Cantor Fitzgerald Sues Saudis for Losses

[Snazzy]

Cantor Fitzgerald Sues Saudis for Losses

1 hour, 39 minutes ago Add Business - AP to My Yahoo!


By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, a bond trading firm that lost two-thirds of its workers in the World Trade Center attack, has sued Saudi Arabia for allegedly supporting al-Qaida prior to the Sept. 11 attack through financing, safe houses, weapons and money laundering.

The company, in a $7 billion lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and made public Friday, also named dozens of other defendants, including numerous banks and Islamic charities, in a bid to hold them accountable for its losses in the terrorism attack.

A message for comment left with the Saudi Arabia embassy in Washington was not immediately returned.

...

The Cantor Fitzgerald lawsuit took particular aim at Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom "knew and intended that these Saudi-based charity and relief organization defendants would provide financial and material support and substantial assistance to al-Qaida."

....

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040903/ap_on_bi_ge/cantor_fitzgerald_1

[seemslikeadream]

1. Terrorist finance crackdown remains strong

UPI - Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Date: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 5:46:27 PM EST By SHIHOKO GOTO, UPI Senior Business Correspondent


Moreover, the Department of Justice's decision to press criminal charges last week against Riggs Bank, one of Washington's most established financial institutions, has demonstrated just how far the government is prepared to crack down on terrorist financing and dubious financial transactions in general. In fact, stopping the flow of money to terrorist groups has been one major success for the administration, as agencies continue to work closely and governments remain united in a common objective.


Granted, it is not easy to grasp just how much money flows into one terrorist group. But at the same time, the 9/11 Commission pointed out that two major funding sources to date have been Islamic charities and informal value transfer systems, such as hawalas, which have come under close scrutiny and shut down if found to have harbored illegal activities.



Indeed, Treasury announced Tuesday that it designated First Merchant Bank of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Infobank of Belarus as "corrupt financial institutions."

Moreover, potential targets of government investigations are not just limited to Islamic groups. With its headquarters based across from the White House, Riggs Bank has been the banker to presidents since the Civil War, and it has been the favored bank for ambassadors and the very wealthy in the Washington area due to its exclusive private banking division.



In particular, investigators will be probing into the bank's relations with the Saudi royal family and the possibility of the bank facilitating financial flows to Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Alimhdhar, who were two of the hijackers on board the flight that crashed into the Pentagon.
more
http://menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=CqsQ9qeidDx...

Terrorist finance crackdown remains strong
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040824-012958-6229r.htm

:hi:

[Snazzy]

3. Help me, wonga

Help me, wonga
Rod Liddle says that Mark Thatcher’s latest difficulties reveal an extraordinary, even hilarious, degree of corruption and humbug in the West

This is a great story. It manages to encompass, somewhere along the line, all of the worst people in the world — or nearly all. There’s a venal, vicious and incompetent African dictator, for a start. And then there’s Mark Thatcher, Jeffrey Archer and a bunch of greedy, public-school-educated English mercenaries — or ‘adventurers’ as they prefer to be called. The Bush family is in there, right up to its collective neck, and so are multinational oil companies, Robert Mugabe, General Pinochet, the Saudis, US banks and the Spanish government. There’s even room for a delightful cameo appearance from Osama bin Laden and those 9/11 hijackers. Hell, what more could you want? I’m half surprised that Hitler, Graham Norton and Janet Street-Porter aren’t somehow implicated.

....

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spectator/spec372.html

[seemslikeadream]

7. Hitler, Graham Norton and Janet Street-Porter?

[Snazzy]

4. They think it's a joke: Riggs Affair Sparks 'Suspicious Activity' Alert on

Bob Dole!

Riggs Affair Sparks 'Suspicious Activity' Alert on Dole

Thursday September 2, 11:49 PM EDT


WASHINGTON -- The Riggs National Bank scandal has led to unexpected fallout, including "suspicious activity reports" on former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.

As often as once a week, Mr. Dole's assistant walks around the corner from his Pennsylvania Avenue office in Washington to a branch of Riggs Bank, where she withdraws as much as $8,000 in cash. For walking-around money, Mr. Dole keeps a wad of $100 bills in the breast pocket of his shirt. "I probably use a credit card four or five times a year," Mr. Dole confesses. "I don't even have a wallet."

Mr. Dole's affinity for cash was of no concern to anyone until recently, when federal regulators pawing through the books of scandal-tarred Riggs spotted the large withdrawals and called them to the attention of management. In short order, the bank filed "suspicious activity reports" on Mr. Dole and another prominent Washington figure, Mr. Carlucci, questioning whether the two men might have violated federal laws against money laundering.

The two aren't actually suspected by Riggs of wrongdoing, people familiar with the filings say. But the bank, a unit of Riggs National Corp. (RIGS), felt it had no choice but to file these reports because of the strict wording of the Bank Secrecy Act.

....

http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=dji-00094720040902&feed=dji&date=20040902&cat=INDUSTRY

[yardwork]

6. It's interesting that Dole walks around with all that cash.

I wonder who he gives it too?

I'm glad that the Saudis are being sued. Apparently money is the only thing that these totalitarian governments (like ours and Saudi Arabia's) care about. So we'll stick it to them on the money front.

[antigop]

11. Um, would that be THE Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group?

>>The Riggs National Bank scandal has led to unexpected fallout, including "suspicious activity reports" on former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.
>>

[Snazzy]

5. You probably have a thread, but... Pinochet

Posted on Thu, Sep. 02, 2004

Chilean dictator faces tax-evasion probe

By KEVIN G. HALL

Knight Ridder Newspapers

SANTIAGO, Chile - Investigative Judge Sergio Munoz, who's looking into sources of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet's millions, may well determine whether one of Latin America's once most feared dictators dies a convict.

...

Since mid-July, he's been following up on a U.S. Senate report alleging that Pinochet, now 88, kept $4 million to $8 million in Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., much of which Senate investigators think was laundered money. Pinochet described it as "savings from a lifetime of work."

...

The impact reflects the fact that Chile is a conservative nation, by far the most Swiss country in South America, whose citizens pride themselves on their probity. Many believed that Pinochet might have been a ruthless dictator but at least he wasn't a thief.

Now detractors claim that his secret U.S. bank accounts give credibility to claims that he took bribes from arms dealers and, possibly, siphoned off money from military accounts that are funded by a share of state copper sales and thus are off limits to modern presidents and lawmakers. Pinochet ruled until 1990, but lorded from the shadows as armed forces commander until 1998.

....

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/9565862.htm

The copper bit new info to me--right up the BFEE alley.

Not to get off Cantor/Fitz and the Saudis. Be nice if somebody, anyone, can make headway on Saudi funding of 9/11 (and yes, I think it's pretty clear that was partly through Riggs, and probably BOA and Citibank--still wonder what the other two banks are).

[librechik]

2. Yay! Discovery should be VERY interesting n/t

[sattahipdeep]

8. The little pretzel-gagging tyrant the guns are out and on the streets

Global Eye
Stealing Home

By Chris Floyd
Published: September 3, 2004


The first question, of course, is largely academic until the ballots are actually counted.
Then we'll know if L'il Pretzel has sufficiently gamed the system to overcome what will
almost certainly be the Bush Dynasty's third straight repudiation by the American people in
the popular vote. Naturally, your hard-core dynast is unconcerned with such trivia as "the
consent of the governed" and other pinko impediments to hereditary rule by the highborn.
Thus more than 45 million voters will be casting their ballots into a digital void, Salon.com
reports. And except in Nevada (one-half of one percent of the total), none of these virtual
votes will be accompanied by paper printouts verifying the citizen's choice. That means no
more of those silly-billy recounts that almost kept Pretzie out of the Oval Office sandbox
until Daddy's fixers stepped in.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/03/120.html

[seemslikeadream]

10. Howard Ahmanson

The brothers Urosevich were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful. Ahmanson was also a major funder of the "Christian Reconstruction" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, stoning of sinners, and slavery for debtors. As the movement's leader, the late R.J. Rushdoony -- Ahmanson's mentor and former fellow CNP member -- put it: "The Christian should therefore not fear laws in support of Christian social goals just because they interfere with personal freedom."

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/03/120.html

[Longhorn79]

9. What are the Saudis going to do when the oil runs out?

Seriously. I think they should use all their wealth right now to create huge resorts in the desert or something, so at least they have a tourist industry. The service industry (to the oil industry) is the only other thing they've got right now, because they don't need anything else.

[GOPAgainstGW]

12. Never Happen-Justice Dept Will Block Due to Nat'l Security-Sorry!!

[sattahipdeep]

13. "Remember" the future depends on the "past"

IN-Q-TEL (CIA VENTURE FIRM)

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2002/01/10/cia-vc-fund.htm