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Interesting story...

A fugitive in Brazil, a mystery in Lebanon
By ERIK SCHECHTER

This was not the way Rana Qoleilat thought things would end. In mid-March, police arrested the 39-year-old Lebanese bank executive at her hotel room in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Rather than going gracefully to jail, Qoleilat offered local officers a $200,000 bribe to release her; three days later, she attempted suicide by cutting her wrists with a tiny blade from an eyeliner sharpener.

Qoleilat once lived the high life back in Lebanon. According to the US News and World Report, she jetted around in her own private plane, had servants and a personal hairdresser and lived in a three-story penthouse - all while claiming to make only $1,000 a month. She even bought a $10 million villa from the son-in-law of Lebanese president Emile Lahoud.

But those care-free days came to an end three years ago when al-Madina Bank, the institution for which Qoleilat worked, came up $1.2 billion short. The resulting scandal landed her in jail for embezzlement, but she only spent a few months there, making bail and then fleeing the country just two months before the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, a key opponent of the Syrians.

To say that the fugitive banker is politically connected is an understatement. Qoleilat moved money for Syrian intelligence officials and Hizbullah, and during the Syrian occupation, the Lebanese government squelched reporting on the al-Madina case. Even now, there's reluctance to open that Pandora's Box, though some of the stolen funds may have financed the Hariri murder.

The bank scandal
Before the 1975-1990 civil war, Lebanon was the financial capital of the Middle East, but warring sectarian militias (as well as Syrian, Palestinian and Israeli forces) wrecked the banking industry, along with much of the economy. Now, after years of reconstruction, the country's banking sector is among the largest in the world, with more than 70 private banks holding deposits in excess of $39 billion.

The al-Madina Bank opened in 1982, in the midst of the war, and was bought two years later by a pair of wealthy Druse brothers from the town of Baakline. In the early 1990s, Rana Qoleilat came to work as a clerk for Adnan and Ibrahim Abu Ayash, and after 12 years at the bank, she made executive. Billions of dollars in Russian mafia, Iraqi regime and Saudi charity money washed through the trio's hands.

Who would notice if a few million here or there went missing? However, a run on the bank in early 2003 revealed that $1.2 billion was gone. The Central Bank of Lebanon first froze the accounts of Qoleilat and the Abu Ayash brothers, then mysteriously backed away. The government even intimidated journalists covering the story.

"Al-Madina was one of the rackets that flourished in Lebanon helping Syrian intelligence officers and officials and their Lebanese allies enrich themselves," explains a Beirut-based reporter.

John Walzer agrees.

"When you see the size of the embezzlement, the people [allegedly] involved, and then the inaction [on the part of the government], you have to surmise that they don't want anyone want to look into it," says the former FBI agent and lead investigator for Fortress Global Investigations, who examined the case.

In July 2004, the Central Bank of Lebanon appointed an administrator to run al-Madina, but the authorities are still not releasing bank details to the public. Still, Fortress Global Investigations knows of money transfers to General Rustom Ghazali, who was the Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, to then-Syrian defense minister Mustapha Tlass and to Hizbullah.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498768830&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Russia Tells Sweden to Release Russian Scientist Held on Espionage Charges
Created: 31.03.2006 17:01 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:01 MSK, 15 hours 33 minutes ago

MosNews

Russia demands the “immediate and unconditional release of scientist Andrei Zamyatnin,” arrested in Sweden suspicion of espionage, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin told the ITAR-TASS news agency Friday.

“The persistent lack of humane action on the part of the Swedish authorities, which is undermining relations between the two countries and arousing the indignation of the Russian public, is a cause for extreme concern,” he said. “Such a situation hardly fits the image of Sweden which exists in Russian public opinion,” Kamynin said.

He also said that the Russian embassy in Stockholm was “maintaining regular contact with the detained Russian national and doing its best to help him deal with the injustice being committed against him”.

Earlier this month, the Foreign Ministry called on the Swedish Ambassador to Russia Johan Molander to request Zamyatnin’s release.

Sources in the Swedish Foreign Ministry said shortly after his arrest that the Russian national was detained on suspicion of espionage, on February 15 in Uppsala, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of Stockholm, where he worked as a visiting researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The Swedish investigators claimed that the researcher had been engaged in “active undermining work” for about a year and “had undermined the country’s security by his criminal activities”. Officials declined to say what kind of information Zamyatnin was selling. Neither did they disclose what country he was accused of working for.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/31/zamyatninstatement.shtml