Israel Matzav: Going after banks to stop terror funding

Monday, September 12, 2011

Going after banks to stop terror funding

Here's an interesting story about how terror victims from all over the world have been using US courts to pursue the banks that fund terror.

Arab Bank, which is headquartered in Amman, is accused of aiding and abetting terrorist acts by providing extensive banking services for several organizations that gave money to suicide bombers’ families.

Among those organizations is the Saudi Committee, which is alleged to have routed over $100 million raised in a Saudi-government-supported campaign to Palestinian terror groups.

According to Prof. Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on Islamic movements who has been involved in 18 of the terror-funding lawsuits, Arab Bank acted as a “pipeline” that channeled funds to Gaza bank accounts.

“Arab Bank transferred the money to the families of Hamas ‘martyrs’ killed in the second intifada,” said Paz.

According to the Arab Bank complaint, the Saudi Committee paid money into an Arab Bank account opened for the family of Izz Ad-din Shuhail Ahmad al-Masri, the Hamas suicide bomber who murdered 15 people and wounded 130 in the 2001 Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem.

Arab Bank is also alleged to have set up an administrative process whereby the relatives of suicide bombers had to receive official certification of their deceased family member’s “martyr” status before receiving funds.

According to attorney Richard D. Heideman – whose Washington firm Heideman Nudelman and Kalik, PC, represents American terror victims in several civil actions – although Arab Bank filed a motion to dismiss the suit in the US District Court of New York, the judge overruled that in a published opinion and has allowed the case to proceed. It is expected to go to trial.

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Although Arab Bank denies knowingly providing support to terrorist activity, it has frozen the accounts of the Saudi Committee.

“Arab Bank is in a panic,” Paz added. “It is a very large private bank in the Arab world, and it is a very important basis of the Jordanian economy. It even had relations with the Bank of Israel. If Arab Bank collapses, it will hurt Jordan and the West Bank.”

According to Paz, the Arab Bank lawsuit has also been effective in impacting other governments in other Gulf States.

“Governments like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states were afraid to be harmed economically and financially,” he said. “And also, of course, they are linked economically and financially to the USA.”

As far as the banks themselves are concerned, Paz said the lawsuits were forcing them to look more carefully at who their clients were.

“The problem is to prove the bank’s involvement in the transfers,” he added. “In many cases the banks are just passive.”

THE GLOBAL nature of banking operations means that even non-US banks must face the consequences of transferring funds to terror groups or to NGOs connected with them.

Several more Western banks are also facing terror-funding lawsuits.