SPIES
IN THE BANK by Murray Horton
Peace Researcher 33 – November
2006
The tentacles of the American Invisible Empire
reach into all sorts of unexpected places, under the justification of the “War
On Terror”. In June 2006, the US Treasury acknowledged that, since the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US,
it and the CIA had tracked millions of international financial transactions
handled by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Communications (SWIFT, which handles about 11 million transactions daily among
banks and financial institutions worldwide). This revelation led to
London-based Privacy International to file complaints with data protection and
privacy regulators in 13 European countries, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand
and Hong Kong, asking them to block the release of
confidential financial records to US authorities. Simon Davies, Privacy
International’s Director, said that the secret CIA-Treasury programme “shows
yet again how the US
wilfully disregards the privacy rights not only of its own citizens, but also
the rights of foreign nationals”. He added that the programme operated “without
any legal basis or authority whatsoever” (New Zealand Herald, 29/6/06;
“Swift disclosures ‘should be blocked’”). For his part, President Bush
condemned newspapers that broke the story, saying their reports made it “harder
to win the war on terror” (ibid.).
US Seizes Aid Money From
Kiwi Churches To African Christians
ABC members may rest assured that it doesn’t affect
us, even if we were in the habit of making international financial
transactions, which we aren’t. There is a prosaic reason why – we bank with
Kiwibank, and because it doesn’t (yet) have a SWIFT code, it can’t do
international electronic financial transactions. But this covert American
interference with the international flow of money definitely has impacted on
perfectly innocent New Zealand
organisations. One such case involved the eminently respectable
Christchurch-based Christian World Service (CWS),
which is the aid and development agency of New Zealand’s Protestant churches.
The details were supplied to me in an e-mail (28/9/06)
from John Gould of the CWS Projects Team.
“Basically, (in 2005) a transfer of
NZ$75,000 (US$52,222) made to assist internally displaced people in South
Blue Nile state in Sudan…
In summary, to assist some 300,000 of Africa’s poorest
people towards better health and able to feed themselves by providing
improved water and sanitation, agricultural inputs, smallstock, training, education
etc.
“Funds were sent from NZ to a Bank of
Scotland account in the UK for our partner Church Ecumenical Action
in Sudan based in Nairobi, Kenya somehow went through the US banking
system and got blocked (temporarily frozen due to a query raised by
the Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US
Department of the Treasury the purpose of which according to its website http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/ is
as follows:-
“The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of
the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade
sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against
targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers,
and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. OFAC acts under Presidential wartime and national emergency
powers, as well as authority granted by specific legislation, to impose
controls on transactions and freeze foreign assets under US jurisdiction.
“Eventually, after much argument with the local
travelex branch working through their office in Australia
we were able to resend the funds but this time discretely direct to (an
organisation) in the UK.
We did at least demand and get over $400 interest which the bank had earned
while 'sitting on the funds'. A couple of years ago a transfer was blocked in a
similar way because it contained reference to 'Sudan'
which automatically generates a query, apparently! We have therefore been
careful to avoid any reference to Sudan,
but on this occasion 'S.Blue Nile' was sufficient to block the transfer.
Frightening stuff”.
Sudan
has been in America’s
bad books since it provided hospitality to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, before
he moved to Afghanistan.
Most memorably, it was the victim of a botched Cruise missile strike ordered by
President Clinton, which succeeded only in destroying a milk powder factory
that had mistakenly been identified as being some sort of terrorists’ chemical
weapons factory. Sudan,
of course, is currently in bad odour with the world for its genocidal policy
towards its own people in Darfur province. For more than
50 years there has been an on again off again civil war between the Muslim Arab
north and the African Christian south. There is, therefore, enormous irony in
the American Invisible Empire blocking (effectively stealing) money being sent
by New Zealand Christians to a Christian church organisation in Sudan.
Counter-productive is the best description. And the people most disadvantaged
by it are “300,000 of Africa’s poorest people”. That’s
the way to win hearts and minds, isn’t it?
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