UNCOVERING RISK..........................
STAY VIGILANT - ARE THESE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
BROTHER IN ARMS
World-check continues to be ahead in the identification of arms traders, another associate of Victor Bout is Kenyan Sanjivan Ruprah. He testified against Bout after being arrested by Belgian authorities. He appears to have been heavily involved in Sierra Leone and illegal diamond trading. He has contacts in high places in Africa - having been the campaign financier of former President Moi of Kenya. He was barred from visiting the UK. World-Check profiled him in September 2002, that is nearly two years before he was added to the OFAC list in July 2004. He has numerous aliases. Can you be sure he isn't a client perhaps through one of his offshore companies? To get more information on him look at his profile UID 32512.
TERROR, MURDER AND POISON
Algerian Kamel Bourgass used a false name to apply for asylum in the UK in 2001, he failed. Subsequently he had a number of brushes with the authorities for minor offences. In June 2003 the police raided a flat in Crumpsall, a suburb of Manchester where he was staying - Bourgass stabbed to death a policeman and injured others, a year later he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was also implicated in terrorist activities, but the investigation was subject to a news blackout. His alleged accomplice a fellow Algerian - in custody in Algeria - admitted that he and Bourgass had spent time together in an Al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and he also revealed that he had intended to use the poison ricin, to murder innocent victims in an area of North London. In April 2005 Bourgass was found guilty of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by using poisons and explosives and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. World-Check profiled him in February 2003 see his profile UID 137974.
GUAM OFFICIALS IMPLICATED
In the Pacific Gil Shinohara UID 232921, one time right hand man of the former Governor of Guam, Carl Gutierrez, has been up on charges of accepting bribes, money laundering and conspiring to defraud the Federal Emergency Management Agency since April 2004. A former Government minister who resigned as leader of a political party as the net tightened and a high powered businessman have already confessed to their part in the fraud and have agreed to testify against Shinohara. Check out his associates.
DRUGS AND HIDDEN ASSETS
US entrepreneur and convicted narcotics importer Paul Edward Hindelang Jr paid just USD640,000 in restitution after his was convicted of importing narcotics into the US back in 1981.
But authorities continued to investigate Hindelang, who it is alleged managed to distribute his ill gotten gains to accounts around the world via a Costa Rican individual who he charged with handling his assets in the 1980s.
It took authorities 17 years before they managed to seize USD60m from his accounts and a year later they seized a further US$6.5m in Monaco and the US.
Investigations into the whereabouts of the proceeds of his narcotics dealing monies continued and in Jan 2005 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized the assets of an Oil company in Phoenix, Arizona and a company in Panama. Find out more by visiting his profile UID 75648.
OIL FOR FOOD ARRESTS
In April, United States federal prosecutors arrested in Houston, Texas, an oil company executive, an American and a Bulgarian oil trader and indicted them for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act stemming from the ongoing UN Iraq Oil for Food scandal investigation. In Nov 2005 World-Check profiled the US oil executive and his company. Take a look at his profile UID 259873 to see his connections.
"We cannot bomb bank
accounts, and we therefore rely
on international cooperation in all our efforts’"
Juan C. Zarate
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime
U.S. Department of the Treasury
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