Frank Viviano Writes   Organized crime said to launder billions for terrorists Money for groups has risen sharply in past decade   Paris -- For the United States and its allies to wage a global war on terrorism, and not merely on those responsible for the attacks on New York and Arlington, Va., they must target an international partnership whose financial means far exceed those of Osama bin Laden. The partnership, say law enforcement experts in Europe, involves international organized crime groups working hand in hand with major terrorist organizations, using banks, stock markets and brokerage houses to launder more than $900 billion a year in secret or illicitly acquired funds. "The nerve center of war is money," said Renaud Van Ruymbeke, France's chief financial crime prosecutor, who leads a European Union team investigating the connections. "Without money, terrorist networks do not exist. They can't finance their operations overseas or purchase arms." The money has grown at a spectacular rate since the forging of an alliance a decade ago between the criminal underworld and fanatical religious and ethnic "liberation movements," say investigators. In both the Middle East and Europe, says Hikmet Sami Turk, Turkey's minister of justice, a rising tide of illicit activities are being "organized by criminal and terrorist gangs who have international networks." Benefiting from this vast wealth are Islamic fundamentalist groups such as bin Laden's al Qaeda (the Base), along with their counterparts in countries such as Lebanon, Chechnya and Tajikistan. Other "liberation movements" tied into the underworld financial nexus include the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Kosovo Liberation Army. Terrorist groups also have been implicated in an international narcotics trade, directed by organized crime, that the United Nations now puts at $360 billion annually, says judge Thierry Cretin of the European Anti-Fraud Office. Investigators say the organized crime connection ranges from wealthy, old- line "mafias" -- Sicily's Cosa Nostra, Chinese Triads, cartels in Colombia and Israel -- to newer crime clans based in Albania, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Africa and the Caucasus. The crime families are seen as particularly important for terrorist groups involved in the acquisition and transport of arms. "The expertise achieved by organized crime groups in moving all kinds of goods through borders renders the contribution of these groups invaluable for hidden transactions," said criminologist Vincenzo Ruggiero of Middlesex University in England. In addition to their contraband activities, terrorist groups earn significant amounts of money from graft and extortion rackets directed against ethnic communities overseas. For example, French police say small businesses in Paris serving Kurds, Tamils and Lebanese are forced to pay "revolutionary taxes" to terrorist groups. Vast sums of this dirty money are being laundered each year before re- entering circulation to pay for the travel, housing, planning, weapons purchases and technical backup in terrorist operations like the devastating assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The laundered money is often funneled through the same high-profile sector of financial institutions that were decimated on Sept. 11. It's an area, say investigators, which the United States and Europe have so far been powerless to tackle. "Stock and bond purchases are essentially anonymous," said a German financial official. "If Osama bin Laden wanted to invest money in the stock market, his name would certainly not appear on the purchase ticket. A brokerage house is under an obligation to protect the identity of its clients, not to reveal it." As reported in The Chronicle on Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is inquiring into disclosures that shares in United Airlines and American Airlines, whose flights were hijacked by the terrorists, were specifically targeted by a huge stock sell-off, possibly by investors with advance knowledge of the attack. In Europe, reports that bin Laden's financial advisers had sold off huge stock holdings prior to the assault have prompted investigations at banks and brokerages in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France and Japan. However, laws requiring banks in Europe to disclose the sources of questionable deposits are rare and weak. A panel of European Union magistrates has been at work for several years on a new set of trans-EU financial laws, geared to impede money laundering. So far, they have been frustrated by the governments of EU states unwilling to surrender national control over their own fiscal infrastructures and criminal laws. "The traditional system of judicial cooperation in penal matters, based substantially on deposition and extradition, is . . . inadequate to confront an organized criminality which . . . exploits with great skill the differences that exist among national penal law," says Piero Luigi Vigna, Italy's chief anti-Mafia prosecutor. Another area of cooperation between terrorist groups and organized crime is the spiraling traffic in human beings. (The Chronicle reported extensively on the human trafficking problem last January.) In Italy, for example, as many as 3,000 undocumented immigrants have been arriving in a single week over the past two years. A high proportion are Afghans, Kurds, Iraqis, Lebanese, Kosovar Albanians and Sri Lankan Tamils. Italian authorities say the voyages are a joint venture involving as many as a dozen crime and insurgent groups, employing highly complex planning tools and a carefully monitored division of profits. Adding to the Italian government's problem, say investigators, is the lack of cooperation from other governments. "The Italian police receive only the most minimal cooperation from their European counterparts, much less from corrupt regimes in the Third World," said a senior official at an international law enforcement agency who did not wish to be identified. "The problem is that this is a phenomenon that respects no borders. The organized crime groups and the terrorist organizations are far more attuned to the realities of a globalist century than Western governments are."   back to index page     back to