[Scott from the Left Coast]

Glad to hear the Swiss have repented. Money is an easy way to track someone, as long as the trackers are very diligent. If this thing is a wire, I'd think the perp would be wise to have something set up, in advance, so that if would be automatically forwarded to, as GovShrinker says, a country that wouldn't give us the time of day.

Even then, we'd know where it went, pretty fast. And the perp(s) would need the complete cooperation of that second country. If we knew where it went, we'd know a whole lot more about this (these) person (people) than we do (at least publicly) now.

[GovernmentShrinker]

The Swiss did not repent; they succumbed to harsh coercion. Something about the European Union forbidding any of its member countries to engage in financial transactions with Swiss banks if they didn't reform their ways.

[txhurl]

a country that wouldn't give us the time of day.

Like LurkerX said, there's no guarantee the shootings will stop, so there's no incentive to pay, unless they have some humongous legitimate threat on the table.

This money part blows apart much of my model. It's just so unprofessional, even for a french guy.

Unless it's a communication to Hussein or somebody else somewhere else to pay up.