A Secret Trip to Saudi Arabia, and a Major Charity Bust

So, what was the secret trip that Juan Zarate of Treasury and NSC honcho Fran Townsend took to Saudi Arabia last month, apparently with a strongly-worded letter forcefully requesting that the royal family take action against the powerful al Rajhi Banking and Investment Corp.? The news was first reported in a tiny squib in the Wall Street Journal, but no one else seems to have picked up on it. Apparently, the high-level delegation threatened to put the al Rajhi company on the dirty bank list reserved for those who launder money and aid organized crime, as well as terrorists, unless it cleaned up its banking practices. Al Rajhi is suing the Journal and has threatened law suits against other publications who have pointed out that the wealthy and powerful family has ties to the Safa Network in Northern Virginia under investigation for terrorist financing, and was on the "Golden Chain" list of major donors to al Qaeda discovered in Bosnia. No one wants to talk about the visit now, or what the Saudis said in response. A bank spokesman told the Journal that he "is not aware o fany investigation by U.S. or Saudi authorities." To hear U.S. officials talk, neither are they.

In another strange twist, Treasury Secretary Snow actually GAVE BACK $25 million that the House had appropriated for FinCEN, the small unit that is supposed to be actively engaged in policing terror financing. Rep. Sue Kelly (R-NY) and others had pushed for the money to help FinCEN upgrade computers, hire more analysts and generally be more effective in its work. But a nasty fight broke out among Republicans over the money, and Snow ended up giving it back, saying in a letter that current funding levels for FinCEN "are appropriate." For a group that is supposed to be getting serious about these issues, it is truely one of the oddest decisions in recent memory. Since the loss of Green Quest, Treasury has no enforcement arm. FinCEN is the closest thing it has to an investigative unit, but it is understaffed and geared toward looking at the traditional financial crimes of drug money laundering and bank fraud. Like much of the rest of government, it is sorely lacking in basic technology. The $25 million could have been spent on that alone. Meanwhile, despite the millions it NEVER offers to return, the FBI remains, basically, stuck in the 1980s in terms of technology. How this is possible, three years after 9-11, is truely a mystery. Yet offices here in Washington, D.C. still rely on a single dial-up modem for accessing the internet. DSL is still in the distant future. So they can't monitor the web, they can't communicate with each other, and have to take turns on a modem that was outdated several years ago.

Finally, Treasury desingated the Islamic Africa Relief Agency (IARA), along with five senior officials, as terrorist financiers, alleging direct support for al Qaeda, Hamas and other organizations. IARA is particularly interesting because it operates out of Sudan, and was closely affiliated with Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the forerunner of al Qaeda. The group has been active in Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa as part of a network of Islamic NGOs and charities that have helped spread a militant brand of Islam in a region where that religion has traditionally been extremely tolerant. And where al Qaeda bought diamonds. The full text of the Treasury statement can be found here.

Like most of the designated Islamic charities, this one established it U.S. base in quiet. out of the way Columbia, Missouri. And like most of the others, it had drawn the attention, but not the action, of federal authorities for years. In this case, since 1999. U.S. federal agents, led by the FBI, moved in yesterday and carted off hard drives, documents and anything else they could get their hands on. One can only hope that, unlike the Northern Virginia Safa case, where translation has been horrendously slow and bureaucratic infighting has made the case a difficult one to advance, this one runs more smoothly.