« Book Review: Curse of the Narrows | Main | Syria: Whos got your back? »

Banco Delta Asia: The Terrorists ATM

Part of the war on Terror is the hunting down and killing of those who kill and maim for the purposes of creating fear.

But the part we forget about, is the process of cutting off their supply lines. Not the supply of weapons, but the supply of money.

Here is a rather brilliant article from Frontpage Magazine.

So when you start getting orange 10 Dollar bills, now you'll know why.

Those of you who have known me the longest know that I've always suspected that the real, yet unspoken reason for our invasion of Iraq was the role that Iraq played as the main bank for terrorist operations around the world. its no accident that with the end of the saddam regime, the terror operations that beseiged Israel and Lebanon came to an end.

There is a tremendous value in being an oil state in that you have the ability to open trade operations in nearly every country in the world. Iraq could effectively launder money at a very high rate for all sorts of failed states around the world, while the world could do very little about it when they did.

The North Korea/Banco Delta Asia system gives us a model of how it works. North Korea needs foriegn cash, but has nothing with which to trade. North Korea then provides the transport and manpower to allow drugs and large scale arm sales to take place, but since no one would ever allow themselves to be put in the position of giving the money directly to North Korea, a second party has to be used for the transfer.

North Korea becomes rich, and Banco Delta Asia gets rich as well. but the end result is that people die.

UPDATE: A few more pieces of information on this issue. First, the IRA makes an appearance in our little web of intrigue:

"Sean Garland, 71, a veteran of the Irish Republican Army, was arrested in Belfast in September. He awaits extradition to the United States on a federal warrant that alleges that he and others bought, moved and either passed or resold high-quality counterfeit $100 notes."

And then theres this quote that ties Iran to North Korea:

Quote:
"The North Korean counterfeiting story begins almost simultaneously with the late Shah of Iran's purchase in 1975 and 1976 of two intaglio-color-8 presses, the type then used by the U.S. Treasury to print genuine dollars, from De La Rue Giori, in Lausanne, Switzerland. These survived the Shah's overthrow by Islamic revolutionaries in 1979 and provided an industrial base for the flood of expertly crafted superdollars. Specimens first appeared in Singapore in 1983, then, a decade later, inundated Europe and the Middle and Far East..."

Reenforcement Quote:
"In California and several other states, arrests were made of people linked to a major Asian crime ring. Prosecutors named the Asian Delta Bank in Macao, the former Portuguese colony in China, as a "primary money-laundering concern," for helping North Koreans distribute forged currency and other criminal activities..."

Note: Time to hit the research pages. I dont remember this happening.

Money Quote:
"After criminal complaints against North Korean diplomats who have been caught distributing supernotes since 1994, Phil Williams, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, observed: "We've rarely seen a state use organized crime in this way. This is a criminal state, not because it's been captured by criminals but because the state has taken over crime."

That is an important distinction. States that operate as criminal enterprises should not afforded the same level of respect as those who live within the law.

It seems to me that there was another bank scandal (called BCCI) in the 1990s that cost Democratic Operative Clark Clifford his job and brought legitimcy to John Kerry. Looks like I'll be spending more time in front of google...

UPDATE II: "matters for further investigation from the BCCI Investigation" Just read it already....

Posted @ October 22, 2005 08:11 PM | Current Affairs