To folks who are concerned about financing of terrorists groups and religious zealotry:
Maariv, September 2, 1994
By: Ben Kaspit, the New York correspondent
The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money
Rabbi Yosef Crozer fell because of his big mouth. "I launder money, a lot of money", he once told an acquaintance. "Every day I take $300,000 from 47 Street in Manhattan, bring it to the synagogue, give a receipt and then take a commission".
The man who heard that story from Crozer was, how sad, an undercover Jewish agent of the U.S. agency for
fighting drug use, DEA. A month later, in February 1990, Crozer was arrested by agents on his way from 47 Street to Brooklyn. They found on him prayer books, five
passports, and also $280.000 dollars in cash in the trunk of his car. He traveled that route every day. He
would arrive at the gold trading office on 47 Street in the afternoon, and leave shortly later, carrying
suitcases and bags loaded with cash. From there he drove to the "Hessed Ve'Tzadaka" ["Mercy and Charity"]
synagogue in Brooklyn, which was turned into an instrument for laundering millions of dollars, the revenue from drug sales in the New York area.
That was how Crozer made his living. Assuming that the commission for laundering money ranged in the area of
2-6%, Rabbi Crozer can be presumed not to have suffered from hunger. The investigators who questioned
him faced a simple task, A respectable and pious Jew who never imagined that he will be interrogated, a son of a
highly respected rabbi who headed a large yeshiva in city of New Square, Crozer broke down and
cooperated. But then his lawyer, Stanley Lupkin, argued that his client, a pious Jew, had no idea that he was
laundering drug money.
Crozer, according to his lawyer, believed that he was laundering money for a Jewish diamond trader "who
trades in cash and not for Gentile drug traders, and was using the situation to make some extra money just for his synagogue. It seems that this argument had some effect since Crozer was sentenced to one year and one day
imprisonment. In exchange for a lenient sentence, he supplied his interrogators with valuable information
which helped them to capture a person whom they had been seeking for a long time: Avraham Sharir, another pious Jew, the owner of a gold trading office on 47 Street, who was really one of the biggest sharks
of laundering drug money in New York City. Sharir, an Israeli Jew aged about 45, to whom we will later return,
subsequently confessed to having laundered $200 million for the Colombian drug cartel of Kali.
The drug trade is considered to be the most profitable branch of crime in the world. The profit margin ranges in
the area of 200% for cocaine and 1, 200% for heroin. The amounts of money circulated in the branch are
larger than the budgets of many small states. The temptation is great. The main problem of the Colombian
drug barons who control a significant part of world drug trade is how to get rid of the money. It is a problem of
the rich, but a nagging one. Two major Colombian drug cartels operate in the U.S.: the Kali cartel and the
Medellin cartel. The killing of the head of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escovar, by Colombian
authorities in December 1993, greatly weakened this cartel, which had controlled the drug trade in the New
York area. The Kali people, in contrast, hold a monopoly over the Los Angeles and Miami area markets. At present, the Kali people distribute about 80% of the world's cocaine and a third of heroin. The Kali drug
cartel makes $25 billion each year within the U.S. alone. The money must somehow be shipped out of the U.S. without arousing the attention of the American authorities.
Besides, the cash must be given a seal of approval and, one way or another, become legitimized. Around this complex issue a mega-business has sprung up: laundering and smuggling drug money.
American customs investigators have found millions of dollars in containers supposed to peas, in double-sided gas tanks, in steel boxes attached to freight ships. In 1990 they found $14 million in cash in a shipment of cables, supposed to have been sent from a Long Island warehouse to Colombia.
According to records found on the site, that was shipment no.234 (multiplied by 14 million, calculate it
yourselves). The same year, at Kennedy Airport, in a warehouse, 26 large containers were found which were supposed to have contained bull sperm. The latter was not there, but there were $6.5 million. In May of this year
American investigators raided a bowling ball plant in Long Island. They picked the balls, cut them in half and
found within 210,000 dollars, in used $100 bills.
Despite their active imagination, the drug barons find it hard to keep up. $25 billion is a lot of money and it
must fill a lot of space, since most of the money gained in drug deals conies in bills of $l0-20. And that is how the match was made between the drug cartels and the 47 Street in Manhattan, That street is
the world center for trading diamonds, gold, jewels and precious stones.
Hundreds of businesses are crowded in there, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, Shops, businesses, display halls.
In the back rooms and on the top floors, far from public access, the action takes place. That is where the major
traders sit, that is where the deals are made. Diamonds, gold and jewels pass from hand to hand, with a handshake.
The frantic activity there offers an ideal cover for illegal transfers of money. "In fact, even legitimate business appears, on 47 Street, to be dark and mysterious", said a customs official. "Merchandise arrives constantly,
boxes, suitcases and packages are constantly opened, everything arrives in armored cars, under heavy security
and a shield of secrecy. |
