FBI agents in town help fight cross-border crime

By Marie Magleby, Special to Gulf News

Published: May 31, 2008, 23:44

Abu Dhabi: Gary Price and Ernest Herbert carry FBI badges, but their job descriptions are significantly different here than in the US.

"I have no law enforcement authority here," Special Agent Price said.

Instead, the duo are go-betweens for local and US law enforcement. He said, "We work closely with UAE government officials to share information that protects the two countries."

They also offer training at the request of local authorities. The training involves many aspects of law enforcement, including ways to combat white-collar crime, violent crime, forensics and counter-terrorism.

In addition, the agents coordinate the Middle East Law Enforcement Training Centre in Dubai, which offers week-long courses for law enforcement personnel from around the Gulf.

Local authorities choose the topics and dates, and FBI specialists come from the US to teach the courses. Since its establishment in 2001, the centre, co-sponsored by the FBI and Dubai police, has conducted about 40 courses dealing with money laundering, computer crimes, intellectual property rights, kidnapping, auto theft, homicide, financial institution fraud, terrorist financing, hostage negotiations and more.

The globalisation of crime, especially financial and internet crime, places the agents in a pivotal position. "The UAE is an important crossroads for business and, as a result, also for crime," Price said of the potential for fraud or abuse in the banking system. With the help of local officials, they routinely seek to investigate bank records and track financial transactions linked to the US.

When internet crime is traced back to the US, the agents are also able to help. Just months ago, a prominent UAE citizen received a cyber threat from a location in the US.

Local law enforcement officials contacted Price and Herbert, who enlisted agents in the US to conduct an investigation. The man was arrested, charged and is now facing imprisonment.

About working with local authorities, Price said: "I truly enjoy working with the Emiratis. They are professional and very gracious." There are, however, obstacles. According to Price, a federal law that regulates "international judicial cooperation" is often misinterpreted to be a roadblock to investigations. "There is not a timely, quick way for law enforcement response because of the bureaucratic process," he said.

Law enforcement mechanisms do not always translate across cultures and borders, Herbert said in a similar vein. "Things are run differently here than in the US, so we have to do things differently."

When FBI agents are on international assignment, they assume the title of Legal Attaché in their respective embassies. Price and Herbert are successors to three other agents since the Abu Dhabi office opened in December 2003. They cover both the UAE and Oman. In the region, the FBI also has agents posted in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

During his tenure, former FBI director Louis Freeh pushed to expand the bureau's international presence. It now has offices in 62 countries. This worldwide network of agents is a necessary countermeasure against the growing nexus of international crime. "Just as there are no borders for crime and terrorism, there can be no borders for justice and the rule of law," current director Robert Mueller told the US Senate in March.

Progress

"Twenty years ago, the idea of regularly communicating with our law enforcement counterparts around the world was as foreign as the internet or the mobile phone. Today, advances in technology, travel and communication have broken down walls between countries, continents and individuals," Mueller added. Price and Herbert embody this prog-ress.

Mueller became the dir-ector one week prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The FBI began as a special agent force in 1908 and received its current title in 1935. Since its genesis, the FBI has seen its share of success and failure. Though it has successfully foiled numerous plots, conspiracies and espionage attempts, it has been criticised for shoddy investigation tactics and ignoring intelligence reports that could have prevented past attacks. Regardless, it has survived a century of challenges.

- The writer is a journalist based in Abu Dhabi.

Source: GulfNews

US workshop in Jordan builds support to battle money laundering

The U.S. government organized a workshop in Jordan to teach officials from the Arab countries how to detect and investigate the smuggling of money.

The U.S. has been working with Jordan and other Arab countries to ensure that banking institutions are subject to appropriate oversight and that they have effective programs in place to prevent money-laundering and terrorist financing.

Participants, including representatives from Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen, examined anti-money laundering standards used by the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based inter-government body set up in 1989 by the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

This week, U.S. federal prosecutors said two NY residents were indicted on charges of trying to smuggle $500,000 (euro323,000) from the U.S. to Jordan.

Authorities said a grand jury in Hartford, Connecticut returned an indictment charging 35-year-old Hassan Abuzaitoun and 33-year-old Mohammad Alazzam with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to smuggle bulk cash from the United States. Both are naturalized U.S. citizens from Jordan residing in Yonkers, New York.

Jordanian authorities have often asserted that Jordan was free of money laundering because of its strict monetary regulations and practices.

In 2004, three different groups of families of suicide bombing victims in Israel filed suits in a Brooklyn, N.Y. federal court against Jordan's largest financial institution _ Arab Bank _ alleging that it moved donations from Saudi Arabia to militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The bank denied the allegation. It later decided to close down its New York branch saying it was pursuing its strategy to focus on operations in the Arab world and Europe.

http://www.amlosphere.com/america/legislation/us-workshop-in-jordan-builds-support-to-battle-money-laundering.html

Jordan: Insurance Commission holds training programme on AML

(MENAFN - Jordan Times) The Insurance Commission (IC) of Jordan recently organised a training programme entitled, "Combating Money Laundering in Insurance Activities", in the presence of 97 participants representing insurance companies.

Held in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development, through its economic growth programme, SABEQ, the United States Department of Treasury, and the Anti-Money Laundering Unit, the training was attended by 97 participants representing insurance companies. The two-day programme aimed to promote awareness about money laundering in insurance activities and best practices to combat it. A number of issues were addressed in the programme, including money laundering and terrorist financing in insurance, common scheme red flags, risk-based guidance, compliance standards best practices, internal controls, trends and strategies, and anti-money laundering vulnerabilities.

Previously, the IC issued anti-money laundering instructions No. 3 in 2007, with the aim of maintaining the good reputation and credibility of the Jordanian insurance market. Since then, the IC has worked effectively to raise awareness about money-laundering crimes in insurance activities in order to present a clear picture of these crimes to the Jordanian market.

http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093196198

Arab states meet to discuss AML mechanisms

AMMAN - Eighteen Arab countries opened a two-day conference in Jordan Monday to look into mechanisms for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities.

The meeting of the Bahrain-based Arab Financial Group for Middle East and North Africa, is also attended by representatives for the United States, Britain, France, Spain, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as observers.

Opening the conference, Jordanian Justice Minister Sharif Zoabi said that fighting fund laundering and financing of terrorism ‘wins added interest these days by supervisory authorities as well as regional and international bodies in view of the globalization of financial and banking operations and openness of markets’.

He pointed out that Jordan and other regional governments were intensifying their efforts in this respect through the enactment of necessary legislation for dealing with money laundering.

The Governor of the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), Umayya Toukan, who heads the Arab group, said the meeting would provide regional countries with ‘an opportunity to work together and exchange expertise over issues relating to money laundering and terrorism financing and to develop regional solutions for addressing them.’

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/April/middleeast_April48.xml§ion=middleeast&col=

Ways of Combating Corruption and Deterring the Corrupt

Samih Massoud Al-Hayat - 14/01/07//

The Jordanian capital was the venue for the first conference attended by the signatory countries in the UN Convention against Corruption. It was adopted in 2003, signed by 140 countries, ratified only by 80 countries so far, and went into effect last year.

The significance of the convention lies in the fact that it is a legal international tool introduced by the UN to put anti-corruption measures by the various States within a framework of regulatory agreements and laws.

These agreements contain key points, the most prominent of which are related to identifying the means of protecting State funds from corruption and the corrupt, providing logistical and practical support to combat corruption, and the intensification of the battle against the corrupt and their prosecution.

Remarkably, the UN convention lacked any clear definition of corruption, leaving it to each State, according to each State's legal status. At the same time, the convention only identified different forms of corruption and urged for their criminalization, such as bribery, graft, embezzlement, money laundering, and abuse of authority, which are causing significant losses to the world's countries.

It is noteworthy that the recent years prior to the introduction of this convention witnessed great international interest in the phenomenon of corruption, and its negative impact on social and economic development.

Also worth pointing out are the significant early efforts exerted in this field by the World Bank, which calculated the amount of bribery worldwide to be ten times the total value of funds paid internationally in financial aid.

The World Bank also laid down its own anti-corruption strategy, which targeted all forms of fraud and corruption in the projects it funds. It also extended aid to developing countries that are combating corruption, and encouraged the implementation of packages of political, economical and administrative reform programs, aiming to improve public services through boosting wages and curbing political favoritism in job placement and promotions; ensuring judicial independence, the effective separation of authorities, guaranteeing the upholding of penal laws, and empowering the role of the legislature and civil society groups in the field of combating corruption.

In the same vein, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was early in focusing on corruption issues, as it set the value of funds being laundering internationally at nearly US$500 billion each year.

The IMF also laid down regulations pertaining to the provision of loans and financial aid, and successfully upheld a policy of suspending financial aid to any State in which governmental corruption was proven to obstruct economic improvement efforts.

In its reports, the IMF confined corruption cases to the practices that diverge public funds to fields other than their own domains, back-door customs and tax, misuse of hard currency reserves by officials of official bodies, bribing functionaries, abuse of power by bank officials, and corrupt practices in the field of foreign direct investments (FDI) in developing countries.

In this respect, we should not disregard the many efforts exerted by other bodies in combating corruption, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Transparency International, which is considered to be the most non-governmental active and influential organization. Transparency International has developed an indicator to measure the prevalence of corruption in various countries. It issues reports in this regard that indicate the ranks of countries according to this indicator.

At the Arab level, a large number of civil society organizations paid early attention to combating corruption. Also, the Center for Arab Unity Studies (CAUS) held a major symposium on corruption and good governance in Arab countries, in which serious studies were presented on corruption in some Arab countries, showing the extent of this phenomenon and its negative impact on economic and social life. In light of this symposium, an Arab institution for combating corruption was founded.

Interest in the corruption phenomenon is of great importance, since it is one of the main obstacles to development, and has negative effects on the integrity of the political and economic system. It undermines the ethical and legal standards, as well as credibility of the legislative authority, causes unrest and political and social chaos, and increases the economic costs of enterprises and institutions because of waste in production and resources. Corruption also diverts government spending away from the intended objectives, reduces investment, increases inequality in the distribution of incomes, and aggravates poverty and unemployment.

There is no doubt that the UN Convention against Corruption is crucial, but it lacks many aspects that were discussed by the aforementioned conference, which emphasized their importance. The conference outlined these aspects in the agreement on a mechanism to combat corruption worldwide, restore funds smuggled from the States because of corruption, coordination among countries for adopting the best possible ways of reimbursement, in addition to the need to agree on the operational mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the agreement and provide the necessary technical assistance to the States.

The Arab States are most concerned with unifying their stances, especially in the fields of legislation, which governs the process of combating corruption, exchanging technical information related to the UN Convention, strengthening the role of civil society organizations in fighting corruption, and responding to their reports and proposals in draft laws and mechanisms of action to ensure the prosecution of the corrupt. All this requires an Arab political will to fight corruption and make it a top priority.

* Mr. Samih Massoud is an economics expert at the Canadian Center for Middle East Studies

http://english.daralhayat.com/business/01-2007/Article-20070114-20a088ab-c0a8-10ed-00be-610810d04e21/story.html

Jordan's PM urges worldwide effort to combat corruption

The Associated Press
Sunday, December 10, 2006
AMMAN, Jordan

Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit on Sunday urged stepped up international efforts to combat corruption, saying it had reached unprecedented levels and played a significant role in global terrorism.

"Corruption of its various sorts has a strong link to organized crime, including drugs, human trafficking, terrorism, arms smuggling, illegal immigration and the misuse of authority, al-Bakhit said.

"Therefore, international cooperation, experience-sharing, information exchange and consolidating technical assistance between countries, international organizations and civil society institutions is highly significant and a human duty," he asserted.

Al-Bakhit said global corruption reached "unprecedented levels." Quoting World Bank figures, he said bribery is estimated at US$1 trillion (€750 million) each year.

"The money spent on bribery is 10 times the international assistance available for development, which makes us realize the seriousness and gravity of the crime of corruption.

Al-Bakhit made the remarks at the opening of a four-day U.N.-sponsored anti-corruption conference on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea.

Some 500 participants from 125 countries are reviewing the U.N. Convention Against Corruption, the first legally binding international anti-corruption tool, which came into force on Dec. 14, 2005.

So far, 140 countries have signed the convention and 80 have ratified it to become full-fledged parties.

It addresses corruption in both the public and private sectors and requires countries to criminalize money laundering, bribery, embezzlement of public funds, and obstruction of justice.

Participants include government ministers, civil society representatives and the private sector, who are examining ways to enforce compliance with the convention, asset recovery and technical assistance to build national capacity to combat corruption.

They are also seeking to strengthen legal cooperation between countries in gathering evidence for use in trials and extradition proceedings are also under discussion.

Conference host Jordan, which ratified the convention on Feb. 24, 2005, is among seven Arab countries that are party to the convention, including Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, Djibouti, Libya and Algeria.

Last Monday, Jordan's ruler, King Abdullah II, issued a royal decree approving the country's anti-corruption commission law, endorsed by parliament in September. It establishes an official body in Jordan entrusted with combating public sector corruption in line with the U.N. convention.

The commission is expected to have a free mandate to pursue current and former officials who are suspected of being involved in corruption.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/10/africa/ME_GEN_Jordan_U.N._Anti_Corruption.php

Imam disputes tie to Hamas

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 1, 2006

Omar Shahin, one of six imams removed from a flight last week, says he has traveled the country since the September 11 attacks to promote understanding of the Muslim religion, but he once worked for a group linked to terrorist financing. He insists that the terrorists who leveled the World Trade Center were not Muslims.

Mr. Shahin says he cut ties to KindHearts after the Treasury Department began investigating the group, that "true Muslims" do not murder and were not responsible for the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

"If they claim they are Muslim, they are wrong," Mr. Shahin said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Despite what religion they claim, even if they are all Arabs, to say they are Muslims is wrong, completely wrong.
"We have been asked by God and by the prophet Muhammad to respect all human life. The Koran is very clear, to save one life he saves all human life, and whoever kills one person, he kills all humankind, and that is what Islam is all about."

Mr. Shahin was a representative and fundraiser for KindHearts, which the Treasury Department says "coordinated with Hamas leaders and made contributions to Hamas-affiliated organizations," in a Feb. 19 statement after freezing the groups' assets.

KindHearts was established by Khaled Smaili, an official with the Global Relief Foundation, after the government froze the al Qaeda-affiliated foundation's assets, according to the Treasury Department.
"When they shut down, I had no clue what they were doing," Mr. Shahin said. "I made sure they are licensed as an American organization with the federal government and states, and that's all I did, I was just a fundraiser and representative.

"I stopped and have no relations with anyone, anymore, because they are under investigation."
Mr. Shahin said that KindHearts donated money, through his efforts, to the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia, to Southerners hit by Hurricane Katrina, and to the Red Cross in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Shahin lives in Phoenix and is the president of the North American Imam Federation, which serves the spiritual and tangible needs of Muslim scholars, helps them improve their relationship with the community, and encourages Muslims to observe the Islamic acts of worship.

He has a doctorate in Islamic law and is a professor at the Graduate Theological Foundation. He also received degrees in Islamic study from universities in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and holds a diploma in Koranic recitation from the University of Jordan.

He is a native of Jordan and is a naturalized American citizen.

Mr. Shahin is the spokesman for the imams who attended his federation's conference last week in Minnesota and were evicted from US Airways Flight 300 because of suspicious behavior.

The imams dispute the account of seven witnesses, including two law-enforcement officers, that the imams shouted hostile slogans and took unassigned seats in a pattern used by terrorists. Mr. Shahin calls the reports "exaggerations" and "false statements."

"I did everything normal, I did not do anything that is not normal in my mind." He said he and his colleagues were removed from the plane because three of the men said prayers in the concourse.

Mr. Shahin said they did not orchestrate the event to create a lawsuit or make a public issue of profiling Muslim passengers.

"We love US Airways, and we want to fly with them," Mr. Shahin said. The Council on American-Islamic Relations will pursue a lawsuit on the imams' behalf, Mr. Shahin said.

Mr. Shahin says they were not led off the plane in handcuffs, as reported, nor were they kept in handcuffs during their five-hour detention, and they were not harassed by dogs.

Witnesses and aviation-security officials say security concerns arose because of the seating arrangement which resembled a controlled pattern used by the September 11 hijackers -- two in front, two in the middle, two in the rear of the plane. Law-enforcement officials say the men were not in their assigned seats.
The request by three passengers, including Mr. Shahin, for seat-belt extensions, also concerned flight attendants. "That was a dead giveaway," one federal air marshal said yesterday. Flight crews are cautioned about giving out seat-belt extenders because you can turn it into a weapon very easily. You swing that belt buckle, and you can potentially kill someone."

Mr. Shahin says that after they were questioned and released, US Airways declined to sell them another plane ticket, even after an FBI agent intervened at the imam's request. "I told him, 'Please sir, to call them.' And he did and talked for more than 20 minutes. He was trying to tell them we have no problem with the government and we can fly with anybody, but they still refused. He told me, 'I'm sorry I did my best.' I really appreciated it."

Paul McCabe, FBI spokesman in Minneapolis, says no such call took place on behalf of the men. "That never happened," Mr. McCabe said.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20061201-121239-7193r_page2.htm