Money Laundering and 9/11 (Financial Times)

[Aries]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d6c3d1e2-093a-11da-880b-00000e2511c8.html

...Kochan recounts Citibank's dealings with what he calls "dirty clients": Sani Abacha, president of Nigeria; El Haj Omar Bongo of Gabon; Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister; and Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former president of Mexico and the infamous "tough guy who knows how to raise $20m over a weekend".

Kochan's account is a product of many years of research and interviews. He is tough but fair, noting that Citibank was not charged with crimes and has enacted modest reforms, and also making it clear that Citibank is not alone.

One interesting question remains unanswered: what role did terrorist financing play in the build-up to the attacks of September 11 2001? There are two pieces of evidence on this point. First, during the days immediately prior to 9/11 the volume of put options, investments that pay off only when a stock declines in price, surged in the parent companies of American Airlines and United Airlines. According to a footnote in the 9/11 commission report, this unusual trading had no connection to terrorism.

Some people remain suspicious, and have pointed to a second piece of evidence: the dramatic spike in US dollars - particularly $100 bills -in circulation in August 2001, one of the three largest monthly increases in 50 years. This surge might have an innocent explanation. But it might also indicate that people with advance knowledge of the attacks were hurriedly withdrawing cash.

Is it possible that terrorists profited from inside information in advance of their attacks? The US government insists the answer is no, but it is hard to imagine that terrorists who are savvy in using shell companies and offshore trusts to hide the identity of their contributors would not also think of trading on inside information or withdrawing cash early.

Perhaps government officials believe the details of these activities, like those about the manufacture of nuclear weapons, should remain out of print, lest they reach the wrong hands.

[OneBlueSky]

1. I believe the 9/11 Commission admitted they didn't know . . .

who financed the attacks and, shockingly, stated that knowing this would be of no practical significance (or something like that) . . .

[teryang]

2. Why bother following the money?

You might find something no one is supposed to know about. War, intelligence schemes, terrorism, drugs, and weapons trafficking.

[Aries]

3. Convar/Kroll

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/oh-places-you-go-when-you-follow-money.html

...And this, from CNN, a few days later:

An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.

That's where Convar Systeme Deutschland GmbH comes in. The company is helping reconstruct data from hard disk drives found in the ruins of the twin towers. While other data-recovery companies are also involved in the effort, the company says it has a special edge: a laser-based scanning technology developed about two years ago.

Peter Henschel, director of Convar, called the extent of the transactions "extraordinarily high."...

Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster.

"There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million," Wagner said. "They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed."

As Convar recovered the data, at a cost of up to $35,000 per hard drive, the information was forwarded to its clients (apparantly telecommunications, accounting, and credit card firms), which in turn passed it on to the FBI...


So, what happened to the WTC data-recovery story, and the "dirty doomsday dealings"?

We need to step back, and ask, what happened to Convar?

In June, 2002, Convar was purchased by security firm Kroll Inc., which employs a number of former FBI and CIA officials, and has a reputation for serving as a cut-out of US Intelligence. It's reportedly known as the "CIA of Wall Street," due to its revolving door of former-and-future spooks, and its role in corporate espionage and the destabilization of foreign governments....

[teryang]

5. Wow!

<Interestingly, in August of 2001, it was then-Managing Director of Kroll, Jerome Hauer, who arranged for former FBI special agent John O'Neill, to be hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center.

Besides being in Kroll's service on September 11, Hauer was also running Rudolph Giuliani's "Office of Emergency Management," and its hardened "command and control" bunker on the 22nd floor of WTC 7. (Perhaps you remember what happened to that.)<snip>

[Southpaw Bookworm]

4. Important issue

And for the LIHOPers out there, one that might need more attention. Between his inauguration and 9/11, the Bushistas were busy trying to prevent the implementation of some new money laundering guidelines that dealt with know-your-customer rules. Feds responsible for these rules (FINCEN) were not happy about it.