Offshore, Scoops
Dimanche (Lausanne), 14 décembre 2001
Pour vendre 600 kg de matériel nucléaire à des Saoudiens, l‘ex-conseiller national UDC et son notaire ont pris moult précautions. Berne ouvre une enquête.
Mercredi, le Ministère public de la Confédération a reçu un envoi curieux en provenance des Etats-Unis: un paquet de documents explosifs attestant l‘existence d‘un vaste trafic de mercure rouge via la Suisse pour un montant de 200 millions de francs. «Mercure rouge est le nom de code donné à toutes sortes de matériel nucléaire passé en contrebande », précise Hansruedi Indermühle du laboratoire AC de Spiez; cette notion floue englobant uranium, plutonium, césium voire osmium 187 et autres contrefaçons.
Offshore, Scoops
Von Lucy Komisar*, Beat Kraushaar Und Henry Habegger, Mitarbeit: Laurent Duvane SonntagsBlick (Zurich) 9 Dezember 2001 BERN – 600 Kilo nukleares Material wollten Ex-SVP-Nationalrat Bernard Rohrbasser und Notar R. verkaufen – an die Saudis. Verwickelt in den dubiosen Handel ist auch das Departement für auswärtige Angelegenheiten. Jetzt ermittelt die Bundesanwaltschaft. Diesen Mittwoch erhielt die Bundesanwaltschaft […]
Offshore, Scoops
Pacific News Service, Nov 14, 2001
When tracking down the terrorist money trail, Washington will inevitably wind up in Switzerland. Swiss banks have long been used by shady characters worldwide to launder money. One of them might be a good starting point for U.S. investigators seeking terrorist funding sources and illicit bioweapons trade.
GENEVA–To protect America from terrorist attack, the United States must investigate illicit trade in biological weapons and trace the movement of terrorist money. A good starting point is a controversial Swiss bank that may have facilitated the sale of hazardous biological materials to Islamic militants.
Offshore, Scoops
Earth Times News Service, Nov 12, 2001
GENEVA– As the U.S. searches for the culprits who let loose an anthrax attack on America and for the money trail of Islamic terrorists believed to have plotted the attack on the World Trade Center, key questions are: How does the illicit trade in biological weapons operate and how is terrorist money moved?
For answers to both those questions, the U.S. ought to zero in on a Swiss bank that handled a sale from a known Russian biological weapons producer, Biopreparat, to a company, Interplastica, with links to Islamic militants.
Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops
In These Times, Oct 22, 2001
Offshore banking has helped Citibank clients hide millions. 
Citibank Citibankis leading a fight by American banks to gut the anti-moneylaundering laws currently being considered in Congress”laws that could significantly change the way banks do business for their wealthiest clients.
Citibank is seeking an exception to a proposed ban on doing business with shell banks, which have no physical presence and are situated “virtually” in offshore zones to avoid taxes and regulations. The banks are used to hide and launder perhaps billions of dollars a year.
Banks, Corporate/Wall St., Offshore, Scoops
Pacific News Service, Oct 4, 2001
NEW YORK–A controversial European book that might help authorities track terrorist funding sources remains unpublished and relatively unknown in the United States.
”Entitled Revelation$,it exposes a secret banking system that might be used by terrorists. At the center is a clearinghouse in Luxembourg called Clearstream, which transfers money for international banks and major companies.
Written by a former high-ranking Clearstream official and a French journalist, its publication last February by Les Arenes in Paris triggered the firing of Clearstream’s top officials, a judicial inquiry in Luxembourg, and invitations to the authors to address members of the European Parliament and the French parliamentary commission on financial crime and money-laundering.
Offshore, Scoops
Sacramento Bee, Sept 23, 2001)
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world’s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers’ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it helps worldwide networks of terrorists.
Terrorists need a way to finance operations in dozens of countries around the globe, to pay for houses, salaries, transport, weapons and explosives.
Money Laundering, Offshore, Scoops
Pacific News Service, Sept 21, 2001
For years the banking laws of the United States and its allies have protected money laundering, which makes money for banks and the wealthy, and has even helped Washington fund freedom fighters. But the system also provides funds and cover for terrorists; the system must be dismantled with new laws.
The global money-laundering system used by terrorists has also served the U.S. government and banks for years, creating wealth and occasionally supporting U.S. political interests abroad. Changing U.S. bank secrecy laws to pierce that laundering system is as essential to stopping terrorism as military force and diplomatic moves.
Money Laundering, Offshore, Scoops
MSNBC.com, Sept 19, 2001
Global money laundering made easy by loose rules on secret accounts
Terrorists work the levers of global banking laws to move money that finance their efforts from phony banks to real ones, like Britain’s Barclays Bank, which Osama bin Laden allegedly used.
Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world‘s banks and financial powers. A lot of people make money from it, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers‘ deposits from tax authorities. But an unintended consequence is that it aids and abets worldwide networks of terrorists.
Offshore, Scoops
Featurewell.com, Aug 6, 2002
For Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, 53, called Taivanchik (the Taiwanese) because of his Asian features, the plot to get an Olympic gold medal for Russia’s top figure-skaters was small-time.
The Russian mafia don who was arrested July 31 for fixing skating contests at the Salt Lake City summer Olympics reminds one of Al Capone, who was put away for tax evasion, because the government couldn‘t get enough evidence against him for murder, extortion and criminal racketeering.
Travel
I was having dinner at the Moscow apartment of Tatiana Kudryavtseva, the Russian translator for books by Graham Greene, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, John Updike and William Styron, among others. But it wasn’t a literary evening. The other guest was Rufina 
Philby, widow of the British spy. Tatiana knew her through Greene, who had written a preface to Philby’s memoir.
Rufina, or Rutchka, as Tatiana called her, was disarming, referring to Kim as the spy and recounting how they’d met in Moscow when a friend couldn’t use a ticket to the U.S. Ice Capades. The couple going with her invited Kim. She recalled how depressed he’d been in his Russian exile until the KGB finally gave him a job–training spies to behave as proper Brits so they’d pass easily in England.
I asked if she’d been to the KGB Museum I’d heard about.
I’ve never been there, she said. I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t know there was one.
That turned out to be far from the truth.
Offshore, Scoops
Publié par The Nation, 18 juin 2001
En février 2001, après la réunion des pays les plus industrialisés, plus connus sous le nom du G7, lorsque Paul O‘Neill, secrétaire d‘Etat au Trésor (ministre des finances américain), a déclaré qu‘une initiative européenne visant à enrayer le blanchissage de l‘argent “ ne consiste pas à dicter aux pays quel est le niveau convenable de la taxation ”, il était clair que c‘en était fait. Pendant 18 mois environ, les Etats Unis avaient indiqué qu‘ils pensaient sérieusement se joindre aux Européens dans leurs modestes efforts pour s‘occuper de l‘argent illicite blanchi de part le monde.
Offshore, Scoops
The Nation, June 18, 2001
When Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said after the February meeting of the top industrialized countries, known as the G-7, that a European initiative to clamp down on money laundering is not about dictating to any country what should be the appropriate level of tax rates, it was clear that the game was over.
For about eighteen months the United States had signaled that it was serious about joining the Europeans in modest efforts to deal with the tide of illicit money that washes around the world. Now, the Bush Administration was saying that it was backing off the US commitment to reform the offshore banking system. Instead, the tough on crime Republicans would stand shoulder to shoulder with the shady characters in Nauru, Aruba, Liechtenstein and elsewhere who offer state-of-the-art financial services for crooks.
Offshore, Scoops
The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2001
Money: The wealthy hide a bundle of their dollars in banks that can keep a secret.
The Bush tax cut for the top 1 percent of richest Americans is worth $69 billion, nearly 38 percent of the total. People who protested that are virtually ignoring another Republican policy that saves the rich the same amount. Experts estimate that $70 billion in taxes are lost annually because many wealthy Americans hide money in tax havens, but Republicans in Congress and the White House are blocking efforts to stop this tax evasion.
Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops
Earth Times News Service, May 18, 2001
In the first salvo of an international effort to disable the system of shell companies used widely by criminals, corrupt officials, and tax cheats, the OECD Council of Ministers on May 10th adopted a report on what countries should do to pierce shell company secrecy. Called “Misuse of Corporate Vehicles for Illicit Purposes,” it is part of a campaign by the world‘s financial powers against the illicit offshore bank and corporate secrecy system. It was written by OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance made up of experts from member countries‘ finance and securities ministries.
Offshore, Regulation & enforcement, Scoops
Earth Times News Service, May 14, 2001
PARIS — OECD Secretary General Donald Johnston says he is pleased about the OECD commitment to try to stop companies from its own member states from bribing public officials in other countries. But, he added, that effort needs to be extended to cover bribery of corporate officials as well.
The Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions entered into force in February 1999. It commits 34 signatory countries, including all the world’s biggest economies, to adopt common rules to punish companies and individuals who engage in bribery.
