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Date Tue, 05 Nov 2002
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Explosive Revelation$
http//www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/10/feature1_1.shtml
The world's
biggest banks and multinational
corporations have set
up a shadowy system to secretly move
trillions of
dollars; a system that can be exploited by
tax evaders, drug
runners and even terrorists.
Ernest Backes, circa
1986.
Ernest Backes exposed
this dubious system and has launched a
personal crusade for
international oversight, earning
him some high-powered
and dangerous enemies.
by Lucy Komisar
In the tax haven of
Luxembourg, a little-known outfit called
Clearstream handles
billions of dollars a year in stock and
bond transfers for
banks, investment companies and
multinational
corporations. But a former top official of
this
"clearinghouse" says Clearstream operates a
secret bookkeeping
system that allows its clients to hide
the money that moves
through their accounts.
In these days of
global markets, individuals and companies
may be buying stocks,
bonds or derivatives from a seller who
is halfway across the
world. Clearinghouses like Clearstream
keep track of the
"paperwork" for the
transactions. Banks
with accounts in the clearinghouse use a
debit and credit
system and, at the end of the day, the
accounts (minus
"handling fees," of course) are
totaled up. The
clearinghouse doesn't actually send
money anywhere, it
just debits and credits its
members' accounts.
It's all very efficient. But
the money involved is
massive. Clearstream handles more than
80 million
transactions a year, and claims to have
securities on deposit
valued at $6.5 trillion.
It's also an excellent
mechanism for laundering drug
money or hiding
income from the tax collector. Banks are
supposed to be
subject to local government oversight. But
many of Clearstream's
members have real or
"virtual"
subsidiaries in offshore tax havens,
where records are
secret and investigators can't trace
transactions. And
Clearstream, which keeps the central
records of financial
trades, doesn't get even the
cursory regulation
that applies to offshore banks. On top of
that, it deliberately
has put in place a system to hide many
of its clients'
transactions from any authorities who
might come looking.
According to former
insiders
Clearstream has a
double system of accounting, with secret,
non-published
accounts that banks and big corporations use
to make transfers
they don't want listed on the
official books.
Though it is legally
limited to dealing with financial
institutions,
Clearstream gives secret accounts to
multinational
corporations so they can move stocks and money
free from outside
scrutiny.
Clearstream carried
an account for a notoriously criminal
Russian bank for
several years after the bank had officially
"collapsed,"
and clearinghouse accounts
camouflaged the
destinations of transfers to Colombian
banks.
Banking with Bin
Laden
Following the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, the
United States started focusing its
investigation on the
financial trail of Osama bin Laden and
the al-Qaeda network.
Like any other large,
global operation, international
terrorists need to
move large sums of money across borders
clandestinely. In
November, U.S. authorities named some
banks that had bin
Laden accounts, and it put them on a
blacklist.
One was Al
TaqwaÑ"Fear of God"Ñregistered in the
Bahamas with offices
in Lugano, Switzerland. Al Taqwa had
access to the
Clearstream system through its correspondent
account with the
Banca del Gottardo in Lugano, which has a
published Clearstream
account (No. 74381).
But bin Laden may
have other access to the unpublished
system. In what he
calls a "spectacular
discovery,"
Ernest Backes reports that in the weeks
before CEO André
Lussi was forced to leave Clearstream last
May, a series of 16
unpublished accounts were opened under
the name of the Saudi
Investment Company, or SICO, the
Geneva holding of the
Saudi Binladen GroupÑwhich is run by
OsamaÕs brother,
Yeslam Binladen (some family members spell
the name
differently).
Yeslam Binladen
insists that he has nothing to do with his
brother, but evidence
suggests SICO is tied into
Osama"s
financial network. SICO is associated with Dar
Al-Maal-Al-Islami
(DMI), an Islamic financial institution
also based in Geneva
and presided over by Prince Muhammed Al
Faisal Al Saoud, a
cousin of Saudi King Fahd, that directs
millions a year to
fundamentalist movements. DMI holds a
share of the Al
Shamal Islamic Bank of Sudan, which was set
up in 1991 and partly
financed by $50 million from Osama bin
Laden.
Furthermore, one of
SICO's administrators, Geneva
attorney Baudoin
Dunand, is a partner in a law firm, Magnin
Dunand &
Partners, that set up the Swiss financial services
company SBAÑa
subsidiary of the SBA Bank in Paris, which is
controlled by Khaled
bin Mahfouz. MahfouzÕs younger sister
is married to Osama
bin Laden.
Clearstream operates
a computer program that erases the
traces of trades on
request from its members.
Clearstream was used
to try to hide a dubious arms deal
between French
authorities and the Taiwanese military.
Many of these charges
were first made in a controversial
book called
Révélation$, written by Denis Robert, a French
journalist, and
Ernest Backes, a former top official at the
clearinghouse who
helped design and install the computer
system that
facilitated the undisclosed accounts. The
book's impact was
explosive. Six European judges
called it "the
black box" of illicit
international
financial flows. Top Clearstream officials
were fired. The
scandal made headlines in big European
newspapers; TV
networks broadcast specials; the French
National Assembly's
financial crimes committee held a
hearing. Luxembourg
authorities ordered an investigation,
and then they
effected a cover-up. Yet Révélation$ remains
unpublished and
relatively unknown in the United States.
A bearded, heavyset
man in his mid-fifties, Backes spoke
with In These Times
in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where
he'd gone to attend a
conference on international
crime, and explained
how he'd started fighting
"organized crime
in banking."
Click here to read
about Clearstream's connection to
the October Surprise.
Ernest Backes was
born in 1946 in Trier, Germany. (As he
likes to joke,
"There were two important people born
in Trier; the other
is Karl Marx.") His father was a
Luxembourg metal
worker, his mother a German nurse. From 14,
he worked on an
assembly line to pay for school and joined
the Young Catholic
Workers. After a job in the Luxembourg
civil service, he was
hired in 1971 by Clearstream's
predecessor Cedel
(short for "central delivery"
office), set up the
year before by a consortium of 66
international banks.
Backes helped design and install
Cedel's computerized
accounting system in the
'70s.
Cedel and its main
competitor, Brussels-based Euroclear,
were started to
manage transfers of
"eurodollars,"
U.S. currency kept in banks
outside the United
States. According to Barbara
Garson's book Money
Makes the World Go Around,
eurodollars were
invented in the '50s by the Chinese
and the Soviets so
they would not have to put their assets
in banks where the
U.S. government could seize them. But
others saw value in
eurodollars, and they began to be traded
for other currencies.
Some banks attracted eurodollars with
higher interest than
was being paid in America, and U.S.
corporations and
individuals began using the accounts to
avoid laws on
domestic banks. The euromoney market was born.
(By the '90s, the
Federal Reserve estimated that about
two-thirds of U.S.
currency was held abroad as eurodollars.)
Cedel and Euroclear
eventually expanded into handling
transfers of stock
titles and other financial instruments.
Their clients needed
a system that would guarantee the
creditworthiness of
their trading partners and keep records
of the trades. The
clearinghouses provided speed,
discretion, and a
system that didn't make the records
of their deals and
profits readily accessible to outsiders.
Every few months, a
list of members' codes was
distributed. For
transfers, members just entered the codes,
and Clearstream
handled the deals with no further inquiries.
In 1975, several big
Italian and German banks wanted to
centralize their
accounting and didn't want other
members of Cedel to
send transfers through their numerous
individual branches.
The Cedel council of
administration, its
board of directors—authorized
banks with multiple
subsidiaries not to put all their
accounts on the
lists. Backes and Gerard Soisson, then
Cedel's general
manager, set up a system of
non-published
accounts. A bank would send a transfer to the
code of the
headquarters bank, which would send it on to the
non-published account
of its subsidiary. The bank would
regulate this operation
internally.
Soisson authorized
each non-published account, which would
be known only by some
insiders, including the auditors and
members of the
council of administration. As Cedel's
literature to clients
explained "As a general rule,
the principal account
of each client is published the
existence of the
account, as well as its name and number,
are published. ... On
demand, and at the discretion of Cedel
Bank, the client can
open a non-published account. The
non-published
accounts don't figure in any printed
document and their
name is not mentioned in any
report."
Requests for
non-published accounts came from some banks
that weren't
eligible, but Soisson turned them down.
By 1980, Backes had
become Cedel's No. 3 official, in
charge of relations
with clients. But he was fired in May
1983. Backes says the
reason given for his sacking was an
argument with an
English banker, a friend of the CEO.
"I think I was
fired was because I knew too much about
the Ambrosiano
scandal," Backes says.
Banco Ambrosiano was
once the second most important private
bank in Italy, with
the Vatican as a principal shareholder
and loan recipient.
The bank laundered drug- and
arms-trafficking
money for the Italian and American mafias
and, in the '80s,
channeled Vatican money to the
Contras in Nicaragua
and Solidarity in Poland. The corrupt
managers also
siphoned off funds via fictitious banks to
personal shell
company accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas,
Panama and other
offshore havens. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed
in 1982 with a
deficit of more than $1 billion. (Unknown to
many moviegoers,
Banco Ambrosiano inspired a subplot of The
Godfather Part III.)
Several of those
behind the swindle have met untimely ends.
Bank chairman Roberto
Calvi was found hanged under
Blackfriars Bridge in
London. Michele Sindona, convicted in
1980 on 65 counts of
fraud in the United States, was
extradited to Italy
in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison;
in 1986, he was found
dead in his cell, poisoned by
cyanide-laced coffee.
(Another suspect, Archbishop Paul
Marcinkus, the head
of the Vatican Bank, now lives in Sun
City, Arizona with a
Vatican passport; U.S. authorities have
ignored a Milan
arrest warrant for him.)
Just two months after
Backes' dismissal in 1983,
Soisson, 48 and
healthy, was found dead in Corsica, where
he'd gone on
vacation. Top Cedel officials had the
body returned
immediately and buried, with no autopsy,
announcing that he
had died of a heart attack. His family
now suspects he was
murdered. "If Soisson was
murdered, it was also
related to what he knew about
Ambrosiano,"
Backes says. "When Soisson died,
the Ambrosiano affair
wasn't yet known as a scandal.
[After it was
revealed] I realized that Soisson and I had
been at the
crossroads. We moved all those transactions
known later in the
scandal to Lima and other branches.
Nobody even knew
there was a Banco Ambrosiano branch in Lima
and other South
American countries."
After leaving Cedel,
Backes got a job in the Luxembourg
stock market, and
later became manager of a butchers'
cooperative. But he
kept friends inside the clearinghouse
and began to collect
information and records about
Cedel's operations.
With Soisson out of
the way, there was nothing to stop the
abuse of the system.
Whereas Soisson had refused numerous
requests to open
non-published accounts (from such
institutions as Chase
Manhattan in New York, Chemical Bank
of London and
numerous subsidiaries of Citibank), Cedel
opened hundreds of
non-published accounts in total
irregularity, especially
after the arrival of CEO André
Lussi in 1990. No
longer were they just sub-accounts of
officially listed
accounts, Backes charges. Some were for
banks that weren't
subsidiaries or even official
members of Cedel. At
the start of 1995, Cedel had more than
2,200 published
accounts. But in reality, according to
documents obtained by
Backes, Cedel that year managed more
than 4,200 accounts,
for more than 2,000 clients from 73
countries.
Clearstream was
formed in 1999 out of the merger of Cedel
and the compensation
company of Deustche Börse (the German
stock exchange).
"No accounts are secret,"
insists spokesman
Graham Cope. "We are controlled by
the local authorities
... who have access to information on
all accounts. The
term ‘secret' is misused again
and again. Our
customers choose to have unpublished
accounts, which
simply means, like a telephone
number, they
choose not to display the name and number
in our publications.
Customers often have many unpublished
accounts, which they
use for their own internal management
purposes to ensure
there is no confusion between their
accounts."
But Backes thinks
otherwise. "I discovered an
increasing number of
unpublished accounts," he says.
"There were more
unpublished than published accounts,
and a [large]
proportion were not sub-accounts of a
principal account,
which is what the system was supposedly
for. The owners of
these accounts were not inscribed on the
official list of the
clients of the firm."
Click here to see a
flowchart of how this money laundering
scheme works.
How does the system
work? Backes explains, for example, that
a bank with a
published account could open an unpublished
account for a branch
in the Cayman Islands, an offshore tax
haven. A drug
trafficker easily could have the Cayman branch
debit cash from his
personal account to buy stocks on Wall
Street. The
transaction would be handled by Clearstream,
which would transfer
the money electronically to a New York
bank that had its own
clearinghouse account. Soon the shares
could be sold to buy
real estate in Chicago with
"clean"
money. But regulators or investigators,
depending only on
published accounts, would find it nearly
impossible to trace
the money. Backes says Clearstream
employees joke that
the company name means "the river
that washes."
While clearinghouse
clients may want to keep transactions
secret, detailed
information on every transfer, including
those via
non-published accounts, is listed on daily
"security
statements and records to prove
that the stock or
cash has been sent. These statements are
stored on microfiche
and, under Luxembourg law, must be kept
10 years' for
commercial enterprises and 15 years for
banks. A Clearstream
insider gave Backes 10 years worth of
these records.
"The documents are a mine of
information for any
financial inquiry," Backes says.
"The archives of
the clearinghouses can contribute to
retracing where funds
have gone. The knowledge of the list
and the codes
relative to non-published accounts, until now
guarded secrets,
offer immense possibilities."
Backes notes that similar
records exist for the other big
clearinghouses,
Euroclear and Swift, also based in Brussels.
"It is
possible," he explains, "when one
knows the date of an
operation and the bank of entry, to
reconstitute inside
the clearing companies the voyage of the
money and stocks or
bonds to follow the tracks."
Révélation$ charges
that Cedel/Clearstream further violated
its own statutes by
setting up unpublished accounts for
industrial and
commercial companies. With accounts in their
own names, companies
could avoid passing through banks or
exchange agents to
use the clearinghouse. They thus skirted
mandated due
diligence and record-keeping. When Siemens was
proposed for
membership, Backes says, some Cedel employees
protested that this
violated Luxembourg law. However,
management told them
that Siemens' admission had been
negotiated at the
highest level.
Among the major
companies with secret accounts, Backes
discovered the Shell
Petroleum Group and the Dutch
agricultural
multinational Unilever, one of whose accounts
was associated with
Goldman Sachs. On the French TV
broadcast "Les
dissimulateurs" ("The
Deceivers") in
March 2000, Clearstream President Lussi
simply denied the
accounts existed. "Only banks and
brokers are eligible
for membership," he said,
"as it has
always been the case. No private company
accounts, no
commercial or industrial companies."
But his own spokesman
contradicts this claim.
"Customers of
Clearstream can be banks or,
exceptionally,
corporate clients who have their own treasury
departments the size
of banks," Cope wrote in an
e-mail to In These
Times. "We cannot accept CEOs of
multinationals or
terrorists and have strict account-opening
procedures to prevent
such problems."
http//www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/10/feature1_2.shtml
Explosive
Revelation$, part 2.
By 2000, according to
Backes, Clearstream managed about
15,000 accounts (of
which half were non-published) for 2,500
clients in 105
countries; most of the investment companies,
banks and their
subsidiaries are from Western Europe and the
United States. Most
of the new non-published accounts were
in offshore tax
havens. The banks with the most
non-published
accounts are Banque Internationale de
Luxembourg (309),
Citibank (271) and Barclays (200).
Backes found numerous
discrepancies in the lists he obtained
of the secret
accounts. For example, code No. 70287 on the
published list
belongs to Citibank NA-Colombia AC in Nassau,
and code No. 70292 is
that of the Banco Internacional de
Colombia Nassau Ltd.
But on the non-published list, the
numbers both belong
to Banco Internacional de Colombia in
Bogota. There's no
mention of Citibank. Based on the
published list,
members may think they are dealing with two
banks in the Bahamas,
one of which is a subsidiary of
Citibank, but
anything sent to these establishments goes
directly to the
country of cocaine cartels. On the April
2000 Clearstream
list, there are 37 Colombian accounts, of
which only three are
published. (Richard Howe, spokesman for
Citicorp in New York,
declined repeated requests for
comment. Cope
declined to talk about any individual
customers or
accounts, citing Luxembourg banking secrecy
laws.)
Clearstream's
dealings with Russian banks are another
area of concern.
Menatep Bank, which had been bought in a
rigged auction of
Soviet assets and has been linked to
numerous
international scams, opened its Cedel account (No.
81738) on May 15,
1997, after Lussi visited the bank's
president in Moscow
and invited him to use the system. It
was a non-published
account that didn't correspond to
any published
account, a breach of Clearstream's
rules. Menatep
further violated the rules because many
transfers were of
cash, not for settlement of securities.
"For the three
months in 1997 for which I hold
microfiches,"
Backes says, "only cash transfers
were channeled
through the Menatep account."
"There were a
lot of transfers between Menatep and the
Bank of New
York," Backes adds. Natasha Gurfinkel
Kagalovsky, a former
Bank of New York official and the wife
of a Menatep vice
president, stands accused of helping
launder at least $7
billion from Russia. U.S. investigators
have attempted to
find out if some of the laundered money
originated with
Menatep, which they believed had looted
Russian assets. (The
Justice Department declined to comment
on the
investigation.)
Even though Menatep
officially failed in 1998, it oddly
remained on the
non-published list of accounts for 2000.
(Clearstream also
lists 36 other Russian accounts, more
non-published than
published.) Kathleen Hawk, a U.S.
spokeswoman for
Clearstream, says that was "a
mistake." But
Cope contradicts her "Closed
accounts remain on
our files and systems even though
they're non-active
because we don't reuse
numbers. We keep the
records for many years so there is no
future confusion from
reused numbers."
But Backes explains
that there's no systematic rule
about delisting
canceled accounts. He found that "some
that didn't exist any
longer were on the list. Others
were delisted when
they didn't exist. And still other
accounts were
delisted, when we knew they existed, though
the numbers no longer
appeared."
Régis Hempel, a
computer programmer who worked for
Clearstream, says
some dormant accounts were activated for
special transactions.
"Such an account can be opened
in the morning, used
for a transaction, and closed to appear
as delisted in the
evening," Backes explains.
"Only the guy
who gave the order to open it in the
morning knows about
the transaction. An investigator or
auditor would not
look at such an account because it
doesn't appear on the
accounts list."
Hempel also claims
that Clearstream erased the records of
some transfers. In
testimony before the French National
Assembly's financial
crimes committee last year, he
explained that a
computer system had been developed to wipe
out the traces of
transactions in non-published accounts.
When a bank wanted to
carry out such a transaction, Hempel
testified, it simply
contacted a Cedel staff person.
"We made a
`hard coding' in the program
and corrected the
instruction that was going to come,"
he explained.
"[An instruction could be] a purchase, a
sale, a movement of
funds or a security. We made it
disappear, or we put
it on another account. Then, when all
was finished, we put
back the old program and removed the
exception. It was not
seen or known."
He said such requests
came every two or three days.
Hempel volunteered to
help Luxembourg prosecutor Carlos
Zeyen investigate
Clearstream. But Hempel says local
authorities seem more
interested in blocking an
investigation than in
exercising oversight. Zeyen responded
that the inquiry into
Hempel's charges hadn't
produced any evidence
and dismissed claims that Hempel had
been prevented from
seeing relevant files as
"rubbish."
In a July 2001 public statement,
Zeyen said the
investigation would continue.
Luxembourg sources
say Zeyen was looking into how Menatep
used the system and
also into improper ways André Lussi
might have gained
personally. In January, a French judge
took depositions
about Menatep corruption. According to
Luxembourg journalist
Marc Gerges, writing in the local
newspaper Land, the
FBI and the German BKA are also
interested in what
might be revealed about the role of
Menatep in the
diversion of IMF funds. Gerges says
investigators are
also looking to implicate Lussi in
suspected financial
swindles conducted through holding
companies and trusts
in the offshore financial havens of
Guernsey or Jersey.
(Lussi could not be located; his
attorney did not
respond to phone and e-mail requests for
comment.)
Click here to read
about Clearstream's connection with
Bin Laden and
al-Qaeda.
The publication of
Révélation$ brought forward others with
stories about how
Cedel/Clearstream had facilitated
corruption. Joël
Bûcher, former deputy general director of
the Taiwan branch of
the bank Société Générale, wrote Zeyen
volunteering to
testify that SG used the clearinghouse to
hide bribes and to
launder money. In his deposition for
Zeyen, which
is cited in Denis Robert's new book
on the Clearstream
saga, The Black Box, Bûcher said he
had worked for the
bank for 20 years, but quit in 1995 out
of disgust at its
rampant money-laundering. He said much of
that occurred though
a Luxembourg affiliate working through
non-published
accounts at Cedel. "Cedel didn't
ask any questions
about the origin of funds that would have
appeared suspect to
any beginner," he told Robert.
"[As a result]
we directed our clientele with funds of
doubtful origin to
Luxembourg."
In the early '90s,
Bûcher contends, Cedel was used to
launder $350 million
in illegal "commissions" on
a contract for the
sale by Thomson-CSF, a French government
arms company, of six
French frigates to Taiwan. He said that
the money, handled by
an SG subsidiary, was paid as a
registered securities
transfer to a
"nominee", a
stand-in for the real
beneficiary, and
that Thomson (now known as Thales)
didn't appear in the
transaction except in the Cedel
archives.
The kickbacks were
exposed after the 1993 murder of a naval
captain named Yin
Ching-feng, who had written a critical
report on the
purchase and its inflated $2.8 billion price.
Bûcher told Taipei
authorities that a third of the kickbacks
went to Taiwanese
generals and politicians, while the rest
was pocketed by
French officials. Taiwan courts sentenced 13
military officers and
15 arms dealers to between eight
months and life in
prison for bribery and leaking military
secrets.
In March, Bûcher will
testify before a French court
examining French
complicity. "SG is very much
implicated," he
told In These Times. "Taipei
police searches found
many records of transfers of
commissions"
relating to the frigates and also to the
sale of French Mirage
fighter planes. In New York, SG
spokesman Jim Galvin
denies that the bank had any
involvement in the
arms deal.
There has been no
legal action by the Luxembourg prosecutor
based on any of his
investigations. However, Clearstream
Banking, Lussi and
others have filed 10 lawsuits for libel
in Luxembourg,
France, Belgium and Switzerland against
Backes, Robert and
their publisher, Les Arenes. The first
case, Clearstream v.
Backes went to court in March in
Luxembourg. Another
case began its first hearings in Paris a
few days later. With
no sense of irony, the liquidator of
Russia's notorious
Menatep Bank is also suing the
authors and
publishers for damage to its reputation.
(Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who controlled
Menatep, did not
respond to a request for comment.)
Backes' knowledge and
records make him a valuable
investigative
partner, and he cooperates with numerous
authorities, though
he prefers not to say in which
countries. But his
agenda is larger than that. Backes is
lobbying for
oversight by an international public body.
Unlike banks,
Clearstream has no effective outside
surveillance. It is
audited by KPMG, one of the "big
five"
international accounting firms, which either has
been ignorant of or
has overlooked the non-published
accounts system. KPMG
announced last year it found "no
evidence" to
support the allegations made in
Révélation$, though
its report was not made public.
Local officials'
attempts to defend financial secrecy
are not surprising.
Luxembourg's multi-billion-dollar
financial sector
brings in 35 percent of GNP and gives the
inhabitants a per
capita income of more than $44,000, the
highest in the world.
(Next on the list are Liechtenstein,
Switzerland and
Bermuda, all money-laundering centers, with
the United States
fifth.) For years, local officials have
refused to provide
bank information to other countries.
But Luxembourg
authorities have turned their sights on
Backes. Using a March
2001 judicial order based on a
complaint made by
Lussi before he was fired, police raided
Backes' house on
September 19 in search of records. He
says they seized
unimportant documents and diskettes; he
keeps the microfiches
outside the country as "life
insurance."
"The raid was organized to impress
[others] not to
repeat what this dangerous guy Ernest Backes
has done," he
says. "Those who know me well know
I am not at all
impressed by such a raid."
Lucy Komisar is a New
York journalist who has spent the past
five years
investigating the international offshore bank and
corporate secrecy
system. To order a copy of Révélation$ (in
French), visit
www.arenes.fr.
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