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「Arab Bank funded Hamas, al-Qaida」

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1113963510318&p=1101615860782

The New York branch of the Arab Bank was instrumental in financing Hamas, Al-Qaida and dozens of other terrorist groups, and some of those transactions were also handled by banks in the United States and Israel, according to a report in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.

Arab Bank funneled more than $20 million to and from terrorist groups and charities affiliated with terrorist groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who perpetrated attacks in Israel, the report said. The bank now may be subject to criminal charges for not disclosing to the US government suspicious transactions that resulted in the financing of terrorists.

Arab Bank already is the subject of a lawsuit by US and Israeli victims of terrorist attacks, who are seeking more than $1 billion in damages, and it is the subject of a criminal investigation by the US Justice Department. In February, the bank agreed to stop accepting deposits at its US branch.

Officials at the bank's headquarters in Amman said they were not aware of the money transfers among the terrorist financiers and would have put a stop to them had they known.
The disclosure that Arab Bank played a key role in financing terrorism is not new, but the Journal report provides new details into how terrorists used the bank to run their operations and raises the possibility that criminal charges against the bank could present the United States and Israel with a diplomatic dilemma.

Both the US and Israel have relied on Arab Bank as a pillar of the Middle East economy and as the only commercial enterprise with a broad network in the Palestinian territories. With $32 billion in assets, the bank often has extended bridge loans to the Palestinian Authority, saving the US and European Union the trouble and expense of bailing out the Palestinians.

Some of the transactions at Arab Bank made by terrorist groups came from other financial institutions first, including Citigroup and Israel Discount Bank, the Journal reported. That disclosure raises questions about those others banks' handling of suspicious transactions that turn out to have been used by terrorists.
Arab Bank's primary defense is that it was not clear on what constituted "suspicious" transactions and therefore did not report to the US authorities transactions that now clearly show they were used by terrorists. Among the suspicious transactions were money transfers by the US-based Holy Land Foundation, which sent more than $3 million through Arab Bank to the Palestinian territories at a time when the US Treasury already has designated Holy Land as a front group for Hamas.

Alyza Lewin, a lawyer for the family of an American yeshiva student named David Boim who was killed by Hamas in a shooting attack in the West Bank in May of 1996, sued the Holy Land Foundation on behalf of the Boim family several years ago and won an award last December of $256 million.

It was the first time an American-based group was held civilly liable for damages for "aiding and abetting an act of terror," Lewin said.

It also served as the legal basis for the current civil lawsuit by victims of terrorism against Arab Bank, Lewin told The Jerusalem Post. "It's the Boim case that enabled them to bring the Arab Bank case," she said.