The people are calling for better economic conditions, and a foreign policy that doesn’t squander Iran’s wealth on adventurism outside the country’s borders. One can only guess that would include complex sanctions busting schemes to enable an illicit nuclear program.

And now that Zarrab has finally clarified a few things about the Iranian role in his scheme, one troubling question lingers: Why did the U.S. government continue to negotiate the nuclear deal with Iran in 2013 and 2014 while Treasury was warning Halkbank about enormous sanctions violations? We may never know. Then again, from the documents I viewed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other sanctions busters come in the DOJ crosshairs—creating new and uncomfortable challenges for our existing alliances and diplomatic agreements. Perhaps other future indictments will tell us more.

In Defiance, Governors Issues Pardons to Deportees

Posted on January 4, 2018January 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

It is argued that the Democrats want the illegals to stay in country due in part to gaining their vote. There is truth to that for sure, yet advocacy organizations raise a LOT of money which is in the end more important to the Democrat base for campaign contributions.

For a list of pro-amnesty groups covering all industry and social classifications, go here.

Perhaps as a reminder it is prudent to mention that Obama led the charge for clemency and pardons as noted here.

President Obama offered clemency to seven Iranians charged with violating U.S. trade sanctions against Iran as part of a historic prisoner agreement with Iran that freed four Americans Saturday, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.

The Iranians, six of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, were imprisoned or were pending trial in the United States. The U.S. government dismissed charges against 14 other Iranians, all outside the United States, after assessing that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful, according to a U.S. official. More here.

***

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mimicked California Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach to immigration, pardoning 18 convicted illegal immigrants who faced deportation.

Cuomo, a Democrat, praised himself on Twitter for his compassion Thursday before linking to a New York Times article supporting the move.

Defying Trump again, Jerry Brown pardons immigrants about to be deported

Escalating the state’s showdown with the Trump administration over illegal immigration, California Gov. Jerry Brown used a Christmas holiday tradition to grant pardons Saturday to two men who were on the verge of being deported for committing crimes while in the U.S.

Brown, pairing his state’s combative approach to federal immigration authorities with his belief in the power of redemption, characterized the pardons as acts of mercy.

The Democratic governor moved as federal officials in recent months have detained and deported immigrants with felony convictions that resulted in the loss of their legal residency status, including many with nonviolent offenses that occurred years ago.

With the pardons, the reason for applicants’ deportations may be eliminated, said attorney Kevin Lo of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, which represented some of the men in a recent class-action lawsuit.

The pardoned immigrants will still need to ask immigration courts to reopen their cases, he said.The detentions of felons has focused on specific ethnic groups in past months, including Cambodians and Vietnamese, according to immigration lawyers handling the cases. Cambodia has been reluctant to repatriate former felons, but acquiesced to accepting more after the State Department stopped issuing visas in September to a small group of top Cambodian officials and their families.

Two of Brown’s pardons are Northern California Cambodian men picked up in October in those immigration sweeps, Mony Neth of Modesto and Rottanak Kong of Davis.

Kong was convicted on felony joyriding in 2003 in Stanislaus County at age 25 and sentenced to a year in jail. Neth was convicted on a felony weapons charge with a gang enhancement and a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property with a value of $400 or less in 1995 in Stanislaus County.

Both men came to the United States as children after their families fled the Khmer Rouge regime, and neither has engaged in criminal activity since being released from prison.

Kong and Neth were scheduled to be deported Monday, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last week in the lawsuit filed by Lo’s team, delaying their departure.

Neth, 42, was unexpectedly released from Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center on Friday, said his wife, Cat Khamvongsa, and is back home with his family – albeit with an ankle monitor.

“We gave him a big hug,” she said of herself and her 16-year-old daughter. “We’re so happy.”

In a phone interview Friday night while on his way to Costco, Neth said he was asleep Friday morning when a guard at the detention facility near Elk Grove called his name.

“I knew right then I was coming home,” Neth said. “It’s the best Christmas gift ever. … I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.”

Despite the governor’s pardon, Neth still faces legal hurdles, Lo said.

What Goes on in Sanctuary California Wont Stay in California

Posted on January 3, 2018January 3, 2018 by Denise Simon

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Federal dollars going to California could or should be considered foreign aid. Why? Read on…

The federal government spends some $367.8 billion a year on California. That’s an average of about $9,500 for every woman, man and child in the state.

In truth, the money isn’t spread out evenly. About 56 cents of every federal dollar spent in California, according to the analysis, goes to health or retirement benefits — Social Security, Medicare and money for low-income residents’ health care through the Medi-Cal program.

Defense contracts are the next biggest slice of the pie, followed by paychecks to military and civilian government employees. From there, federal spending gets sprinkled among a number of programs run by the state government. Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent budget plan pegged those funds at a total of $105 billion, equivalent to about 58% of state taxpayer dollars to be spent in the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

A detailed report is here.

So, now that California is officially a sanctuary state under SB54, effective January1, 2018, those illegals, felons and those plotting threats with regard to national security can freely travel anywhere, this is not just a California problem.

Last year, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order to cut funding from counties that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities, Santa Clara County stood to lose $1.7 billion in federal funding. After fighting the order, a federal judge ruled in favor of the county. Now that the entire state is following the same guidelines, some leaders argue it could strengthen their position in future legal battles.

Not everyone is onboard, however. Some California sheriff’s departments have criticized the new sanctuary state law, saying it will lead to broad roundups that could lead to collateral arrests. More here.

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There is a key word in this new law, it is ‘prohibits’.

BILL SUMMARY

Prohibits state and local law enforcement from holding illegal aliens on the basis of federal immigration detainers, or transferring them into federal custody, unless they’ve been convicted in the last 15 years for one of a list of 31 crimes, or are a registered sex offender: if not, they may only be held with a warrant from a federal judge.

Prohibits state and local law enforcement from asking anyone about their immigration status.

Prohibits state and local law enforcement from sharing any information with federal immigration authorities that is not available to the general public.

Prohibits state and local law enforcement from using any of their money or personnel to “investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes”.

Prohibits state and local law enforcement from allowing federal immigration authorities to use space in their facilities.

Limits how and when state and local law enforcement can contract with federal immigration authorities.

Grants discretion to state and local law enforcement to cooperate even less with federal immigration authorities than the bill authorizes them to, but not more

Is near-universally recognized and described by both its supporters and opponents as a sanctuary state bill: protects illegal aliens at the expense of citizens, will increase illegal immigration to California, and sends the message that illegal aliens are welcome everywhere in the state.

***

State Senate Leader Kevin de Leon, the author of the bill, has argued that public safety will be undermined if the law isn’t passed. It is estimated that more than 2 million undocumented people live in California — with hundreds of thousands from Asia as well as Latin America — and advocates say many will be scared to interact with official institutions if they fear that will put them on federal immigration agents’ radar. They say individuals might not report violent crimes to police, might not send their kids to school or might not seek medical care at the local hospital. And there is some evidence to back that up: Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Police Department said that Latino communities were reporting fewer instances of sexual assault and domestic violence because of concerns about deportation under Trump. More here.

***

California Democratic state Senate president Kevin de León intends to enter California’s 2018 Senate race against Sen. Dianne Feinstein, three sources with knowledge of his plans say.

De León has begun calling labor leaders and elected officials to inform them of his plans, the sources said, and is expected to soon announce his campaign against Feinstein, a giant of California Democratic politics who has held the office since 1992.

The 50-year-old de León, who represents Los Angeles and is seen as a leading Latino voice in Democratic politics, is likely to campaign aggressively against President Donald Trump. He began signaling he could oppose Feinstein in late August, after she said Trump could “be a good president” and that he “can learn and change.” Feinstein later clarified that she is “under no illusion that it’s likely to happen and will continue to oppose his policies.” More here.

So who is this de Leon character? That is a challenge to determine and he has not been fully forthcoming on his own history. Check it out here.

We also had this sexual harassment case, where de Leon was the roommate. Hummm. He was also a college dropout.

De León was the first and only person in his family to graduate from high school and attend college. He started out at the University of California Santa Barbara, but it was a challenge. He had moxie but no organizational skills, no practice at taking notes or studying for a test. He didn’t last long.

He couldn’t go back home and tell his mother of his failure. Instead, he went to work for One Stop Immigration Center, a nonprofit in Los Angeles that helps undocumented immigrants fill out paperwork and teaches them English, history and organizing.

Then, the Attorney General for California is Javier Beccera. He is a loyal and dedicated supported of the Dream Act and will defend all cases against California becoming a sanctuary state. Meanwhile, remember that whole Pakistani IT case in Congress under Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Enter again Javier Beccera.

Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations. The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said.

On Jan. 24, 2017, Becerra vacated his congressional seat to become California’s attorney general. “He wanted to wipe his server, and we brought to his attention it was under investigation. The light-off was we asked for an image of the server, and they deliberately turned over a fake server,” the senior official said.

“They were using the House Democratic Caucus as their central service warehouse … It was a breach. The data was completely out of [the members’] possession. Does it mean it was sold to the Russians? I don’t know,” the senior official said.

Capitol Police considered the image a sign that the Awans knew exactly what they were doing and were going to great lengths to try to cover it up, the senior official said. The House Sergeant-at-Arms banned them from the network as a result.

The senior official said the data was also funneled offsite via a Dropbox account, from which copies could easily be downloaded. Authorities could not immediately shut down the account when the Awans were banned from the network because it was not an official account. More here.

One last item…don’t forget to keep Eric Holder in the whole mix regarding California.

Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder files brief on behalf of California Senate in Chicago’s ‘sanctuary city’ lawsuit

The California Senate is throwing its support behind Chicago in a lawsuit against the Justice Department over its plan to withhold federal money from “sanctuary cities,” which limit collaboration between state and local authorities with federal immigration agents.

Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and his firm, Covington & Burling, on Thursday filed a friend-of the-court brief on behalf of the state Senate in the federal case, saying sanctuary jurisdictions have policies consistent with federal law.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, Holder says, does not have the constitutional authority to mandate that cities, counties or states participate in federal immigration efforts as a condition to receive their federal public safety awards.

The lawsuit, filed last month by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city officials, asks a judge to block the Trump administration from enforcing three new conditions it included in petitions for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant money. The city uses the grant to buy police cars and other equipment, and to fund an anti-violence program.

Holder, who was said to have filed the brief pro-bono, was temporarily hired by the Senate and Assembly to serve as outside counsel to offer advice on the state’s legal strategy against the incoming administration. On Friday, a Covington & Burling spokeswoman said the firm remains “engaged with the California Senate on an ongoing basis.”

In the brief, Holder said the California Legislature has a particular interest in the Chicago case as it weighs Senate Bill 54, which seeks to limit state and local law enforcement agencies from using resources to question, detain and provide information on immigrants illegally in the country.

Covington & Burling analyzed the legislation this year and concluded that “states have the power over the health and safety of their residents and allocation of state resources.”

Taking Names and Dollars at the UN on the Jerusalem Capital Vote

Posted on January 3, 2018January 3, 2018 by Denise Simon

Image result for jerusalem capital vote UN

The U.S. will hold a reception for countries that did not vote last month to approve a United Nations (U.N.) resolution condemning the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Tuesday.

“As I said in December, we won’t forget the Jerusalem vote,” Haley said at a news conference. “To that end, tomorrow night, we are having a reception for the countries who chose not to oppose the U.S. position [on Jerusalem].”

The resolution, while not legally binding, amounted to an international effort to pressure the Trump administration to reconsider its Jerusalem decision, which reversed decades of U.S. policy in the region.

Among the countries to vote in favor of the resolution were key U.S. allies, like the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Other allies, like Canada, Australia and Mexico, abstained from the vote.

Among the nine countries to vote against the resolution were the U.S., Israel, Honduras, Guatemala and Palau, among others.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Jerusalem is considered sacred by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and Israel considers the city its eternal capital. But the Palestinians have long desired to establish east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. More here.

*** So, beyond this…what about money to opposition countries?

Nikki Haley said that the United States would be “taking note” of the countries that “disrespected” America by voting in favor of the resolution, and President Trump said bluntly that the countries who don’t vote with the U.S. will have their funding cut.

So what if Trump actually gutted funding for those 128 countries? Well, The Daily Caller did the math.

According to USAid.gov, which catalogs all country-by-country financial obligations the U.S. holds with the rest of the world, Trump’s threat would save the United States more than $24 billion — in just one year.

The numbers below are based on what the U.S. was obligated to pay in 2016 to each of the countries that voted against us in the UN vote last week. Obligations are defined as the amount the United States is legally bound to pony up either in that year or the future.

The obligations may differ from the actual cash disbursements given in any given year, but they best reflect our financial obligations to the country in question.

Here are the countries that voted against the U.S., listed alphabetically, along with America’s 2016 financial obligation to each country:

Afghanistan — $5,060,306,050

Albania — $27,479,989

Algeria — $17,807,222

Andorra — $0

Angola — $64,489,547

Armenia — $22,239,896

Austria — $310,536

Azerbaijan — $15,312,389

Bahrain — $6,573,352

Bangladesh — $263,396,621

Barbados — $5,442,370

Belarus — $11,166,107

Belgium — $3,101,636

Belize — $8,613,838

Bolivia — $1,378,654

Botswana — $57,252,922

Brazil — $14,899,949

Brunei — $354,829

Bulgaria — $20,066,715

Burkina Faso — $74,469,144

Burundi — $70,507,528

Cabo Verde — $5,044,716

Cambodia — $103,194,295

Chad — $117,425,683

Chile — $2,266,071

China — $42,263,025

Comoros — $1,057,063

Congo — $8,439,457

Costa Rica — $14,650,552

Cote d’Ivoire — $161,860,737

Cuba — $15,776,924

Cyprus — $0

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) — $2,142,161

Denmark — $3,455

Djibouti — $24,299,878

Dominica — $616,000

Ecuador — $26,014,579

Egypt — $1,239,291,240

Eritrea — $119,364

Estonia — $15,937,295

Ethiopia — $1,111,152,703

Finland — $33,492

France — $4,660,356

Gabon — $31,442,404

Gambia — $3,197,858

Germany — $5,484,317

Ghana — $724,133,065

Greece — $8,508,639

Grenada — $690,300

Guinea — $87,630,410

Guyana — $9,691,030

Iceland — $0

India — $179,688,851

Indonesia — $222,431,738

Iran — $3,350,327

Iraq — $5,280,379,380

Ireland — $0

Italy — $454,613

Japan — $20,804,795

Jordan — $1,214,093,785

Kazakhstan — $80,418,203

Kuwait — $112,000

Kyrgyzstan — $41,262,984

Laos — $57,174,076

Lebanon — $416,553,311

Liberia — $473,677,614

Libya — $26,612,087

Liechtenstein — $0

Lithuania — $15,709,304

Luxembourg — $0

Madagascar — $102,823,791

Malaysia — $10,439,368

Maldives — $1,511,931

Mali — $257,152,020

Malta — $137,945

Mauritania — $12,743,363

Mauritius — $791,133

Monaco — $0

Montenegro — $2,118,108

Morocco — $82,023,514

Mozambique — $514,007,619

Namibia — $53,691,093

Nepal — $194,286,218

Netherlands — $0

New Zealand — $0

Nicaragua — $31,318,397

Niger — $144,122,239

Nigeria — $718,236,917

Norway — $100,000

Oman — $5,753,829

Pakistan — $777,504,870

Papua New Guinea — $14,836,598

Peru — $95,803,112

Portugal — $207,600

Qatar — $95,097

Republic of Korea (South Korea) — $3,032,086

Russia — $17,195,004

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — $612,000

Saudi Arabia — $732,875

Senegal — $99,599,642

Serbia — $33,062,589

Seychelles — $223,002

Singapore — $468,118

Slovakia — $2,585,685

Slovenia — $715,716

Somalia — $274,784,535

South Africa — $597,218,298

Spain — $81,231

Sri Lanka — $27,192,841

Sudan — $137,878,835

Suriname — $232,672

Sweden — $1,269

Switzerland — $1,168,960

Syria — $916,426,147

Tajikistan — $47,789,686

Thailand — $68,182,970

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia — $31,755,240

Tunisia — $117,490,639

Turkey — $154,594,512

United Arab Emirates — $1,140,659

United Kingdom — $3,877,820

United Republic of Tanzania — $628,785,614

Uruguay — $836,850

Uzbekistan — $20,067,933

Venezuela — $9,178,148

Vietnam — $157,611,276

Yemen — $305,054,784

Zimbabwe — $261,181,770

TOTAL — $24,485,383,599

AVERAGE PER COUNTRY — $205,795,526

About THAT Arab Bank in New York

Posted on January 2, 2018January 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

Yet another deadly and financial scandal both Barack Obama and John Kerry ignored for the sake of the consummation of the Iran nuclear deal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is launching a review of a law enforcement initiative called Project Cassandra after an investigative report was published this week claiming the Obama administration gave a free pass to Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations to help ensure the Iran nuclear deal would stay on track.

The Justice Department said in a statement to Fox News that Sessions on Friday directed a review of prior Drug Enforcement Administration investigations “to evaluate allegations that certain matters were not properly prosecuted and to ensure all matters are appropriately handled.”

“While I am hopeful that there were no barriers constructed by the last administration to allowing DEA agents to fully bring all appropriate cases under Project Cassandra, this is a significant issue for the protection of Americans,” Sessions said in a written statement. “We will review these matters and give full support to investigations of violent drug trafficking organizations.” More here.

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Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS fame wrote about this case in 2005 while at the Wall Street Journal. And the LA Times further summarized the legal case against the Arab Bank and financing terror.

There is even a book about banking and terrorism.

Image result for lawfare law as a weapon of war

Back in 2015:

Three days before a first-of-its-kind damages trial was supposed to start, a Middle Eastern bank has reached a settlement with hundreds of American plaintiffs, including victims of terrorist attacks around Israel, who had filed a lawsuit against the bank accusing it of supporting terrorism.

A spokesman for the bank, Arab Bank, and a spokeswoman for one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs confirmed on Friday that an agreement had been reached but declined to offer additional details, including the amount of the settlement.

Last year, a jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn found Arab Bank liable for financing terrorism by processing transactions for members of the militant Islamic group Hamas. More here.

*** Image result for arab bank new york Arab bank, New York

BEIRUT: Jordan’s largest lender, the Arab Bank, announced this week that a New York federal court dismissed more than 90 percent of the claims in a long-running lawsuit accusing it of providing banking services to charities and individuals allegedly affiliated with Palestinian militants. The ruling is the most significant victory yet for the Arab Bank yet in its nine-year legal battle with 6,596 relatives of victims killed or injured in two dozen Palestinian attacks in Israel during the Second Intifada. More here.

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LINDE v. ARAB BANK, PLC

In July 2004, Osen LLC sued Arab Bank, Plc on behalf of American terror victims in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit, captioned Linde v. Arab Bank, Plc and brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), was the first civil lawsuit brought against Arab Bank. The Plaintiffs sought to hold Arab Bank liable for deaths and severe injuries resulting from acts of international terrorism that Palestinian terrorist groups perpetrated between 2000 and 2004, during the Second Intifada. After 10 years of litigation that included multiple appeals, American victims of terrorism were finally able to present their case to a Brooklyn jury in August and September 2014. The first trial centered around 24 terrorist attacks that the Plaintiffs alleged were perpetrated by Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization that the United States first designated a terrorist entity in 1995. On September 22, 2014, an 11-person jury found Arab Bank liable for knowingly providing financial services for Hamas. This finding represented the first, and still only, time a financial institution has been held civilly liable for aiding terrorism.

The Liability Trial (August-September 2014)

During the course of the trial, which centered around 24 Hamas terrorist attacks between March 2001 and September 2004, the Plaintiffs proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to Hamas by illegally maintaining accounts for: Hamas (via an account held in the name of senior Hamas leader and spokesman Osama Hamdan that accepted multiple checks explicitly made out to beneficiary “Hamas“); Hamas’s founder and supreme leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (Yassin was first designated a Specially Designated Terrorist in 1995); and dozens of other Hamas leaders and senior operatives, including Salah Shehadeh – founder and former head of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and current Hamas leader in Gaza. The Plaintiffs also proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that facilitated millions of dollars in direct transfers to the families of suicide bombers and other terrorist operatives through the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada al Quds and the Al-Shahid Foundation. Lastly, the Plaintiffs proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to Hamas by maintaining accounts for eleven Hamas-controlled organizations in the Palestinian Territories.

One of Arab Bank’s chief contentions, voiced by defense expert Beverley Milton-Edwards, was that the identities of Hamas leaders were not well known between 2000-2004. The jury, however, was shown a video of the funeral of the infamous Hamas bomb-maker, Muhanad al-Taher, in the town square of Nablus. Hamed Beitawi, vice-Chairman of the Nablus Zakat Committee and Chairman of the Islamic Solidarity Al-Tadhamun Charitable Society – Nablus (two of the eleven relevant Hamas-controlled organizations, both of which maintained accounts at Arab Bank) spoke at this very public event. Dr. Milton-Edwards was also impeached by video showing Salah Shehadeh – founder and former head of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza – giving a speech to a massive audience, thus undercutting the Bank’s claim that Hamas leaders “lived in the shadows.”

Post-Trial Proceedings

After the jury rendered its unanimous verdict, Arab Bank filed 3 motions, arguing: (1) notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, Arab Bank was entitled to victory on the merits and dismissal of the case; (2) if the Court would not grant that relief, Arab Bank was entitled to a new trial because of purported mistakes the Court made in managing the trial; and (3) in any event, the Bank was entitled to immediate review of the verdict by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Court denied the Bank’s motions for a new trial and for Second Circuit review of the verdict. In its decision, the Court noted that the Bank’s liability was established “on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that defendant knew its customers were terrorists.”

The Court further noted the testimony of the Bank’s own former head compliance officer in London who was presented with the Saudi Committee wire transfer payable to “the family of martyr Ibrahim Karim Beni Awda” and responded: “[w]e would never in a million years have dealt with a payment order such as this.”

The Court’s decision also took note of the testimony of Arab Bank’s primary expert witness, Dr. Milton-Edwards, who testified that the organizations in the Palestinian Territories at issue in the case were neither controlled by Hamas nor perceived as Hamas affiliates during the relevant period based in part of her review of “paraphernalia” she observed during her visits to these organizations. The Court observed that her testimony “backfired in spectacular fashion” when “it came out on cross-examination that she could not read Arabic.”

Furthermore, the Court noted Dr. Milton-Edwards’ impeachment by her own book: She had testified that the Islamic Society of Gaza was neither affiliated with Hamas nor perceived as such by the Palestinian public. Her book told a different story, however:

[t]he work of the Islamic Society and the rest of Hamas’s network in the decades up to, during and after the second intifada, when families needed it most, represented not so much a donation as an investment by Hamas, one that reached a lucrative political dividend in the 2006 election.

Ultimately, the Court concluded, “[t]he effect of cross-examination on Dr. Milton-Edwards’ testimony, and its potential spillover effect on the credibility of defendant’s entire case, is … hard to overstate.”

Arab Bank’s Appeal

Following the Court’s denial of the Bank’s motions for a new trial the parties prepared for the first damages trial, which the parties agreed to postpone once they reached a framework for settlement of all of the Plaintiffs’ Anti-Terrorism Act-related claims.

As part of the settlement, the Bank reserved the right to take a one-time appeal of the liability verdict, the outcome of which would determine the settlement’s precise contours. The briefing is complete and the Second Circuit heard extensive oral argument on May 16, 2017.