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September 16, 2004 -- 'Relief' for al Qaeda? Saudi Prince Salman.
AFTER 9/11, the United States invaded two states: Afghanistan and Iraq. Cantor Fitzgerald the World Trade Center financial firm that bore a full 22 percent of 9/11's deaths enjoys no such sovereign powers. So Cantor has spent three years preparing its own bloodless counterstrike.
Cantor wants to cut cleanly through the cocoon that, the firm alleges, protected and promoted the slaughterers of its WTC employees: The insular world of Saudi Arabian finance.
"The attacks of September 11, 2001, . . . could not have been accomplished without the knowing and intentional financial support lent to al Qaeda . . . by a global network of banks, institutions, charities, relief organizations, businesses, individual financiers, foreign governments and foreign government officials," Cantor Fitzgerald argues in a civil suit filed in Manhattan federal court two weeks ago. (The Port Authority, the WTC's owner, has since joined in as co-plaintiff.)
It takes global finance to fight global finance. So Cantor has assembled an A-list team of the East Coast's best corporate lawyers to trace the 9/11 money network back to what the firm alleges was its Saudi nexus.
Cantor has hired law firm Dickstein Shapiro to make its case and the legal minds there aren't personal-injury sharks who file frivolous suits against deep-pocketed defendants. Dickstein's anti-trust and business-litigation lawyers are just as skilled at defending alleged financial and corporate conspirators as they are at prosecuting them.
They know the secrets of global finance and they play to win.
Let other 9/11 victims and survivors sue to determine the facts that led up to 9/11. Cantor is certain it already knows what happened on 9/11 and who paid for the attack. It wants $7 billion cash money for its lost property and profits, plus punitive damages not an empty moral victory over amoral terrorists.
Cantor is, of course, suing al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The firm's 60-page complaint strips the Muslim veil from al Qaeda, exposing it for what it is a "highly organized" racketeering network headed by global criminal masterminds who toil in service of a clear, common goal. In al Qaeda's own words: "To kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."
More important: Cantor is suing Saudi Arabia itself along with dozens of prominent Saudi charities, banks and bankers. The complaint is thus a concise tutorial on Saudi finance.
Prior to 9/11, al Qaeda needed $50 million a year to plan and execute terrorist activities. But the 9/11 Commission has noted that bin Laden likely did not endow al Qaeda from a massive personal fortune. Instead, Cantor alleges, al Qaeda relied on a central tenet of Islamic law to underwrite its activities: Zakat.
Cantor's brief explains the principle of compulsory Zakat, or charitable "almsgiving," through which Muslims aid the poor and dispossessed. In Saudi Arabia, Zakat payments by individuals and corporations are collected and distributed by the government.
Cantor alleges that the Saudi monarchy, via three powerful Saudi princes Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs head Prince Sultan, Interior Minister Prince Naif and High Commissioner for Relief Prince Salman transferred Zakat funds to state-sanctioned terrorist sponsors like the Islamic International Relief Organization (founded by bin Laden's brother-in-law), the Muslim World League and the Mercy International Relief Agency.
The three princes engaged in a pattern of racketeering that resulted in "an uninterrupted flow of financial and material support" to al Qaeda, the suit alleges - enabling al Qaeda to "plan, orchestrate and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks."This even after then-President Bill Clinton and European diplomats had repeatedly warned the Saudi government throughout the 1990s that Saudi charities were funding terrorist activities across the globe.
But the Cantor suit goes much further: It slices at the core of Saudi finance, targeting Saudi Arabia's central bank and the kingdom's commercial and investment banks and bankers.
The suit alleges that Central Bank SAMA and the biggest Saudi banks like National Commercial Bank (NCB) and al-Baraka Bancorp aided al Qaeda. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia oversaw the operations of the Saudi-based banking and financial defendants . . . with the full knowledge and awareness that they were providing ongoing financial and material support to al-Qaeda," Cantor alleges.
Specifically: The suit alleges that NCB supported al Qaeda and Cantor has submitted congressional testimony by a former CIA operative that there is "little doubt that a financial conduit to bin Laden was handled through the National Commercial Bank."
The suit further alleges that Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former NCB president, was an al Qaeda "Golden Chain" donor who funnelled up to $100 million to al Qaeda accounts in the 1990s. While Mahfouz was bank president in 1998, for example, the US government complained to Saudi Arabia that the bank was funding terrorist activities in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
The suit also alleges that the founder of the Jeddah-based Dallah al-Baraka financial conglomerate, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, was another Golden Chain donor.
The suit alleges further that the founder of a third "legitimate" Mideast financial network, al-Barakaat Exchange's Shaykh Ahmed Nur Jimale, had close ties with bin Laden and that al Qaeda funnelled up to $20 million a year through that bank.
If Cantor gets its jury trial in Manhattan, it will be interesting to see if those who run Saudi Arabia's leading banks will come and defend themselves, and the actions of their current and former employees or if they will forfeit the suit.
Iraq's Saddam was content to live under permanent U.N. sanctions but Saudi financiers want to live half in our world and half in their own. An Al-Baraka subsidiary controls a bank in Chicago, for example. Would the banks fight Cantor to preserve their assets and contacts here or will they recede further into the Arabian world?
Another point: Cantor's suit targets Saudis but the outcome will have implications for banks worldwide.
The suit is an attempt to exact civil penalties for alleged violations of pre-9/11 U.S. laws.
Cantor alleges, in part, that the defendants aided a violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act on US soil: 9/11. But since 9/11, Congress has passed the Patriot Act which mandates that American banks follow strict new safeguards to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
Those banks and international banks who do business here would view a Cantor victory as a warning that they, too, could be held liable for future terrorist acts if they engage in nefarious, or even simply negligent, banking practices.
NATO AIR said:wow that's fantastic. that is a hell of a good effort and investigation. why the **** can't the FBI/justice dept. do something like this and not screw it up??
NATO AIR said:true i suppose. the FBI/justice dept. is still a joke right now though.
on the other hand, bin laden and the saudi gov't are about to learn the greatest lesson of all: payback is a motha
Kathianne said:Since 9/11, the FBI has made significant changes in dealing with local police in areas-this I KNOW for a fact, not from newspapers and such. In Chicago area alone, they have stopped multiple attempts, that will not be reported on, which may well be another mistake.
Kathianne said:Attacks on different facilities.
NATO AIR said:wow that's fantastic. that is a hell of a good effort and investigation. why the **** can't the FBI/justice dept. do something like this and not screw it up??
onedomino said:Why are attempted attacks not reported? The Sun and Tribune are not particularly shy.
Kathianne said:Preemption and working with local authorities. Problem here, when something is preempted, no crime has been committed. Ala Padilla, and 'enemy combatants.' There is no reason for the press to cover, but more importantly, the police entities seem to believe they are better off keeping it quiet, I'm sure for prevention of copycats, keeping the enemy from knowing how they have been found out, and to keep the public from becoming more afraid.
onedomino said:Why are attempted attacks not reported? The Sun and Tribune are not particularly shy.
NATO AIR said:that is true. in addition, there is a culture of caution in the FBI that has led them to make many a blown call. instead of innovation and openness, they became the perfect bueraucrats.
NATO AIR said:here's my thing on the FBI... its poorly led, filled with too many agents who are more interested in politics and Political correctness than getting the job done right. this is not only 9/11, but the HUGE majority of mistakes the FBI has made over the past 40 years. basically, since the Kennedy adminstration, they've been sucking. considering all the havoc they caused because of Hoover's psychosis, its amazing they have sunk to even lower levels since then.
The CIA... same thing, sure they might get some things right, but there's too many people there who can't follow leads or clues or even common sense. the leadership has been poor too, they got a lot in afghanistan right but before and after then its been one unforgiveable failure after another.
the treasury dept- i'm sorry to hit the FBI/justice dept. over the cantor suit, that was my fault. the tracking of terrorist finances lies with the treasury dept. and while they've had some successes, they also have failed to go to the lengths of Cantor Fitzgerald, and that should have been their modus operandi from day one after 9/11.
our government is filled with shitty mid and senior level leaders, and its a shame that so many of them will keep their jobs and continue to ruin our government from the inside.
don't even get me started on the state and defense depts.
NATO AIR said:here's my thing on the FBI... its poorly led, filled with too many agents who are more interested in politics and Political correctness than getting the job done right. this is not only 9/11, but the HUGE majority of mistakes the FBI has made over the past 40 years. basically, since the Kennedy adminstration, they've been sucking. considering all the havoc they caused because of Hoover's psychosis, its amazing they have sunk to even lower levels since then.
The CIA... same thing, sure they might get some things right, but there's too many people there who can't follow leads or clues or even common sense. the leadership has been poor too, they got a lot in afghanistan right but before and after then its been one unforgiveable failure after another.
the treasury dept- i'm sorry to hit the FBI/justice dept. over the cantor suit, that was my fault. the tracking of terrorist finances lies with the treasury dept. and while they've had some successes, they also have failed to go to the lengths of Cantor Fitzgerald, and that should have been their modus operandi from day one after 9/11.
our government is filled with shitty mid and senior level leaders, and its a shame that so many of them will keep their jobs and continue to ruin our government from the inside.
don't even get me started on the state and defense depts.
