AP: Terror financing fines down post 9/11

[Judi Lynn]

Sunday, November 7, 2004 · Last updated 9:24 a.m. PT

AP: Terror financing fines down post 9/11

By MATT KELLEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.

The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records.

After the attacks, Bush grouped North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq together as an "axis of evil" countries with both weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorists.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman said that despite the smaller average fines, the administration was doing a good job of enforcing economic penalties against nations considered sponsors of terrorism. Molly Millerwise said the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, "is committed to ensuring that U.S. entities abide by U.S. sanction laws. We are not in the business of making money."
(snip/...)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Terror%20Financing

[leesa]

1. Well, DUH, what a surprise...since Cheney is heavily into financing

terrorism.

[lanparty]

2. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait ...

THAT is where the funding is coming from. We are financing terrorists with our automobile usage. And these countries are our ALLIES!!!!

We are fighting terrorist with our left hand and funding them with our left!!! We have also re-opened the poppy fields of Afghanistan which the Taliban had previously shut down!!!!

It seems more and more to me like the 9/11 attack was engineered as a method of ridding Taliban interference with the Caspian sea pipeline and providing an excuse to colonize the oilfields of Iraq!!! The taliban "had our backs" in the drug war. All we needed to do was drop special forces in to wipe out the terrorist training camps on a regular basis!!!

The truth is that you can run a terrorist camp pretty much anywhere. They're effectively two week retreats. Hell the Aryan Nation runs camps that substanitivly identical in the depths of the south!!! The difference is they're training to kill "coloreds, jews and catholics" rather than "good white protestant christians"!!!

Nope, it REALLY makes you wonder when the Bush family has such close ties to the Bin Ladins. And you KNOW that they are still protecting their clan memeber. The middle east is dominated by tribal societies. THAT is what they do. They stick to their own!!!

[Keirsey]

3. calling Senators Kerry and Waxman

Follow the money.


http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/

[Shallah Kali]

4. Remember they have 4 guys on bin laden and hussien and 21 on castro

Four Treasury agents track bin Laden and Saddam money, while 21 work Castro
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ff=/news/archive/2004/04/29/national1842EDT0787.DTL


The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show.

In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations.

In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro's regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.