Posted on 12/02/2001 2:06:59 PM PST by Shermy
The US is planning to confront Saudi Arabia with evidence that funds from the country are flowing to terrorist organisations.
Despite pressure from the US, the Saudi Government is believed to have done little to stanch the flow of funds to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Washington has till now not presented evidence to merit a crackdown but US diplomat Bill Burns would soon go to Saudi Arabia taking with him intelligence data linking some of the kingdom's leading money-men and charities to Osama bin Laden.
The data will include sensitive intercepts, human intelligence and wire transfers to back up American demands that Saudis freeze assets of suspected bin Laden financiers.
One Saudi in Burns' list cited by the Time magazine is wealthy businessman Yasin al-Qadi, who is alleged to have raised millions of dollars for a charity named by the US as a possible bin Laden front.
Al-Wadi has repeatedly protested his innocence and is challenging a freeze on his assets in a court in Britain. However, the US last week shipped to London a hefty package of intelligence data to strengthen the British case, American sources said.
Al-Qadi says his charity Blessed Relief has long been dormant, a contention echoed by a senior Saudi official. But the US sources say that intelligence shows movements of people, money and weapons to Muslim fighters in Bosnia financed by the charity as recently as 1999.
Saudis Balk at US Request to Freeze Bank Accounts [Nov. 27 NY Times (12 Posts)
Report: Turkey Freezes Saudi's Assets [Nov. 24 AP--mentions Mr. al-Qadi (5 posts)]
Facing the truth about the Saudis [Nov. 17 Boston Globe 112 posts]
Michelle Malkin
Banking on American stupidity
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- SOME American banks just don't get it. Here we are, at war with deadly foreign terrorists who exploited our lax immigration policies, and what are these U.S. financial institutions doing? Making it easier for illegal immigrants to do business inside our borders.
Earlier this month, California-based banking giant Wells Fargo proudly publicized its plan to loosen identification guidelines for Mexican customers who want to open American checking or savings accounts. Banks usually require foreign customers to show passports as a primary form of ID, with credit cards and Social Security numbers or federal taxpayer ID numbers as backup documents. But now, as a result of heavy lobbying from the Mexican government and Hispanic-American activists, Wells Fargo will accept an ID card issued by Mexican consulate offices known as "matricula consular."
Any Mexican national living abroad (read: any illegal Mexican immigrant living in the U.S.) can get the card by simply supplying proof of Mexican citizenship, such as a birth certificate or voting card. No other secondary ID is needed if a Wells Fargo customer signs a residency form from the Internal Revenue Service - which emphasizes that it will not share the information with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Not that clueless INS officials, who let Sept. 11 hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta and his visa-overstaying alien conspirators slip through their fingers, would do anything with the information, anyway. Tony Lew, an INS spokesman in Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times that the agency has no problem with Wells Fargo's new policy. "Our priorities are to go after illegal immigrants involved in committing crime," he said. "If they are law-abiding citizens, we don't have the resources to go looking for them."
Memo to the INS: Illegal aliens are, by definition, law-breaking criminals. Good grief. Will the INS ever learn? It's exactly this deaf, blind, and dumb culture toward illegal aliens that al Qaeda terrorists - several of whom worked with Hispanic immigration scam artists to obtain fake documents -- used to their bloody advantage.
Backed by the feds, bank officials eager to cash in on the huge illegal alien market -- and score a few P.C. brownie points - are pulling out all the stops to lower the bar for "undocumented" Mexican customers. "We welcome you to come to one of our branches," Wells Fargo Bank vice president John Murillo crowed at a Spanish-language news conference, "where we won't question your legal status."
Here are more bank officials to put that criminal-friendly welcome message in neon lights: "Wells Fargo does not focus at all on the legal status of our customers," California marketing manager Gari Helms told the Los Angeles Times. "Whether someone is legal or illegal is not for us to determine," Alice Perez, Hispanic marketing manager for US Bancorp, told the Chicago Daily Herald.
US Bancorp moved quickly to accept Mexican IDs following Wells Fargo's announcement. Also accepting the Mexican consular cards: Firstar banks, Harris Bank, Union Bank, and U.S. branches of the Puerto Rico-based Banco Popular. The American Banker newspaper reports that Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc. is "actively looking into" loosening its ID policy for Mexicans.
Also following Wells Fargo's lead: local governments in California, such as Orange County and San Francisco, which will now accept the consular cards as identification so that illegal aliens jailed for "minor offenses" will not be deported.
And Mexico is only the first step. Wells Fargo has said it is open to accepting similar cards issued by other governments.
Once again, the convenience and comfort of illegal aliens overrides the safety and security of American citizens. You think Osama bin Laden and his America-hating followers around the world won't find a way to exploit this new brainless program, too? You can bank on it
Like Bush or Cheney or Crown Prince Abdullah is listening to those twerps.
What does this mean?
Now we all know you represent the little Pampered Prince here, but you don't speak for Bush and Cheney.
If not, read how Abdulaziz Ibn Saud came boiling out of exile in Kuwait at the ripe age of 22 with 20 men and took Riyadh back in 1902.
My I am so impressed. Really.
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