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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (1285)	7/29/2003 2:37:28 PM
From: rrufff	Respond to of 22250

It's as real as your phantasm approach to mideast politics. I don't put a lot of faith in internet "research" and googling. However, I'm at work and need to make this fast. So after 30 seconds on Google, using search words "Arafat Swiss billion dollars" cdn-friends-icej.ca CORRUPTION IN THE PLO'S FINANCIAL EMPIRE In a play for power within the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Legislative Council recently threatened Chairman Yasser Arafat with a "no confidence" vote due to stalling in the annual budgeting process. To forestall the vote, Arafat sacked his ministers (then invited Hamas and the anti-Oslo Farouk Kaddoumi to join a new cabinet). A similar turn of events occurred one year earlier at budget time, when Arafat's cabinet resigned over an internal report of widespread corruption by PA ministries, including the Office of the Ra'is—Arafat himself. This report, it should be noted, was ordered by Arafat and conducted by a close relative out of Arafat's own office, and concluded that US$326 million (or 37 per cent of the PA's budget) was unaccounted for due to fraud, corruption and mismanagement. Since the 1998 PA budget of $1,8 billion is 50 per cent dependent on foreign aid, a brief review of past PLO financial dealings is instructive. Combining a ruthless leadership style with business sense gained from operating a successful construction company in the Gulf states, Yasser Arafat took over as chairman of the PLO in 1969 and built it into the world's largest, richest international terrorist group. Some analysts attribute the key to his longevity as head of such a violent, fractious organisation to his strict control over the PLO's purse-strings. As the PLO gained notoriety with high-profile terrorist acts against Israeli and other targets, it received donations from Palestinian sources abroad, and voluntary and involuntary contributions, measured in tens of millions of dollars, from the Kremlin and Arab-Muslim world. Even Western states are reported to have paid the PLO "protection money" from time to time for sharing intelligence on other terrorist groups and for keeping terror at bay in their countries. In 1970, the PLO set up a front company named SAMED as a commercial and manufacturing entity serving as the economic arm of the PLO's fighting forces. By 1989 it was a global operation with revenues of $70 million per year. SAMED first used cheap labor from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and expanded into Arab and African states and communist Eastern Europe with a diverse portfolio of factories, oil refineries and other businesses. Eventually, it acquired large shares in airlines (such as Maldive Airways, Caledonian Airlines, Air Zimbabwe and Air Kenya) and duty-free shops (at Nairobi's Kenyatta Airport, for example), thus providing the PLO with the means to move arms and operatives inconspicuously. Once the PLO was entrenched in Lebanon in the 1970s, Arafat eyed the tremendous profits available from illicit drugs produced in the Beka'a valley, and began exploiting the narcotics trade. Although it is difficult to assess the amounts earned through the PLO's narco-terrorism activities, it is safely estimated to be in the billions of dollars. During years of PLO-bred anarchy in what was once the banking hub of the Arab world, Lebanon was looted. In one bank heist alone, the PLO stole more than $600 million in gold from a Lebanese bank by blasting a hole through the back of a church and hiring Sicilian safe-crackers to open the bank's vault. Much of this ill-gotten gain was funneled to secret Swiss bank accounts kept under Arafat's control. When Arafat was missing and presumed dead following an airplane crash in Libya in April 1992, many in the PLO's hierarchy publicly voiced fears over how his death could affect the whole organisation. According to knowledgeable sources in the US Congress, the real concern within the PLO at that time was whether anyone besides Arafat had been entrusted with the access codes to these private Swiss accounts. Apparently, Arafat kept the codes in a notebook which he carried in the top-left pocket of his trademark military uniform, and the only set of codes was feared to have been irrecoverably lost in the rumoured inferno somewhere in the vast Libyan desert. With the Oslo breakthrough in September 1993, the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority began receiving billions of dollars in funds from a number of previously reluctant Western donor countries, including a pledge of $500 million per year from the United States. Since any recipient of US foreign aid must open their books to the US Congress, Ben Gilman, now Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, asked the General Accounting Office (a branch of Congress) to provide a report on PLO assets and sources of income. The GAO got little co-operation from American and British intelligence and hit a solid stone wall with the PLO. Because of the PLO's refusal to cooperate and to operate with transparency, Gilman was able to slap a congressional hold on US funds to the PA for the better part of a year. When the GAO finally was able to deliver its report, it was classified "secret", but one source familiar with its contents said it confirmed that Arafat and the PLO held well over $10 billion in assets, even at a time when he was publicly claiming "bankruptcy".

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (1285)	7/29/2003 2:48:08 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Here's more. Again, I don't like doing google and I believe you can prove just about anything by using its resources. However, you conspiracy "theorists" do it all the time so "when in rome....." Did you know that Arafat does not use the billions he has in foreign bank accounts to aid his own people? Yasser Arafat's personal wealth is estimated in the billions of dollars. In accordance with an Arab League decision made 35 years ago, Arab and Gulf state countries contributed tax money obtained from Palestinian laborers working in their countries to the PLO coffers. Arafat also received large sums of money for military training from various Arab countries that filled the PLO coffers. Arafat was not only deft in collecting taxes. He was also an accomplished arms trader and drug trafficker. Throughout the 1970s and 80s the PLO, and Arafat in particular, accumulated billions founding in the process a mini-empire in investments and real estate. According to a British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) report published on the eve of the famous "handshake" on the white House lawn, PLO assets, which were then close to $14 billion originated from "donations, extortion, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud" Chairman Arafat resorted to hiding large amounts in Swiss and other bank accounts and making large investments in real estate and industry in the United States, Australia and the UK. What was left over was used to purchase arms and afford the PLO elite, living in exile in Tunis, luxurious lifestyles. Very little of the funds that the PLO acquired in those years and even the foreign aid it has received since has found its way into the hands of ordinary Palestinians. Instead the West Bank's economy, since the PLO's assumption of authority in 1994, commenced a dramatic slide into poverty and collapse. According to surveys by the Yad Tabenkin Research Center, the West Bank per capita gross domestic product (GDP) before the Oslo Accord in 1993 was approximately $3,500 and in Gaza about $2, 800. Now the per capita for both territories is about $1,300. Before May 1994, the Palestinian per capita GDP in the West Bank was about 40% of the $8,000 Israeli per capita GDP for the same period and for most of the early 1990s economic growth in the West Bank exceeded that of Israel. If that trend had been allowed to continue in the West Bank's GDP would have reached $7,000 by now, which would make its prosperity similar to Saudi Arabia and 700% higher than other Arab states such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan. However, economic development and national prosperity have clearly never been at the top of Arafat's agenda. Joint Palestinian-Israeli industrial parks, designed to encourage Palestinian entrepreneurship, were scotched by Arafat while still in the planning stages. Money slated for housing projects to rehabilitate refugee camps were funneled into extravagant condominium projects for the Palestinian elite. In 1998, the International Monetary Fund reported that half of the Palestinian budget was simply missing and could not be accounted for. The very basics of a responsible fiscal management - the transparency of investments, open accounting practices and general accountability are non-existent in the Palestinian controlled areas. The impression is unavoidable: the Palestinian areas constitute one contiguous plutocracy maintained for the benefit and enjoyment of a handful of PLO loyalists. Why? Why, if Arafat is committed to the welfare and liberation of his people, are all the resources that could be used to alleviate their suffering withheld from them? The tragic answer is that Palestine's 'national liberation' has little if nothing to do with the welfare of the Palestinians themselves. Its focus and drive is solely on the hatred and intended destruction of Israel. Anything that distracts attention from this supreme goal, such as economic development (undeniably dependent on open trade and economic cooperation with Israel) or even social welfare is to be avoided. In the meantime, Palestinian poverty and suffering is usefully employed as propaganda to demonstrate Israeli injustice instead of being attributed to those who are most responsible for its creation. Thus, the Palestinians' true tragedy remains not Israeli oppression nor occupation but the corruption, greed and hubris of their own leaders. British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) Yad Tabenkin Research Center International Monetary Fund betaroncampus.org

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (1285)	7/29/2003 3:00:44 PM
From: rrufff	Respond to of 22250

Here's one from Fordham U To promote Governance with Respect Ethics Accountability and Transparency (GREAT) PALESTINE Join a Discussion site, where you can click on “New Topic” or try this link Transparency International’s corruption rank for this country in 2000 is absent and means that international investment is discouraged by excessive corruption. PROBE SOUGHT INTO POSSIBLE PALESTINIAN Misuse of EU AID. A group of European lawmakers and their colleagues have requested an investigation by the European Parliament to determine the use by the Palestinian authority of EU foreign aid. The Palestinian authority receives $10.8 million per month from the EU, designated to help pay employee wages. Lawmakers worry the aid is being pocketed by corrupt Palestinian officials or that it is being used to fund terror attacks on Israel. The European Commission, charged with distributing the funds, is being criticized for blind funding. According to Shimon Samuel, International Liaison Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, this practice offers no deterrent to political corruption. (The Wall Street Journal, Feb 5, 2003, summary by Kelly Kristen). Palestinian leader needs more time. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has sent a letter to the Palestinian parliament asking for an extra two weeks to name a new cabinet, after an Israeli siege of his base delayed a pledged reshuffle, a top official said. "We are asking for two more weeks. This is the time we lost under siege," said Nabil Shaath, one of the ministers forced to resign by the Palestinian Legislative Council, or parliament, in a stormy session on September 11. The assembly, dominated by Arafat’s own Fatah faction, threatened to vote down the cabinet - which Arafat first reformed in June under pressure to shape up his much-criticized administration - because members believed the reshuffle did not go far enough. The cabinet resigned en masse rather than face a public snub, and Arafat was given two weeks to present a new list of ministers. The blow to the cabinet, accused by foreign and domestic critics of incompetence and corruption, was seen by many observers as a revolt by the Palestinian lawmakers, largely sidelined in Arafat’s autocratic rule. (News Limited, October 1, 2002, summary by Sherldine Tomlinson). EX-PLO FINANCE OFFICER ARRESTED ON CORRUPTION CHARGES. Jaweed al-Ghussein, former treasurer of the Palestine Liberation Organization has been extradited to Gaza and accused of corruption by his childhood friend and former ally, Yassir Arafat. Mr. Arafat has order a number of Palestinians allegedly collaborating with Israel to be arrested, tried, and shot by firing squad. During the Gulf War, he condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, causing a rift with Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders; later he acknowledged existence of hidden accounts worth hundreds of millions of pounds that were accessible only to Mr. Arafat. Calls for help to secure al-Ghussein’s release has been launched by family and influential friends, and appeals from the King of Jordan, the Kuwaitis and other Arab governments, Britain and the U.S. are expected as they may be asked to provide political asylum. The action may be viewed as an attempt by the Palestinian Authority to deflect corruption criticism and to intimidate its critics. (The Times, Apr 23, 2001, summary by Marg Reynolds). Jerusalem, EU TO CLOSELY MONITOR FUNDS TO PA. The European Union officials who visited Palestine said they plan to strictly monitor funds transferred to the impoverished Palestinian Authority, in order to make sure they do not find their way into the pockets of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat or the pockets of other officials. According to a report published in the Jerusalem Post, Arafat has allocated millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account, which he has now offered to Iraqi President S. Hussein in exchange for a safe haven, if he is forced to leave the Palestinian areas! Arafat's personal assets, estimated by Israeli security officials as $20 billion, stems from his days as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, when he transferred money he received from various countries for the organization to his private bank accounts in Switzerland, the US, and Europe. EU special Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos said that they were "working for a transparent budget." "We are not going to allow these kinds of things, and will control [the aid funds] very well," he added. EU Commissioner for External Relations Christopher Patten said that "in order for us to go on and provide substantial assistance to the Palestinian administration, we will need to see a tough realistic budget, some real transparency" and measures to ensure "complete anti-corruption." (Source: Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2001, summary by Pavlidis George). A fax signed by the anticorruption unit of Fatah's al-Aksa Martyrs called on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to weed out corruption in Palestinian society. They named a senior Palestinian banker whom the group accused of transferring some $12.6 million it clams was meant for those who were suffering from the recent situation. The daily newspaper al-Kuds, made two references to corruption. One by the local Chrisitan Orthodox Committee spoke of the need for the end of the corruption within the Church. (Jerusalem Post Newspaper, February 1, 2001, summary by B. Gray). PALESTINIAN MILITANTS RISE UP AND CRITICIZE ARAFAT "FAT CATS". Mr. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, after seven years of pursuing peace with Israel, is now subjected to criticism. In the epicenter of the criticism are found the corrupt "fat cats" who surround Mr. Arafat. For example, there are bitter comments on the size of a seaside villa built by Abu Mazen (Mr. Arafat's deputy) and on the BMWs driven by members of the government and legislature. Traditionally, criticism on corruption has been a taboo issue for Palestinians during their uprising; officials were insisting that such issues shouldn't be addressed until the struggle with Israel would be over. (Source: The Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2000, summary by Pavlidis George). \Arafat’s Palestinian Authority arrests 8 for signing a petition that is critical of official corruption (See NYTimes, Nov. 30, 1999, p. A10). fordham.edu