Armies of Liberation

Several years ago the Central Bank began stamping the bills as counterfeit to prevent General Ali Mohsen from putting them back in circulation, as told by a bank employees present at the time. As often occurs, the counterfeiting rings are often simultaneously engaged in other criminal activity such as drug smuggling etc.

Counterfeit Saudi riyals sees upsurge in Yemen, ARAB NEWS Published: Jan 5, 2011

SANAA: Yemen has seen a recent upsurge in the number of currency counterfeit crimes and police reports show that the scale of the problem in the country is grave. A day hardly goes by without a new case involving fake currencies being disclosed. (Read on …)

Below an additional report on banking in Yemen which notes only two per cent of the population has bank accounts. Bloomberg

Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, plans to sell $500 million of local currency Islamic bonds for the first time to fund the budget deficit and spur the Shariah-compliant finance industry.
(Read on …)

CBY already injected 20% of its reserves as purchasing power shrinks amid continued public insecurity. A Yemeni economist earlier postulated that excessive money laundering has had a negative impact on the value of the riyal.

Yemen Observer Yemeni riyal fell further against the US dollar as the central bank pumped $57 million into the exchange market, the latest of a series of cash injections to support the tumbling currency which hit a record low this week. (Read on …)

Nice. But they got a good chunk of funds already via this pipeline.

AlawasatAsharq Al-Awsat – Al Qaeda revealed on Thursday the identity of one of the most dangerous women in the organization who was detained by Saudi security forces last February. Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Haylah al Qassir was arrested as part of a group of 113 terrorists for having links to Al Qaeda in Yemen. The arrests were announced last March.

An audiotape attributed to Al Qaeda was released on Thursday in which Saeed al Shehri, a deputy leader within Al Qaeda, called for kidnapping Saudi government officials in revenge for Haylah al Qassir’s arrest that was carried out by the Saudi authorities in Riyadh. Al Qassir is described as one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous women. (Read on …)

Yemen Times

Dr. Mohamed Jubran, professor of economics, to the Yemen Times:
Money laundering is responsible for the devaluation of the Yemeni riyal

He is often quoted by local newspapers and television channels on economic issues, and is well-known among economic reporters and business editors. He used to be a member of the Islah party, but now only focuses on the economy.

In his sitting room at the week-end, he finishes writing up a research paper on his laptop and scans a study about the economy of Yemen. This is Dr. Mohamed Jubran, professor of economics at Sana’a University and he is the person who always finds the courage to speak his mind on any activity related to the economy, business or banking. (Read on …)

What is that, about 400K US? And the story is the Health and Education Ministries withdrew the 400K for salaries from a bank in Zanzibar, Abyan and were driving back when they were highjacked and robbed, and no one could call the nearby military camp because the phone lines were cut by the state earlier in the month. There was an earlier bank robbery in Aden.

Yemen Observer Unknown gunmen seized a car carrying the salaries of the Education and Health Ministries in Loder District in Abyan on Wednesday in the biggest armed robbery operation. (Read on …)

After years of delay during which this bill was brought forth and then rejected by Parliament, Yemen passed a counter-terror financing law. The argument against the law was that it would hamper efforts to fund “legitimate resistance” movements like Hamas and other charitable giving. Also recall in 2005, when the UN circulated a list of 144 bank accounts associated with al Qaeda and/or the Taliban, Yemen closed one and took no further action in subsequent years. See also my category Parliament.

SABA: The parliament ratified on Tuesday the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism.

Concluding its second session for the second term of the seventh annual round, the parliament also approved a law draft against money laundering and terrorism financing as well as a law draft of amending some articles of the civil procedures law.

Ratifying the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism by the parliament comes within the state efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms.

Companies habitually defaulting should be blacklisted, but its important to determine if this is a political move. Very few government actions in Yemen are politically neutral. Yemen Economist:

Central Bank of Yemen tends seriously to develop about 58 trade companies and exchange offices and shops on the blacklist of the bank, so as not honoring their financial obligations to commercial and investment banks operating in Yemen and abroad. (Read on …)

al Sahwa

To read the assessment of the Government’s report on its performance over the past year ..
إقتصادي يمني: الحكومة أضاعت 146 مليار ريال من القروض والمنح Economic Yemen: The government lost 146 billion rials in loans and grants
20/08/2009 الصحوة نت – مصطفى الصبري: 20/08/2009 Sahwa Net – Mustafa Sabri:

انتقد الدكتور/ محمد جبران ـ Criticized Dr. / Mohammed Gibran أستاذ المحاسبة والاقتصاد في جامعة صنعاء ـ تقرير الأداء الحكومي 2008م الصادر عن رئاسة الوزراء والذي قدم لمجلس النواب خلال الشهر الماضي. Professor of Accounting and Economics at the University of Sanaa on the government in 2008 issued by the Prime Minister and submitted to the House of Representatives last month.

وقال جبران: إن التقرير يفتقر إلى المنهجية العلمية والمهنية كما تفتقر الأرقام التي احتواها إلى أي مصدر Gibran said: The report lacks the scientific methodology and professional and lack the numbers to the issues contained in any source
رسمي كبيانات الحساب الختامي، وتقارير الجهاز المركزي للرقابة والمحاسبة، وتقرير البنك المركزي السنوي، وكتاب الإحصاء السنوي. Official data of the final account, and reports of the central control and accounting, and the annual report of the Central Bank, the Statistical Yearbook. (Read on …)

SANAA, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Yemen, beset by internal strife and tumbling oil income, expects economic growth of 5 percent in 2009, with delays to gas exports putting an earlier 7 percent target beyond reach, a central bank official said on Thursday.

Ibrahim al-Nahari, sub-governor for foreign banking operations, told Reuters in an interview that gross domestic product (GDP) had expanded 4.66 percent last year…

Hisham Sharaf, vice minister for planning and international cooperation, told Reuters the unspent funds (ed-from the 2006 donors conference) total $3.2 billion, aside from aid from bilateral donors with existing programmes…

Oil revenue dropped 75 percent to $665 million in the first six months from the same period last year due to the combined impact of lower prices and declining production, Nahari said. (Read on …)

Update 2: from the YO The News Yemen website cited the Manager of the Administrative affairs at Arab Bank Headquarters in Sana’a, Mr. Mansour Ghazi, as saying that the entire news report is baseless and that there was a misunderstanding about the entire issue. Oh well that explains it.

Update: Yes the money is missing, the robbery took place next to a police station by persons wearing police uniforms who fired into the air, also in custody bank officials, Saba

Original Post: Did they get away with the money? This could be anybody pulling this stunt.

London Free Press Yemeni authorities arrested half a dozen men, whom they say are affiliated to al-Qaida, on suspicion of robbing a bank’s armoured car, a security official said Wednesday.

The men are accused of a brazen daylight robbery of $500,000 from an armoured car of the Arab Bank that took place Monday in the port city of Aden.

The official said the militants were seeking to finance their operations and recruit fighters around the country.

The six men are now being interrogated, the official added on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Jakarta bombers tied to Mid-East militants, The Age

TIES between Middle Eastern extremists and the terrorist cell that launched suicide bombing attacks on two hotels in Jakarta are emerging after the arrest of an alleged financier of the plot who lived in Saudi Arabia… Noordin, South-East Asia’s most wanted man, remains at large, with police in Bekasi, outside Jakarta, saying they have begun inspecting women wearing burqas, believed to be a favourite disguise of his.

Financial links between Noordin’s cell and Middle East militants, including al-Qaeda, are being closely investigated by Indonesian police, according to counter-terrorism sources….As well as the reported arrests, there is another apparent Arab connection to Noordin’s cell.

Saifuddin Jaelani, an Islamic cleric who allegedly recruited at least one of the suicide bombers for the hotel attacks, spent four years in Yemen as a student.

Raising further suspicions about his activities in the country, where al-Qaeda has had a significant presence for more than a decade, Saifuddin did not register as a student while he was living there.

According to the Jakarta Post, he received several large payments from Yemen in the lead-up to the bombings.

The information could not be verified, but Indonesia’s Centre for Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis has detected 68 financial transactions possibly linked to terrorism between 2004 and 2009.

PSA: There may be some odd, boring and entirely out of sequence stuff popping up over the next week, as I move private posts and drafts from the back to the front. The internal search function works more completley on posts and I need to be zipping at the moment. The stability of Yemen’s banking system is actually rather important, and its distorted, as all systems in Yemen are, by corruption.

YO 5/22,

Hafez Mayad, the Chairman of the board of Cooperative and Agricultural Credit bank (CAC Bank) confirmed that Yemeni officials, sheikhs, and well-known people are indebted YR5 billion to CAC Bank. He said that during the press conference, held last Wednesday during the ceremony for the launching of their e-banking product.

Mayad stated that this indebt came as result of the absence of follow up mechanisms in the previous time. He clarified those people (plunderers as he called them) who are indebted to CAC bank are the main factor of its failure. Mayad was responding to claims by Mps that the CAC Bank abandoned its main role related to support agricultural sector.

He said that CAC Bank will not be a resource of enrichment for plunderers anymore.
In terms of implementing government policy related to supporting the agricultural sector, Mayad said, “We work on supporting this sector by governmental money only, not by money of depositors. I mean that it is not allowed for any one to use money of depositors to support any one.”

The e-banking product is a banking system which allows you to make most of your banking transactions at anytime wherever you are through the internet, Mayad said. CAC Bank international e-banking is considered to be the first system in Yemen and in the Middle East which generates different functionality related to banking services, high technology and security, Mayad said.

Mayad said CAC Bank occupied the first rank in the financing of economic sectors during 2008 according to the report issued by Central Bank of Yemen, achieving the growth rate of 46.5 percent and contributed to the financing of the economic sector by 35.6 percent at the level of the banking sector.

The EU apparently has given up hope of Yemen passing that stalled terror financing law. (The law may inhibit contributions to “legitimate resistance” like Hamas, Yemeni MP’s say in explaining the inaction.) And now the strategy turns to asking other countries to strengthen monitoring of transfers by expat Yemenis and others into Yemen. The FSAT report was quite detailed in demonstrating that its a question of capacity as well as will; Yemeni investigators wait for a completed report to land on their desks. The conclusion was Yemeni money laundering efforts are in their infancy; that was 2007 I think, and not much has improved. The financial transfers to Fahd al Quso were proof enough of that. Tightening up on the external remittances is an obvious step when the internal controls are literally non-existant. Border control is another area of deficiency, especially with the Yemeni Coast Guard and Border Guard getting into frays on a regular basis.

UK News: Gulf Arab countries should help Pakistan and Yemen bolster security in the face of rising militant violence that could spread their way, the European Union’s anti-terrorism chief said Monday.

Gulf authorities should also tighten controls on possible transfers of funds to militant groups through Pakistani and Yemeni expatriates living in the oil-exporting region, Gilles de Kerchove told Reuters.

“It’s a question of knowing if we can together work with Gulf countries to try and avoiding Pakistan and Yemen becoming what we commonly call ‘failed states’ and gradually safe havens for al Qaeda organizations,” he said on the sidelines of a conference on terror financing.

“We are witnessing a regionalisation of al Qaeda, in North Africa, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula,” he said, referring to various groups using al Qaeda’s name. “It’s urgent that we help Pakistan and Yemen strengthen their anti-terrorism apparatus.”

—-

De Kerchove said Gulf countries needed to do more to combat money laundering that could benefit militants…

He said Saudi Arabia should tighten control along its long and porous border with Yemen…”Much of the anti-terrorism campaign has been led by the Pakistani army, an army that has not be adequately trained to deal with an insurgency,” he said. “In Yemen, there is a huge amount of work to be done (and) a weakening state apparatus.”

The CBY is another mess. Counterfeiting of Saudi Riyals is another concern.

Yemen Times

The political situation remains challenging. A concerted government campaign has succeeded in suppressing Al-Qaida activities but the group retains the ability to engage in sporadic incidents such as a recent attack on Korean tourists. The Government also reached an agreement with the opposition to delay parliamentary elections for two years, thereby averting a major political crisis. Finally, demonstrations in the South have become less frequent and violent. Concerns remain, however, over the fragile peace accord with the Houthis signed in July 2008, which is threatened by intermittent clashes and mutual accusations of breaches. (Read on …)

Drops 8 points in first quarter, News Yemen

Governor of Central Bank of Yemen Ahmed al-Samawi said on Tuesday that the rate of inflation was decreased to 2.1 percent last February compared to 10.2 percent at the end of last year.

In a meeting with the delegation of the International Monetary Fund, al-Samawi confirmed that the condition of the banking system in the country is safe and was not affected by the global financial crisis as there is not local stock market and measures adopted to avoid such crisis in the banks.

According to the National’s souces in Pakistan, Waheshi replaces Zarchawi. So again, still, there’s that AQ Central tie in to that was so hard for some to fathom. Both UBL and Zawaheri agreed to the promotion. If the reporting is correct, Waheshi is designated to plot attacks, collect funds and coordinate training.

Waheshi doesn’t know he’s a stooge, a strawman, probably being set up for assassination. The Yemeni regime, which knows where he is curently, is going to kill him sooner or later and Saleh will be a hero. Maybe some attacks prior against western or Saudi targets, but not the LNG. The West will claim it as a victory, another AQ number 2 bites the dust. Everyone will be happy, something similiar to the actual story of al Harithy, and no still witnesses! Too bad Fawaz al Raibi wasn’t taken alive, he had a lot to say. Where is Abu Bakr these days?

The Nation, PK: PESHAWAR – Abu Nasar Al-Haweshi from Yemen has been nominated as Al-Qaeda’s leader for Gulf Region, The Nation learnt through highly-placed reliable sources on Sunday.

Belonging to Yemen, Abu Nasar Al-Haweshi, also known as Abu Baseer, is active in Al-Qaeda since long. His nomination aimed at filling the office, which had fallen vacant after the death of Abu Zarqavi in Iraq in 2006.

According to the sources, there was no any replacement of Zarqavi since his death. Now both Osama bin Laden and Dr Aiman Al Zawahiri agreed on assigning the task to Abu Nasar Al Haweshi. The assignments of Abu Nasar, beside engineering and plotting, include collection of donation for war from the Gulf region and facilitating the militants in getting training from border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Abu Nasar was considered fifth amongst leading Al Qaeda commanders like Abu Laith Al Laibi, Abu Zarqavi, Abdullah Kurd and Abdul Hadi. Both Abdul Hadi and Abu Zarqavi were killed in Iraq, Abu Laith Al Laibi in North Waziristan and Abdullah Kurd in Qandahar Afghanistan.

Abu Nasar remained in Duranta training camps during Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He also fought against the Northern Alliance, headed by late Ahmad Shah Mesud in Takhar, Hirat and Bagram regions. He had served Osama bin Laden as his security chief for a couple of months.

During his stay in Afghanistan, Abu Nasar remained very close to both former ministers Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund.

They forgot to mention Wahishi was originally sent to Afghanistan by Saleh’s uncle on his mother’s side, Ali Maqasa.

Money laundering is not a topic I know a lot about, but I would assume its important to the overall counter-terror package. There’s the report of the US financial assessment team on the Embassy’s website. The report notes Yemeni capacity is in its infancy and Yemen requires laws, law enforcement and investigative training.

But most of all what Yemen requires is political will or maybe even to finally pick a side. Which leads me to today’s post, where President Field Marshall Ali Abdullah Saleh asks the Parliament to think about thinking about and possibly discussing legislation designed to prevent money laundering that funds terror activity. In the past, parliamentarians have objected saying the measures would inhibit cash collection and flows to Hamas and the resistance in Gaza and other charitable works.

Gov. asks Parliament to consider terror & money laundering draft laws
Monday, 02-February-2009
Almotamar.net, Saba – The Parliament listened in its session held on Monday to the government’s letter over adding a number of draft laws and treaties in its current periods’ agenda.

The parliament agreed on what has been included in the letter and referred the draft laws and treaties to specialized committees for studying them and reporting to the parliament on them.

Kinda like the UN, yes? They’re going to schedule a time to discuss the request to discuss. Meanwhile Parliament is a facade that exists to legitimize Saleh. He decides who gets what leadership position and what legislation will pass. So its just more of the Field Marshal dancing to the terror beat. Actually the Central Bank instituted the practice of stamping counterfeit bills several years ago because otherwise Ali Mohsen would take the forgeries and put them back into circulation. There was some funny story once about bills that were only printed on one side.

Good. Now some follow-up, enforcement and updated laws would be nice.

Yemen intensifies measures on combating money laundering
Tuesday, 25-November-2008
Almotamar.net – The Central Bank of Yemen CBY has embarked on taking a bunch of additional monitoring and preventive measures and arrangements on financial, organisations and private federations aimed at fighting money laundering and financing terror and protection of the banking establishment in Yemen against any dubious financial activities.

A source at the CBY told almotamar.net Tuesday that taking those measures by the CBY comes after suspecting a number of cases concerning money laundering in some banking dealings between a number of financial establishments and foreign sides , indicating that the CBY has lately begun entrusted a number of specialised monitoring committees to make field visits and assess all banking and accountancy procedures of local financial establishments in order to asses extent of their commitment to controls issued by the State Security Council regarding money laundering. In addition the committees are to report to the Central bank by those establishments on any suspected banking dealings pertaining to individuals or entities banned for dealing with them on charges of funding terror or supporting suspicious activities.

According to the source the CBY has made a list of obligatory instructions directed to local banking establishments. These are part of measures for fighting money laundering and financing terror.

The source maintained that the Central Bank forces all banks to create unit for gathering information on money laundering operations and to appoint specialists in them in addition to forcing banks to conduct accurate investigations in all banking operations and dealings.

Winner for run-on sentence of the day:

The US financial assessment team said efforts to counter money laundering are in their infancy in Yemen, (quite a bad spot for that) because not only of the absence of a legal framework (the law pending in parliament might impinge on contributions for charity purposes. lawmakers claim) but also because of the lack of awareness of standard investigative proceedures themselves.

al-Motamar

Almotamar.net – An official at the Central bank of Yemen (CBY) on Tuesday disclosed 11 cases of suspected money laundering in Yemen director of banking studies institute of the VBY Yassin Sharaf al-Qadasy said, at a symposium on money laundering and its dangers on the on the national economy organised today the centre for studies and economic information in collaboration with the banking magazine, that two of the suspected cases were referred to the prosecution to take legal measures about them.

While al-Qadasy accused the present law of money laundering of shortcoming as it is confined to certain crimes under the globalization of the crime he looks forward to a draft law still under consideration at the parliament and that draft law was drafted according to international criteria. He added that Yemen fully committed with regard of money laundering.