Arab Bank reaches settlement with terror victims
The Jordan-based Arab Bank reached a settlement on Friday with the families of the
victims of some of the 'Palestinian' terror attacks it helped finance.
The settlement was confirmed on Friday by Michael Elsner, a lawyer
for the plaintiffs, and a spokesman for Arab Bank. The terms were not
disclosed.
Elsner said the framework of the deal would be finalised over the next few months.
A trial had been scheduled to start on Monday to begin determining
how much the bank would have to pay the victims and their families.
The Jordan-based multinational lender was found liable by a US jury
in September 2014 for financing terrorism by transferring funds for
members of Hamas.
Approximately 500 US citizens had sued Arab Bank under the US
Anti-Terrorism Act, which permits US citizens to pursue claims arising
from international terrorism.
The plaintiffs included both victims of attacks carried out by Hamas and other groups, as well as family members of the victims.
At trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Arab Bank knowingly
maintained accounts for Hamas operatives and facilitated payments to
families of suicide bombers and those imprisoned or injured during a
Palestinian uprising beginning in 2000.
Arab Bank argued that it had followed proper screening procedures to
checked accounts and transactions against lists of designated terrorist
organisations.
Several other banks are facing similar claims in US courts under the
Anti-Terrorism Act, including Bank of China, Credit Lyonnais, HSBC and
Royal Bank of Scotland, among others.
Hope the rest of them all have to pay too.
JTA adds:
The settlement, whose details were not disclosed, comes days before
the trial was set to enter its damages phase in federal court in
Brooklyn, according to the Associated Press.
In the trial, 300 victims of terrorism during the Second Intifada in
the early 2000s sued the bank, which was accused of helping Hamas
create a “death and dismemberment benefit plan” for dead terrorists. The
suit was first filed in 2004.
According to AP, the case was the first time a bank had been tried
under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows victims of attacks by United
States-designated terrorist organizations to seek damages.
'Death and dismemberment benefit plan.' Never heard that one before.
Labels: Arab Bank, Bank of China, financing terror, Hamas, HSBC, Islamic Jihad, suicide bombing, terror victim suits in US
Breaking: Arab Bank found guilty of terror funding
Great news coming out of New York: The Arab Bank has been
found guilty of terror funding.
A U.S. jury said
on Monday Arab Bank Plc provided material support to Hamas, and must
therefore compensate the victims of two dozen attacks the Islamic
militant group allegedly carried out in Israel and the Palestinian
territories.
Jurors needed less than two
days to deliberate, following a six-week trial in Brooklyn federal court
that lawyers described as the first terrorism financing civil case to
reach trial in the United States.
Nearly
300 Americans who were either victims or related to victims of the
attacks had sued Arab Bank in 2004, accusing it of violating the
Anti-Terrorism Act, which lets victims of U.S.-designated foreign
terrorist organizations seek damages. A trial on damages will be
scheduled for a later date.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab Bank, terror funding, terror victim suits in US, terror victims
PA finance minister paid thousands to designated terrorist while working at Arab Bank
Under cross-examination in the Arab Bank terror financing trial in New York, 'Palestinian Authority Finance Minister' Shukri Bishara, the former chief executive officer of the Arab Bank, has admitted that he
knowingly paid thousands of dollars to designated Hamas terrorist Osama Hamdan while employed by the bank.
Under cross examination by counsel for the plaintiffs Mark Werbner, Bishara’s tone changed from gregarious to acrimonious. A heated exchange took place when Werbner asserted that Bishara had released funds from a bank account belonging to senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan.
“You gave this terrorist $8,000, the man who moves weapons and explosives,” Werbner stated. “You had no other choice than to give this terrorist $8,000?” “My concern was to get rid of the account,” Bishara explained, having admitted he knew Hamdan was on the US terrorist blacklist at the time. “There was simply no way” to close the account without a court order or Hamdan being designated a terrorist by Lebanon, he said.
Defense lawyers say the so-called “Beirut account” was first brought to the bank’s attention in 2004 by this lawsuit. After waiting five or six months to find another solution, Bishara said, the Arab Bank ultimately cut a check to Hamdan and closed the account.
This fund transfer has burdened the bank’s main defense, which was that most transfers were made to those who were not on any US watch list at the time.
Of course there was 'another solution.' They could have gotten the court order. Or they could have held the money.
Here's hoping that Arab Bank is barred from using the US banking system. Other countries' banks have been threatened for far less harmful actions.
Labels: Arab Bank, designated terror organization, Hamas, Osama Hamdan, terror funding
Going after Arab Bank in New York
Here's a
very lengthy post about a lawyer's efforts to go after the New York branch of Jordan's Arab Bank for financing terrorism. Here's the key passage:
What Osen found particularly galling was that much of the money that
flowed to these families and groups passed through New York, where the
Arab Bank’s dollar-denominated transactions were cleared. It appeared
Arab Bank was facilitating massive amounts of terror financing from
Madison Avenue, right under the noses of federal regulators and the US
government.
Shortly after the bombing of bus no. 6 a representative from “The
Organization of Martyr Families” telephoned Bassam Takruri’s parents. He
told Takruri’s mother to open an account at the Arab Bank so the family
could receive its reward. Soon after the account was open, the first
$200 arrived by direct transfer, a process repeated every month for a
year. When, a few weeks after the attack, Israeli bulldozers razed the
family’s home to the ground, they moved into an apartment paid for by
the group, a portrait of their martyr son hanging over the sofa.
It never occurred to Takruri’s father not to accept the funds or turn down the offer of a place to live.
“We needed the money,” he told Der Spiegel. “We suddenly no longer had a house.”
Now that Osen understood how the money flowed, he needed a theory of
liability that would enable him to bring suit against the bank. It
didn’t take him long to settle on the US Anti-terrorism Act,
which Congress passed into law shortly after the events of September
11, 2001. It made it possible for the families or heirs of an American
injured by an act of terrorism to sue in any appropriate district court
of the United States and recover “threefold the damages he or she
sustains and the cost of the suit, including attorney’s fees.” One key
aspect of the Act deals with terror financing. Osen believed that the
bank violated the law by soliciting, collecting, transmitting,
disbursing, and providing the financial resources that allowed Hamas and
its affiliated organizations to flourish and engage in a campaign of
terror.
In the past, American courts awarded billions of dollars in damages
against Iran for sponsoring terrorist groups, but victims have had
difficulty collecting because the US State and Justice departments
resisted seizing foreign government assets. Because of a lack of
diplomatic relations, Iran had few assets in America, and what it had
were embassies and the like — nothing that could be seized. Osen was
sure a judgment against a foreign bank, especially one with assets in
the United States, would reap different results. You couldn’t alter the
nation of Iran’s behavior by suing it, but you could deter commercial
entities from aiding terrorism by holding them accountable and hitting
them on their bottom lines.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab Bank, financing terror, terror victim suits in US, terror victims
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.
...
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.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab Bank, terror funding, terror victim suits in US
