Terrorism Money Passed Through NY Banks, Expert Testifies

By LOVASHNI KHALIKAPRASAD

An expert witness testified on Tuesday that money transfers used ultimately to fund terrorist activities might have passed through such big New York banks as  JP Morgan Chase and Citibank that would have been unaware of this use because of the complexity of the system.

The testimony emerged in the unprecedented civil lawsuit against Arab Bank of Amman, Jordan, accused in Brooklyn Federal Court of helping Hamas conduct attacks on Israel.

“New York is a money center,” said the witness, Anne Vitale, President of Vital AML Consultant, Inc., adding that very large sums would not be subject to special scrutiny unless the banks were on a federal blacklist of suspicious financial houses.

After the homeland attacks of 2001, air jordan 10 U.S. banking regulations were strengthened to weed out suspicious transfers but international standards were not as rigorous, creating a sieve for terrorism funding.

Arab Bank is one of the largest in the Middle East with branches in about 30 countries.

According to the lawsuit, the defendants were aware that the bank provided services for 49 Hamas leaders. Approximately, $2.9 million was wired to Hamas leaders, the lawsuit showed.

 

Earlier in the trial Brian Billard, an employee of the bank’s New York office testified that the transactions that passed through the bank were screened against the government’s Office of Foreign Asset Control list (OFAC.) Yet, the money slipped through the OFAC screen at other banks also and ended up in the account of terrorist organizations.

 

Similarly, Vitale explained that banks could not tell if someone is engaging in terrorism if they are not on the OFAC list.

 

Some 297 plaintiffs, alleging to be victims of Hamas suicide bombers, are suing the bank in this unusual case.