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A group of MEPs is calling for action as further details of an alleged covert operation conducted by the Colombian intelligence agency (DAS) continue to emerge, with one of its reported aims being to undermine the authority of the European Parliament.
Recently released documents that were confiscated from the DAS by the Colombian Attorney General’s office highlight the nature of “Operation Europe.”

The alleged action in Europe includes phone tapping and the interception of emails (Photo: Flickr.com)
Its objective was to “neutralise the influence of the European judicial system, the European Parliament’s human rights sub-committee, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,” reads one text seen by this website.

Following lines suggest the process of discrediting these institutions should be carried out by waging a “legal war.”

News of the Colombian agency’s activities targeting national and international human rights defenders, NGOs and democratic organisations, of which ‘Operation Europe’ was only one part, first broke in the Colombian media in early 2009.

As the scandal grew, former right-wing President Alvaro Uribe finally moved to stem the criticism by introducing legislation late last year to overhaul the controversial agency, although it has yet to be approved by the country’s legislature.

But a group of MEPs, primarily from the European Parliament’s Green group, are not satisfied, fearing that the reported campaign of close surveillance and threat-making against Bogota’s critics may simply continue under a different guise.

Their concerns are backed up by the Colombian Commission of Jurists, among others, a group of legal activists that says the law does not “establish adequate, effective and independent oversight of intelligence activities.”

Green MEP Ulrike Lunacek is one of those to have put questions to the European Commission and Council of Ministers, but said the answers she received were “not satisfactory.”

In responding to the queries last month, the commission said it was “well aware of the reports relating to alleged illegal spying by the DAS” and has raised the matter with the Colombian authorities on several occasions.

The EU executive body added that it has faith in the current investigation being carried out by the Colombian Prosecutor General’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office and has been informed of the draft law to liquidate the DAS and set up a new agency.

Others want more, however.

“There should be a full police and judicial investigation of the alleged crimes,” said centre-left MEP Richard Howitt. “All of us at member-state level and within the European institutions should take full responsibility for making sure such investigations are conducted.”

Hopes for the Belgian Presidency

Unhappy with the current level of action, Ms Lunacek says she has greater hopes for the next six months, with Spain set to hand over the reins of the EU’s rotating presidency on 1 July.

“The Spanish government is very in favour of the free trade agreement with Colombia [initialed in May], and they don’t want anything to jeopardise that,” the Austrian deputy told EUobserver. “But then the Belgians will take over the presidency and they have citizens that have been proven to have suffered phone tapping by the DAS.”

One of those Belgian citizens who claims to have been a victim of DAS activities is Paul-Emile Dupret, a political advisor to the European Parliament’s left-wing United European Left (GUE) group.

“My name is mentioned on the DAS file several times,” he says, believing it to be partially the result of his involvement in the organisation of an anti-Uribe protest in 2004 when the ex-President visited the European Parliament.

Several months after the protest, Mr Dupret was arrested upon landing in the United States. “I was interrogated when I arrived, put in prison for 24 hours, asked dozens of questions about by views on Colombia,” he says. “Since then I have been prevented from returning to the US. They now consider me a terrorist.”

The close ties between Washington and Bogota are well known.

The Belgian citizen is currently working with a group of other victims and a team of lawyers, and plans to present their collective case against the Colombian agency in the Belgian courts this July, the first European citizens to do so.

Certain European NGOs also claim to have been the target of a concerted campaign to discredit their activities and tarnish their reputations. Amongst them is the Belgian faith-based NGO Broederlijk Delen, whose representative Patricia Verbauwhede attended a press conference in parliament this week.

“The EU needs to make a statement on the DAS,” she said. “We request an investigation of the DAS on European soil and we feel the EU should not conclude its free trade agreement with Colombia.”

So far the sought-after strong statements and investigations have not been forthcoming.

By ANDREW WILLIS
BRUSSELS, 25. JUN 2010, 09:28
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ILLUSTRATION BY LEO GARCIAWhen the editorial staff of Semana, a feisty Bogotá-based weekly news magazine, was closing out their Feb. 21 edition, they couldn’t help but notice an unmarked car parked for several hours in front of their building. This came as no surprise to editor- in-chief Alfonso Cuéllar, who supervised a six-month long investigation of illegal wiretapping by Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security, known in Colombia as the DAS.

“We knew that both the good guys and the bad guys were aware that we were working on the story,” said Cuéllar in a recent interview from Bogotá. “That’s partly why the DAS was shredding all of the evidence a month before it broke.” Backed up by numerous sources and documents, Semana exposed how members of the DAS were illegally spying on Supreme Court judges, former Colombian president César Gaviria, opposition politicians, prominent journalists and even high-ranking members of the ruling party.

Amongst a roster of Machiavellian allegations — from KGB-like tactics used to create “vice files” on prominent politicians, to the selling of sensitive intelligence to narco traffickers and those with links to illegal paramilitary organizations and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas — is one charge that will be of particular interest to the United States, especially as the country contemplates the fallout from its own domestic surveillance scandal. The U.S. government, according to the Semana report, supplied the sophisticated interception devices used by the spies in Colombia.

NOT EVERYBODY IS SO AGNOSTIC

“It will be interesting to see if the rumors that are circulating in Bogotá, that the U.S. Embassy had a role in the wiretapping operation, turn out to be true,” said Joseph Fitsanakis, senior editor of IntelNews and a longtime intelligence analyst. “It won’t be the first time.”

According to sources in Bogotá, the DAS used a system called Phantom 3000, marketed by a company called TraceSpan Communications, a private U.S. company with a development center in Israel. “In this age of high security threats, when foreign terrorists and local criminals use the Internet for communication, TraceSpan is proud to provide Law Enforcement Authorities a new means to fight back,” said Hanan Herzberg, TraceSpan founder and CEO, in a press release for the product. “The system’s small footprint makes it an ideal solution for any law enforcement agency as well as the perfect solution for the Central Office.”

This wouldn’t be the first time that U.S.- supplied intelligence gear was used by the Colombian government. In 2006, the U.S. State Department awarded a $5 million contract to California-based Oakley Networks to provide “Internet surveillance software” to a specialized unit of Colombia’s National Police. The details of that deal emerged when the National Police were accused of spying on a variety of Colombian human-rights groups, as well as U.S.-based interfaith organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation. Oakley Networks, now a subsidiary of the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon Co., bills itself as a “leader in insider threat monitoring and investigations,” that offers “sophisticated monitoring and discovery technologies.”

The Oakley Networks contract came as part of the more than $5 billion the United States has sent to Colombia since 2000 to fund Plan Colombia, ostensibly an effort to eradicate production of the coca leaf. The funding has continued despite the Colombian military’s ties to right-wing paramilitary groups and to the killing of union leaders, human rights activists and indigenous people.

U.S. REMAINS A KEY FRIEND

In Bogotá, the ramifications of the Semana investigation were immediate. The offices of the DAS were raided by the Colombian prosecutor general’s office, the day following Semana’s original story, and the agency’s director general, Capt. Jorge Alberto Lagos, resigned the following week. The entire high command of the agency submitted letters of resignation and Colombia’s attorney general recently declared that 22 DAS detectives had been fired and would face “judicial and administrative investigations,” while also intimating that more dismissals are coming down the pike. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, for years the Bush administration’s staunchest ally in Latin America, quickly denied any role in the imbroglio and declared that wiretapping would be immediately reassigned to the National Police. As this was the third such scandal in the DAS under Uribe’s watch, not everybody is taking the denial at face value.

The scandal broke just four months after the former head of the DAS resigned after admitting it spied on a prominent leftist politician who had exposed ties between Uribe and rightwing death squads.

“I don’t think it’s a very plausible argument that these were just low-level characters in the DAS, who were setting up these illegal wiretaps on their own initiative,” said Lorenzo Morales, online editor at Semana. “The DAS receives its orders directly from the [Colombian] president and his inner circle.”

The spy scandal does not appear to have dampened U.S.-Colombian relations. Semana broke the story just before Colombia sent a highlevel delegation to meet with Obama administration officials. On Feb. 25, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez Merizalde by saying, “It’s a real pleasure to have the representative of a country that has made so many strides and so much progress, and we have a lot to talk about because there is so much we have in common to work on.” Less than two months later, at the Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama sat next to Uribe and discussed the possibility of a U.S.-Colombian “free trade” agreement — a deal Obama opposed on the campaign trail.

In Bogotá, U.S. embassy officials have not denied playing a role in the Colombian spy operation.

“We have worked with the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) in joint and regional counter-narcotics efforts in a positive and straightforward manner, including providing equipment,” states a diplomatic official at the embassy. “We have no knowledge that any equipment has been misused.”

Semana’s Alfonso Cuéllar says he hopes the paper’s report will put an end to illegal spying.

“I think that one thing we found in our investigation, at least amongst the DAS officials, was that some of these guys don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, they think it’s normal,” he said. “They say, what’s wrong with checking out people that could be potential enemies of the state, or adversaries of the president? Hopefully, one of the things these revelations will get people thinking about is that no, this is not normal.”

Joseph Huff-Hannon is an independent journalist based in Brooklyn who writes on politics and culture.

A coalition of U.S. organizations have called on the U.S. embassy in Bogotá to pressure Colombian officials to stop spying on human rights and peace organizations.

Between 2006 and 2008, Colombian agencies reportedly intercepted more than 150 email accounts of groups including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest interfaith peace organization in the United States.

“[This] puts at risk our field team and the communities we work with, by suggesting that those working for peace and human rights are subversive, legitimate targets for right-wing violence,” said John Lindsay-Poland, co-director of the Fellowship’s Task Force on Latin America.

The spy operation began after the U.S. State Department awarded a $5 million contract to the California-based Oakley Networks to provide “internet surveillance software” to the intelligence unit of the Colombian National Police as part of Plan Colombia.

“U.S. taxpayers were apparently paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate U.S. and Colombian humanitarian organizations,” wrote the authors of a December 2008 letter to U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield in Bogotá.

In addition, the Fellowship of Reconciliation fears a June 2007 break-in at the organization’s Bogotá office was connected to the surveillance campaign.

“We’ve also now learned that the Colombian military paid for computer hard drives of interest to intelligence’ agencies … These stolen laptops contained sensitive files on our work with members of Colombian peace communities,” Lindsay-Poland said.

BYJOSEPH HUFF-HANNON
MAY 14, 2009 ISSUE #135 —MIKE BURKE
Find this story at 14 May 2009

Copyright https://indypendent.org/

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Venezuela has announced the arrest of a number of people whom it accuses of being agents spying for Colombia.
Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Arias Cardenas said they were members of Colombia’s DAS state security agency.
He said they were “captured carrying out actions of espionage”, without giving any further details.
Ties between the two nations have been frozen since July when Colombia said it would let the US army use its military bases for anti-drugs operations.
The agreement has caused alarm among some of Colombia’s neighbours, who object to an increased US military presence in the region.
When news of the deal first broke in August, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that “winds of war” were blowing across the continent.
‘Serious event’
Mr Cardenas said on Tuesday that Caracas would soon produce evidence to back up its claims in the spying row.
“Do not underestimate the importance of an event as serious and as grave as the capture of Colombian DAS security agents committing acts of espionage,” he told reporters in Caracas.
Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela, Maria Luisa Chiappe, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying she had no information about DAS agents working on Venezuelan soil.

Page last updated at 22:52 GMT, Tuesday, 27 October 2009

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BOGOTA, Sept 18 Colombia’s state intelligence agency will be dissolved, the government said on Friday, following a flood of scandals in which agents are accused of wire-tapping judges, reporters and opposition politicians.

Former officials of the DAS agency are also being investigated for taking bribes in exchange for providing right-wing cocaine-funded paramilitaries with hit lists of union leaders and human rights activists.

Agents are accused of continuing to listen in on the phone conversations of politicians, rights workers and journalists despite public outcry over the practice.

“The DAS will be dissolved in order to make way for a new civilian intelligence agency,” DAS chief Felipe Munoz said in a statement posted on Colombia’s presidential website.

“A definitive change is needed,” the statement said.

The new agency will offer “absolute trust and transparency,” it said.

The move could help allay fears in Washington among Democratic lawmakers who have blocked a trade deal with Colombia based on accusations that President Alvaro Uribe has allowed local union leaders to be persecuted with impunity.

Uribe, Washington’s main ally in South America, said on Thursday that the DAS should be dismantled and that the national police could take over many of its responsibilities.

A bill will be presented to Congress next week proposing the end of the DAS and outlining the structure of the new intelligence agency, according to Munoz’s statement.

More than 40 former DAS employees are being investigated over the telephone-bugging accusations.

Despite these and other scandals, Uribe is seen as a hero to many for his crackdown on Marxist guerrillas. He may stand for an unprecedented third term next year if his supporters manage to amend the constitution to allow him to run.

Margaret Sekaggya, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders, earlier on Friday called on the DAS to stop its illegal monitoring of activists.

She said the surveillance has been used to trump up false charges against rights workers, who are regularly accused by government officials of supporting the outlawed rebel army known as the FARC.

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:49pm EDT

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BOGOTA – Colombia’s DAS security service fired 22 detectives, apparently in connection with an investigation into the illegal wiretapping of leading public figures, the press said on Tuesday.

Monday witnessed “one of the biggest purges in the recent history of the DAS” after a meeting of director with the services internal-affairs panel, El Tiempo newspaper said.

“When questioned about the reason for the dismissals, spokespeople for the agency said Muñoz affected them making use of the discretionary authority the law gives him, and that there will another purge this Friday,” the daily said.

The fired detectives continue to face judicial and administrative investigations.

The acting chief justice of Colombia’s Supreme Court, Jaime Arrubla, said on Tuesday in an interview with La W radio that Attorney General Mario Iguaran told him senior officials appear to have had a role in the illegal wiretaps.

While Caracol Radio reported that the AG’s office has evidence showing four separate groups within DAS conducted the illegal eavesdropping, using equipment provided by the United States and Britain.

Each group was assigned targets by senior DAS officials, Caracol said, and the groups’ files were found to contain information about the credit reports and personal finances of magistrates and court employees.

“Notable was the existence of a folder marked ‘Vices and Weaknesses,’ in which is provided a detailed report about very intimate matters of opposition political leaders and judges. They provided details about sexual preferences, whether or not the people had lovers, if they consumed liquor or drugs,” Caracol Radio said.

In late February, the scandal over the unlawful wiretaps forced President Alvaro Uribe to announce that he would no longer allow DAS to conduct electronic surveillance.

Uribe said then that the National Police would take over responsibility for monitoring conversations via telephone and the Internet.

The story was broken in January by Colombian newsweekly Semana, which said the targets of the spying included Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos – seen as a future presidential hopeful – and the head of the National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo.

Also monitored were former President Cesar Gaviria, erstwhile Supreme Court Chief Justice Francisco Javier Ricaurte, who has frequently sparred with Uribe; and several of the country’s most influential journalists.

Wiretapping scandals are nothing new in Colombia.

In 2007, Uribe sacked his top police chiefs after the telephone bugging of opposition members, state officials and journalists came to light.

The previous DAS director, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, resigned late last year after admitting her subordinates had been spying on opposition Sen. Gustavo Petro, who has been a key figure in exposing ties between Uribe allies and right-wing paramilitaries.

Another previous DAS director, Jorge Noguera, is behind bars while under investigation for allegedly colluding with the militias.

Petro said in February that the administration was behind the latest illegal wiretaps, but Uribe has vehemently denied the accusation, saying that “a criminal gang” operating within the agency and at the service of drug traffickers was responsible. EFE

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BOGOTA (Reuters) – La Central de Inteligencia de Colombia, inmersa en un escándalo de espionaje, siguió interceptando ilegalmente comunicaciones telefónicas de congresistas para establecer sus posiciones ante un referendo sobre la reelección presidencial, dijo el domingo una revista.

La nueva denuncia podría aumentar las críticas contra el Gobierno del presidente Alvaro Uribe, por la falta de medidas eficaces para controlar la agencia de seguridad, bajo su mando directo, en momentos en que la Cámara de Representantes se dispone a votar en último debate un referendo sobre reelección.

El escándalo en el Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) estalló en febrero después de que la revista Semana aseguró que funcionarios del organismo de seguridad interceptaban ilegalmente comunicaciones de magistrados, jueces, periodistas y funcionarios del Gobierno.

Después de la denuncia la Fiscalía General ocupó la sede de la central de inteligencia, confiscó algunos de los equipos de interceptaciones y Uribe le suspendió las funciones de espionaje.

“¿Qué es lo que está pasando en las últimas semanas y qué nos interesa? Simple: el referendo. Hay que saber en qué están y qué están pensando los políticos”, dijo a Semana uno de los funcionarios encargados de las interceptaciones que no se identificó.

La Cámara de Representantes se alista para discutir y votar esta semana en último debate el texto de un referendo que busca habilitar a Uribe para buscar su segunda reelección inmediata en el 2010.

El director del DAS, Felipe Muñoz, solicitó a la Fiscalía investigar las denuncias del medio periodístico, negó interceptaciones desde la central de inteligencia y anunció su disposición de colaborar con las averiguaciones en una rueda de prensa.

El escándalo que se inició en febrero provocó la renuncia y destitución de más de 30 funcionarios de la Central de Inteligencia, en la que laboran 6.500 funcionarios.

(Reporte de Luis Jaime Acosta. Editado por Javier López de Lérida)
domingo 30 de agosto de 2009 23:28 GYT Imprimir [-] Texto [+]

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CARACAS – The Venezuelan government presented on Thursday what officials called “irrefutable evidence” that neighboring Colombia has dispatched spies to Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba as part of an ambitious, CIA-financed operation.

Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami detailed the contents of documents allegedly originating with Colombia’s DAS security service and unearthed since the apprehension of two suspected Colombian on Venezuelan soil.

He said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was fully aware of the espionage carried out by the DAS, which reports directly to the office of the head of state and has been repeatedly caught spying on journalists, judges and opposition politicians in its own country.

El Aissami said the purported DAS documents refer to three operations: “Salomon,” targeting Ecuador; “Phoenix,” aimed at Cuba, and “Falcon,” directed at Venezuela.

He said the information was compiled in the course of a DAS internal investigation about a leak of classified information.

The minister did not say how he obtained the DAS report.

One of those interviewed in the DAS probe, “Carlos Orguela Orguela, Colombian identification card No. 79,596,402,” told questioners that Operation Salomon involved 144 agents and that the funding came from DAS and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

The U.S. mission, El Aissami said, “pays the rent for the sham office” used by the spies.

“With operational support given by the DAS and the CIA they accomplished the recruitment of high-profile human sources who currently provide strategic information to the DAS,” the Venezuelan official said.

Orguela said the results of the spy efforts were relayed to Uribe and then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos “in three official presentations and an informal one.”

El Aissami said the aim of the Colombian espionage operation in Venezuela was “to collect information about the Bolivarian National Armed Forces” as well as “to suborn and corrupt officials” and enlist opposition politicians.

“We know who is involved here in Venezuela in Project Falcon,” the minister said, though providing no details.

Caracas obtained the documents pursuant to the capture of two DAS agents in Venezuela, El Aissami told the National Assembly.

He said that Eduardo Gonzalez Muñoz and Angel Jacinto Guanare were arrested Oct. 2 in Maracay, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Caracas, along with one of their sources, Venezuelan citizen Melvin Argenis Gutierrez.

In announcing the arrests of the suspected DAS agents earlier this week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recalled that he had previously alerted Uribe “about the conspiratorial activities” of Colombian operatives in Venezuela.

Those activities continue, the Venezuelan leader said, “above all now with the decision of Colombia” to sign an accord with Washington giving the U.S. Armed Forces access to seven Colombian military bases.

Officials in Bogota, which has received some $6 billion in mainly military aid from the United States since 2000, say the pact will be signed Friday.

Chavez, survivor of a 2002 coup attempt that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says took place with Washington’s advance knowledge if not active collusion, says the basing agreement poses a threat to his “Bolivarian Revolution.” EFE

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Claims of Collaboration with Drug Traffickers and Paramilitaries Sting the Country’s DAS Security Service and Support Allegations of DEA Corruption Published in Narco News

Though it has barely registered in the U.S. press, a national scandal is currently unfolding in Colombia, where a jailed high official of the Administrative Department for Security (DAS, in its Spanish initials) has been speaking freely with journalists about the extensive collaboration between the secret police agency and right-wing paramilitary groups.

Rafael García lost his post as DAS’ information technology chief after being charged with taking bribes from rightwing paramilitaries and narcos (often, one and the same). He now claims that DAS has been working for years, at least since Uribe’s 2002 election, in conjunction with the paras and their narco allies, sharing documents and intelligence to help kill and intimidate activists and unionists, help powerful drug traffickers avoid prosecution and murder informants. And investigative journalists in Colombia have verified and shed more light on a number of these claims.

Sound familiar? Narco News for the past four months has been uncovering a web of corruption linking the U.S.’s own DEA agents and other law enforcement personnel with drug traffickers and paramilitaries in Colombia. The new allegations about paramilitary and narco infiltration of the DAS make the “Kent Memo” (the internal Justice Department document claiming corruption in the DEA’s Bogotá office) all the more believable. They give a picture of a war on “drugs and terror” in Colombia that is corrupt to the core, and in which the most powerful narcos are seasoned experts at working with the same law enforcement entities charged with bringing them down.

Jorge Noguera on the cover of Cambio magazine.
The DAS is a strange beast, jumping in to many roles that in most countries would be handled by several different agencies. It handles immigration and tourist visas in the airports, provides security to important political figures, does intelligence work for the ongoing civil war (occasionally combating rebels alongside the army), and functions as a secret police force that can arrest and interrogate anyone deemed to be a security threat. What narco with half a brain wouldn’t try to infiltrate an organization that holds the keys to so many doors?

The DAS does not fall under any justice department but rather is directly controlled by the president’s office. It is small wonder, then, that such revelations about the DAS would surface under the watch of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the narcopresidente himself. The scandal has been brewing since last fall, when a DAS chief — who received his post shortly after Uribe took office — resigned after the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo discovered some tapes that let the cat out of the bag. As Ramón Acevedo reported for Narco News in November:

After many years of international and national pressure to abide by international human rights, the Colombian government continues to use the military and paramilitary “death squads” as main weapons against the civilian population and political opposition. For decades, the Colombian military and their paramilitary allies have enjoyed a high level of impunity from judicial processes. Most recently, on October 23rd the head of Colombia’s secret police (DAS), Jorge Noguera, resigned after the discovery of tapes discussing the agency’s alleged plans to give intelligence information to the paramilitaries. In addition, the paramilitaries have boasted many times of how they control more than 35 percent of the Colombian congress.
Until this scandal broke, Noguera had been living with his family in a luxury Bogotá penthouse that the DNE (Colombia’s drug control administration) had seized from a drug trafficker and turned over to him, with the DAS footing the bill for the hundreds of dollars a month in administration and utilities, according to Cambio magazine. The Colombian government claims it is now investigating Noguera, but Uribe quickly took him out of the spotlight by whisking him away to work at the Colombian consulate in Milan, Italy.

Semana magazine, one of the two major glossy newsmagazines in Colombia along with Cambio, published an extensive interview earlier this month with Rafael García. García spoke mainly of “Jorge 40,” one of the most powerful paramilitary chiefs in the country (and under indictment for drug trafficking in the U.S.). Semana’s journalists asked who else wielded influence over the spy agency.

SEMANA: Apart from paramilitary groups, was there also infiltration from and collaboration with known narco-traffickers?
R.G.: Giancarlo (Auqué, a former DAS intelligence director) and Jorge Norguera passed privileged information to Diego Montoya, and the idea wasn’t for him to hide but to warn him that there was a snitch in his organization who was reporting his location. Giancarlo himself told me this while he was working as intelligence director. Giancarlo told me that an intelligence report had arrived that said “Don Diego” was being pursued around the Cimitarra valley, and that we had to find a way to warn him because there was a snitch inside of his organization. If it was someone from the DAS, the police or the attorney general’s office, I don’t know. But we had to help him so that he could locate the informant. Jorge Noguera used Jimmy Nassar (one of his advisors) as his messenger because it was Nasser who had direct relations with the North Valley Cartel.

Wílber Alirio Varela
Photo: State Department
García is not the only one who has talked. DAS sub-director José Miguel Narváez turned on his boss, Noguera, last fall and was one of the main forces behind Noguera’s downfall. In September, Carlos Moreno, an agent who claimed he had been fired unfairly came to complain to Narváez, who recorded their conversation. Cambio obtained a copy of the recording and revealed its contents two weeks ago. According to that story:

The conversation’s content is hair-raising, and refers to extrajudicial killings apparently ordered by DAS’ Intelligence Directorate, deaths of informants that were no longer useful or represented some danger because they had too much information; theft of files from the Fiscalía (attorney general’s office) which mentioned DAS officials, such as files on drug trafficker Wílber Alirio Varela, alias “Jabón,” and the theft of reports from intelligence files on paramilitary boss Martín Llanos in return for huge payments.
Moreno says on tape that he personally stole files from the Fiscalía and believes that Varela requested this.

Damage Control: Attacking the Messenger

With just weeks to go in Colombia’s presidential race, in which Uribe stands for reelection on May 28, the DAS scandal threatens to tarnish his golden-boy image and dent his popularity, often seen by supporters and demoralized opponents as invincible.

Former DAS information chief Rafael García, for one, doesn’t buy Uribe’s cries of innocence. From his interview with Semana:

SEMANA: On several occasions you accompanied Noguera to the Palacio de Nariño (Colombia’s White House). How much did President Álvaro Uribe know about all this?
RG: I can’t answer that for you. I will tell the Fiscalía or a foreign government after I know my family is protected.

What I would say to the public is, could it be that (Peruvian president) Fujimori didn’t know what Vladimiro Montesinos was doing? I don’t know how someone could have done so many things without his superior finding out. What I am saying is the truth. If I have to pay with my life for daring to tell the truth, I will assume the consequences.

Predictably, both Noguera and Uribe have responded by lashing out at their critics in the press. Instead of any substantial reply to their questions or response to García’s claims, Cambio’s reporters received these answers when they contacted Noguera by phone at his bunker in Milan:

“I don’t care what a delinquent like Rafael García says about me.”
“García is capable of selling his own mother to get away with what he’s done. His claims are the product of an old grudge.”

“His words should have the same credibility as Pablo Escobar’s did in his time.”

“For a long time I have asked the Fiscalía to take my statement in order to definitively close this chapter.”

“I don’t trust the journalists of Colombia because they have done me a lot of damage. They publish whatever they want.”

Intimidating the press is certainly nothing new to DAS, though it is usually done more subtly. Last June, journalist and friend of Narco News César Jérez of Prensa Rural, who with his all-volunteer staff fearlessly reports on rural struggles in Colombia, especially around the paramilitary-infested oil town of Barrancabermeja and the Cimitarra valley, found himself being followed through the streets of that city by DAS agents.

And President Uribe has lived up to his reputation of total intolerance toward any criticism from civil society. In a recent interview with RCN radio, he said:

…You see, I am very respectful of the media and never take any action against them. But the media cannot hope to, they have to decide if they are serious or if they practice yellow journalism. If they are media that are part of a the democratic rule of law, or if they are media that stand in for the justice system. If they are media that respect instructions and exercise their right to the free press within those, or if they stand in for the justice system. If they are media that respect the Constitution, that respect people’s basic rights such as the right to their own dignity, or if they are media that commit any act of responsibility just to make sales.
…

The thing is that they are making hasty accusations here. Who knows what kind of political manipulation is behind journalism to create scandals or produce yellow journalism. These media outlets, like the one you cite [referring to Semana magazine], to make money, without daring to look at the other side, take people down and condemn them without even listening to them. They attack the good names of people and institutions if they feel like it, without listening to them…

This is Uribe’s favorite tactic: to separate his critics, be they human rights groups or commercial journalists, into “bad guys” and “good guys.” It reminds one of Joe McCarthy’s flailing in the face of Ed Murrow’s journalism, answering serious charges supported by evidence with accusations of subversion and communism.

That arrogant contempt for the press, for honest, independent investigation of elected officials, was eventually McCarthy’s downfall.

Overlap with Alleged DEA Corruption

Drug warriors will point to cases such as this one as proof that the U.S. needs to be involved in Colombia, as a sort of check to the corruption of local law enforcement. But the DAS is not the only law enforcement agency now accused of outing informants to help drug-trafficking allies.

Among the claims in the Kent memo is the allegation that corrupt Bogotá DEA agents leaked the name of one of their informants as part of their work protecting an unnamed narco-trafficker. The informant, former North Valley Cartel leader Jose Nelson Urrego, was trying to help Miami DEA agents investigate the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and their supposed involvement in the drug trade. But the Bogotá agents put as many obstacles in the Miami agents’ path as possible, eventually revealing him as an informant. As Bill Conroy reported in February:

Not only was Urrego in a position to reveal intimate details about the operations of Colombian drug traffickers, including possibly any links they might have to the allegedly corrupt DEA agents in Colombia, but he also could have opened up a can of worms with respect to narco-financing of Colombian political candidates.
In any event, the efforts by Fields and his fellow DEA agents in Miami to bring Urrego in-house as an informant came to an abrupt end, according to the Kent memo, when someone sent a document to Urrego containing confidential DEA information that revealed he was cooperating with the DEA. Whoever sent this document to Urrego was essentially threatening Urrego’s life, as being pointed out as a DEA collaborator can be a death sentence in the drug underworld.

A narco-trafficker alleged to be the source of that fax later took a lie detector test and told investigators he had received internal documents from DEA agents. Though he passed the polygraph, sources told Conroy, the results were covered up.

Other informants for the Florida agents also mysteriously ended up dead after running up against the allegedly corrupt Bogotá agents. From Conroy’s original story:

During the course of an investigation into a Colombian narco-trafficking operation, a group of DEA agents in Florida had zeroed in on several targets, with the help of several Colombian informants. Once the targets were identified as being part of the drug ring, they began to cooperate with the Florida-based agents.
“… They made startling revelations concerning DEA agents in Bogotá,” Kent writes. “They alleged that they were assisted in their narcotics activities by the [Bogotá] agents. Specifically, they alleged that the agents provided them with information on investigations and other law enforcement activities in Colombia.”

The traffickers eventually gave the Florida agents copies of confidential DEA reports, which the Bogotá agents allegedly had handed over to the traffickers. After the Florida agents turned these documents over to the OPR and OIG, one of them was put on “administrative leave” — the first sign that a cover-up was underway.

While the Florida agent was out on leave, the Bogotá agents set up a meeting with one of the informants.

“As the informant left that meeting, he was murdered,” Kent states. “Other informants … who also worked with the DEA group in Florida were also murdered. Each murder was preceded by a request for their identity by an agent in Bogotá.”

Beyond the similarity in the DEA and DAS agents’ alleged behavior — both outing informants to protect narcos — the names of the narco-traffickers involved also overlap.

David Tinsley, a supervisor with the DEA’s Miami office, oversaw “Operation Cali-Man,” and a follow-up operation called “Rainmaker.” Both were undercover operations targeting Colombian drug traffickers. Rainmaker, though, focused in part on corrupt Colombian law enforcers. It was just when Cali-Man was wrapping up and Rainmaker was beginning that Bogotá agents, including Leo Arreguin who was at the time in charge of the DEA’s Bogotá office, complained to headquarters about the operations and eventually convinced Washington to shut them down and place Tinsley on administrative leave. (Arreguin accused Tinsley of corruption involving one of his informants, Baruch Vega.) Several of the major traffickers that Tinsley had made cases against in Cali-Man were not indicted or prosecuted for years due to the charges against him.

A source in the DEA familiar with operations Cali-Man and Rainmaker has confirmed to Narco News that the same North Valley Cartel leaders that infiltrated the DAS — Diego Montoya and Wílber Varela — were Tinsley’s targets with Cali-Man. Conroy’s investigations have suggested that the Bogotá agents did everything possible to shut down Rainmaker, Cali-Man and other operations run by the Florida office, either to protect allies in organized crime or to protect themselves from the revelation of embarrassing information.

Former FBI, DEA and CIA informant Baruch Vega told Narco News that Wílber Varela and Diego Montoya were both players in what he calls the “Devil’s Cartel.” As Bill Conroy reported on March 18:

Vega says the many pieces of this dark mystery make it appear very complicated to unravel.
“But, if they are lined up in the right way, it becomes easy to understand,” he adds. “It’s a matter of putting the right players in the right place.”

The way things lined up, according to Vega, involved what amounts to the perfect narco-trafficking organization, which he describes as the “Devil’s Cartel.”

This so-called Devil’s Cartel was an alliance of North Valley traffickers, many of them former Colombian National Police officials, along with active members of the Colombian National Police under the direction of a corrupt Colombian National Police colonel named Danilo Gonzalez.

Paramilitary forces under the leadership of Carlos Castaño, who headed the murderous United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (the AUC), provided the muscle and protection for this Devil’s Cartel and its operations, Vega contends.

The U.S. government indicted Castaño in 2002 on narco-trafficking charges. Two years later, Castaño disappeared, after a reported attempt on his life in Colombia. He is presumed dead, although his body was never found.

The intelligence arm of this Devil’s Cartel, Vega claims, was composed of corrupt U.S. federal agents with DEA and U.S. Customs.

Read the full story for more background on Vega. Not all of his claims can be independently verified, but as more and more comes out about the DAS scandal, what Vega says sounds more and more plausible.

It’s also difficult to imagine that DEA and CIA agents in Colombia haven’t worked with Noguera and other DAS officials named in the scandal at some point. In fact, early in the tape obtained by Cambio, Carlos Moreno, the fired DAS agent, refers to a CIA agent that worked with alleged DAS hitmen:

AGENT THAT ACCOMPANIED MORENO: Look, doctor (Narváez), the thing is that they had this boy here, Carlos… as a hit man. Ariza [then chief of intellegence] told him that he had to do it. They bought him the motorcycle, the gun, all that, and they went around knocking people off, throwing them (in the garbage). That’s the truth.
MORENO: Yes, that is the truth, doctor.

JOSÉ MIGUEL NARVÁEZ: But how did it work? Tell me more…

MORENO: When Enrique Ariza was approved as chief of intelligence, they called me to have me meet with some guys that are in a little group that works with Scott. I know Scott, he’s from the CIA. At that time there was a group forming, out of DAS people themselves, to do “limpieza” [literally, “cleansing”]. Many times, I did the job of killing informants. They ordered me to do it, so I did it.

OTHER AGENT: Yes, he has done this for the institution… They are looking for him in order to kill him, and he doesn’t deserve to be left out in the cold, doctor…

No further information has come out regarding this supposed CIA agent. Nor is it clear in the transcript what exactly is meant by “cleansing” — whether this meant cleansing the DAS of agents that were somehow problematic, or something more sinister such as eliminating informants and witnesses.

Narco News continues to dig deeper into the DEA and other U.S. agencies’ corruption and involvement with narco-traffickers, trying to flesh out the connections, separate the fact from the fiction, the truth from the spin. Hopefully, the few honest reporters among the Colombian media — usually as bought and sold as their U.S. counterparts — will continue to reveal the depths to which the DAS and other Colombian state entities have sunk. Uribe may well survive this scandal and win his reelection… with the usual help from his DAS, narco and paramilitary allies, along with his friends in Washington. Either way, how much longer will people in Colombia and the U.S. put up with life in the crossfire of a war on drugs in which the two sides have become so indistinguishable?

By Dan Feder
April 29, 2006

Find this story at 29 April 2006

Copyright http://www.narconews.com/

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Intelligence agencies from several countries, including CIA intermediaries, have abundantly used the services of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to “conceal” their activities, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) says, citing leaked documents.

Both “secret agents and their informants have used the company’s services,” wrote the newspaper, which earlier this month published online materials based on 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm. It has been called the largest leak on corruption in journalistic history.

“Agents have set up shell companies to conceal their activities,” the Munich-based newspaper reported, adding that there are CIA mediators among them.

According to SZ, Mossack Fonseca’s clients also included some of those involved in the so-called Iran-Contra affair, in which several Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated arms sales to Iran in the 1980s in order to secure the release of US hostages and fund Nicaragua’s Contra rebels.

Read more
© RT‘Who’s funding this?’ CIA & MI5 whistleblowers question credibility of Panama Papers coverage
The Panama Papers also claim to reveal that some “former high-ranking officials of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Rwanda” are listed amongst the company’s clients. Among them was Sheikh Kamal Adham, the former Saudi intelligence chief, who according to SZ, was “one of the CIA’s key intermediaries in the 1970s” in the Middle East region.

The Panama leak claims to expose the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides data on the financial activities of 128 other politicians and public officials from different countries. Newspapers around the globe had plenty of world leaders to choose from, – from President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron.

With high-profile figures on the menu, the majority of the international media rushed to accuse Vladimir Putin of corruption, even though neither he nor any members of his family were mentioned in the Panama Papers leak.

Last week WikiLeaks tweeted that the US government and American hedge-fund billionaire George Soros allegedly funded the Papers to attack Putin. According to the international whistleblowing organization, the US government’s funding of such an attack appeared to be a serious blow to its integrity.

Read more
Demonstrators hold placards during a protest outside Downing Street in Whitehall, central London, Britain April 9, 2016 © Neil HallCrowds march in London to demand Cameron resignation following Panama Papers leak (IMAGES)
One former CIA officer told RT that the fact that the Western media has been unanimously using the Russian leader as the “face” of the Panama Papers leak can be explained by one simple look at the organizations behind these news outlets.

“Everyone in corporate press is controlled by corporations that profit on wars and have an interest in creating tensions – all these people in the Western press, like the Guardian, are blackening Putin [for being] a designated villain here. Curiously, his name is not in these documents,” Ray McGovern said, adding that it was “a major mistake made by the leaker” to hand the documents over to the corporate media, instead of leaking them to trusted independent journalists.

There were many raised eyebrows particularly over little mention of the exposed offshore dealings of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s late father. Last week the British PM admitted that he benefited from shares in an offshore trust set up by his father. Cameron, who is facing outrage over revelations concerning his private finances, told ITV that he had received £300,000 (about $420,000) in inheritance from his father, who died in 2010. Yet he claimed that he didn’t know whether any of that money came from an offshore source. A massive protest gathered in front of PM David Cameron’s residence at 10 Downing Street on Sunday, calling for his resignation.

Published time: 12 Apr, 2016 13:22
© Rodrigo Arangua / AFP
Find this story at 12 April 2016

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2016.

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Die CIA bemühte über Mittelsmänner anscheinend die Dienste der Kanzlei Mossack Fonseca: Laut einem Bericht der “SZ” ließen Agenten in den Achtzigern Briefkastenfirmen gründen, um ihre Aktionen zu verschleiern.

US-Geheimdienstler sollen “in erheblichem Umfang” die Dienste der Kanzlei Mossack Fonseca in Panama genutzt haben. Das geht laut der “Süddeutschen Zeitung” (“SZ”) aus den Panama Papers hervor. Demnach ließen Agenten Briefkastenfirmen gründen, um ihre Aktionen zu verschleiern. Unter ihnen seien auch Mittelsmänner aus dem Umfeld des amerikanischen Auslandsgeheimdienstes CIA.

Zur Kundschaft von Mossack Fonseca gehörten demnach in den Achtzigerjahren etwa Figuren der Iran-Contra-Affäre. Dabei ging es um geheime Waffenlieferungen der CIA an Teheran. In diesem Zusammenhang wird unter anderem ein US-Geschäftsmann genannt, der Flugzeuge verlieh. Mit einer seiner Maschinen sollen laut dem Bericht in den Achtzigerjahren im Auftrag der CIA Waffen nach Teheran geliefert worden sein. Der Geschäftsmann bestreitet, von der Operation gewusst zu haben.

Auch weitere Unternehmen, die immer wieder in Verdacht geraten sind, dem US-Geheimdienst geholfen zu haben, tauchen der “SZ” zufolge in dem Material auf.

Außerdem seien unter den gegenwärtigen oder früheren Kunden hochrangige Geheimdienstverantwortliche aus mindestens drei Ländern zu finden, konkret aus Saudi-Arabien, Kolumbien und Ruanda – auch der saudische Scheich Kamal Adham, der in den Siebzigerjahren als wichtigster Ansprechpartner der CIA in der Region galt.

Ein weiterer Kunde Mossack Fonsecas ist nach Angaben der “SZ” der Isländer Loftur Johannesson. Er werde im Zusammenhang mit mindestens vier Briefkastenfirmen genannt. Der SPIEGEL bezeichnete ihn Anfang der Neunziger in einem Artikel über die “guten Kunden der CIA” als Kontaktperson des Geheimdienstes. In mehreren Büchern und Artikeln heißt es, Johannesson habe im Auftrag der CIA Waffen in Krisenregionen geliefert, unter anderem nach Afghanistan, so die “SZ”.

Johannesson habe über einen Sprecher erklären lassen, er sei Geschäftsmann im Luftfahrtgeschäft und nicht für Geheimdienste tätig. Die Kanzlei in Kanada erklärte laut dem Bericht zudem, sie überprüfe ihre Kunden gründlich. Sollte ein Mandant seine Identität oder die Herkunft seiner Gelder nicht angemessenen nachweisen, so werde sie mit ihm nicht zusammenarbeiten.

12. April 2016, 00:03 Uhr
Find this story at 12 April 2016

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2016

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Secret agents from several countries, including intermediaries of the CIA, have used the services of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca in order to “conceal” their activities, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday.
“Secret agents and their informants have made wide use of the company’s services,” wrote the newspaper, which obtained a massive stash of 11.5 million documents from the company that is sending shockwaves around the globe.
“Agents have opened shell companies to conceal their activities… Among them are close intermediaries of the CIA,” the newspaper reported.
China’s elite hiding billions overseas

The Munich-based newspaper said Mossack Fonseca’s clients included “several players” in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, which saw senior US officials facilitate secret arms sales to Iran in a bid to secure the release of American hostages and fund Nicaragua’s Contra rebels.
The Panama Papers also reveal that “current or former high-ranking officials of the secret services of at least three countries… Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Rwanda” are listed amongst the company’s clients, the Sueddeutsche said.
Hong Kong’s rich face exposure in tax-haven leak

Among them was Sheikh Kamal Adham, the former Saudi intelligence chief who died in 1999. Adham “spent the 1970s as one of the CIA’s key intermediaries” in the Middle East, the daily said.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung received the huge stash of Mossack Fonseca documents from an anonymous source and shared them with more than 100 media groups through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
A week after the first revelations, the documents have shed light on how the world’s rich and powerful have used offshore companies to stash their assets, forcing Iceland’s prime minister to resign and putting pressure on a slew of other leaders around the world.

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 12 April, 2016, 1:49pm
Agence France-Presse

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Copyright © 2016 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd.

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Panama has long been a haven for money launderers—including the CIA.

It should come as no surprise that the CIA’s finances are a secret. One of the rare glimpses into the agency’s funding came when Edward Snowden leaked a copy of the intelligence “black budget” to The Washington Post in 2013. But if history is any indication, the CIA may well have resources that don’t appear on any congressional document, highly classified or otherwise. Covert operations, by their very nature, often require access to off-the-books funding. The CIA’s first operation was paid for with funds seized from the Nazis, and in the years since, the agency has been notoriously creative about how it obtains its money.

Signal

The Panama Papers underscore how tax havens are used by covert agencies and other shadowy players to launder dirty money, a practice that has a long history in which Panama, in particular, has played a notable part.

Adnan Khashoggi would know. A “principal foreign agent” of the United States, as one Senate report referred to him, the billionaire playboy made a fortune (more than $100 million between 1970 and 1975 alone) from commissions negotiating arms deals with his native Saudi Arabia. He used these windfalls, in turn, to cultivate political clout—including, allegedly, with President Richard Nixon. In the aftermath of Watergate, when Congress began reining in the CIA, Khashoggi helped establish the supranational intelligence partnership known as the Safari Club. Soon after, he aided the CIA in circumventing another congressional impediment. With money borrowed from the Saudi and U.S. intelligence-linked Bank of Credit and Commerce International, he financed the illegal arms sales that set off the Iran-Contra scandal.

One way Khashoggi structured his shadowy holdings during his heyday was through the specialized services of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that is in the news for having helped global luminaries like Vladimir Putin hide their money. Thanks to a recent report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, we now know Khashoggi to be among a number of former spies and CIA associates implicated by the 2.6 terabytes of offshore financial documents provided to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung last summer.

That his name should appear in an international dark money scandal suggests something about the nature of tax havens that much of the media’s coverage has thus far avoided grappling with. The Panama Papers have largely been presented as an unprecedented insight into how global elites hide their fortunes from tax collectors and other regulators. But they also underscore how tax havens are used by covert agencies and other shadowy players to launder dirty money, a practice that has a long history in which Panama, in particular, has played a notable part.

The Panama Papers date back to 1977. By then, the Carter administration, worried that it could jeopardize negotiations over the Panama Canal, had already willed itself into forgetting what the U.S. government had long known about Panama’s intimate role in the burgeoning South American cocaine trade. Serious allegations against Manuel Noriega, the intelligence chief who would go on to become the country’s ruler, had been brought to the attention of the now-defunct Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs as early as 1971. But the United States’s interests in Panama were at least as strong as those of the emerging coke lords who were using Panama as a stopover for drug shipments headed north. In some cases, their interests were one and the same.

At the time, the Panama Canal Zone played host to the School of the Americas, the U.S. military training academy infamous for the remarkable array of atrocities committed by its highest-achieving graduates. Not far from the SOA facility was the classified U.S. communications network used to coordinate Operation Condor, the cross-border rendition, torture, execution, and assassination program implemented by the South American dictatorships of the era. With its abundance of U.S. surveillance hardware and constant influx of easily disguised foreigners, Panama became a sort of regional outpost for U.S. Cold War intelligence.

A proud SOA alumnus himself, Noriega was recruited by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959 and received his first check from the CIA in 1967. The military coup that broke out that year catapulted him to the top of Panama’s spy agency, a position for which the ruthless, ideologically flexible Noriega proved to be uniquely well-suited.

Noriega had a talent for the double life. He would fly to Washington to meet with CIA Director William Casey one day and to Havana to meet with Fidel Castro the next, positioning himself as a key interlocutor between the sworn enemies and playing one side off the other. He was just as comfortable railing against Yankee imperialism as he was serving up rivals and narco-associates in exchange for DEA commendations. Noriega allegedly charged $200,000 a planeload to protect the Medellin Cartel’s shipment routes. The $200,000 a year he collected from the Reagan administration must have seemed a pittance by comparison.

CIA payments to Noriega were channeled through accounts he maintained at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the agency’s preferred conduit for its secret dealings with Saudi and Pakistani intelligence and with the heroin-trafficking mujahedeen insurgency in Afghanistan. During the same period, Adnan Khashoggi, who was listed on a 1991 Defense Intelligence Report as having sold machine guns to the Medellin Cartel, was borrowing from the bank to finance weapons sales to Iran—the proceeds for which, like some of Noriega’s earnings, were then funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras. Subsequent federal prosecutions determined BCCI’s Panamanian branch, in particular, to be actively engaged in money laundering for the Colombian drug trade. A Senate subcommittee report called the bank a “fundamentally corrupt criminal enterprise.”

But BCCI was hardly the only Panamanian financial house awash in drug profits and covert intrigue. As a 1985 House Foreign Affairs report explained, it was hard to find a Panamanian bank that wasn’t engaged, to one degree or another, in some form of untoward activity. “With more than one hundred banks, the U.S. dollar as the national currency, and strict bank secrecy laws, Panama is an ideal haven for laundering narcotics money. Unlimited amounts of money may be brought into and out of the country with no reporting requirements, and money laundering is not a crime.” Corruption in government and the military, the committee found, was “endemic and institutionalized.”

Panama, to borrow the words of the Senate’s Iran-Contra report, had become the “hemisphere’s first ‘narco-kleptocracy,’” a major financial clearing house not just for the Colombian cartels, but for illegal groups of all stripes in the region, as well as “legitimate” businesspeople drawn to the exciting new services being offered thanks to the logistical demands and largesse of the drug trade. Americans were sinking millions into this innovative tax haven, and the surplus of available dirty currency actually insulated Panama from the debt crises that were sweeping the region at the time—converting it into a secure, relatively stable place for the Third World rich to hide their money.

“Particularly popular with Latin Americans,” writes Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld in Evil Money, “was a double-shell arrangement, in which the Bahamian cover was overlaid with Panamanian corporate shells. Panamanian lawyers were equally adept at creating fictitious companies. The money would be wired from one corporate account to another without revealing the identity of the real owner.”

Dummy companies of this sort, set up by the White House and registered in Panama, were used to float the Nicaraguan Contras. Noriega’s personal Swiss-based lawyer even helped Marine Colonel Oliver North construct a front for an airfield in Costa Rica. A veritable fleet of aircraft, including planes provided by Noriega and some paid for through a BCCI account, made the circuitous journey from secret runway to secret runway, dropping off weapons in Honduras and Costa Rica, cocaine in the southern United States, and large stacks of small-denomination bills in Panamanian bank vaults.

As we continue to dig through the many layers of corruption, lawbreaking, and bad faith that have accumulated in the intervening years, it’s important to recognize that the quintessentially private practices that now form the basis for the Panama Papers revelations emerged within a context of large-scale state criminality.

The 1989 U.S. invasion that led to Noriega’s arrest only exacerbated the underlying problems of Panamanian governance. As Jonathan Marshall, co-author of the indispensable Cocaine Politics, explained, between “economic sanctions, capital flight, war damage, and a more than a billion dollars’ worth of damage from post-conflict looting,” any new president would have faced significant challenges. It happened that the one the United States installed, Guillermo Endara, had dubious ties to a bank the DEA and FBI both suspected of money laundering. Endara’s appointees for attorney general, treasury minister, and chief Supreme Court justice had each served as director of a bank shut down for its alliance with Colombia’s Cali Cartel. By the U.S. government’s own estimation, trafficking and laundering got worse in the invasion’s aftermath, a legacy that has continued on to the present day. Facing corruption charges, the country’s most recent president has sought refuge in Miami.

After the invasion, a joke started circulating around Panama that seems fairly prescient, in light of the Panama Papers. “They took Ali Baba,” it went, “and left us with the 40 thieves.”

BY STEVEN COHEN
April 8, 2016
Find this story at 8 April 2016

Copyright 2016 © New Republic.

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THIS WEEK STARTED off big with the Panama Papers, the largest leak in history. The still-unfolding story uncovered a complex web of global tax evasion perpetuated by world leaders and their friends. Breaking the Panama Papers news required massive coordination: Over 100 journalists used a constellation of encryption tools and methods to help the whistleblower behind the leaks safely deliver 2.6 terabytes of documents.

Turkey had its own data spill this week as well, when an unnamed hacker posted the personal information of 50 million Turkish citizens extracted from poorly secured government servers. In other news, Kate Moussouris, the strategist behind the Department of Defense’s and Microsoft’s bug bounty programs, is branching out as an independent consultant. And a Maryland appeals court ruled that the Baltimore Police Department’s use of cell phone-tracking stingrays requires a warrant, setting a precedent that may inch the stingray debate closer to the Supreme Court.

On a more personal note, people looking for romance online should know they are increasingly common targets for scammers. And now that Facebook has live video, the social media giant is hoping that its users—like you—will help it police inappropriate live content, which will probably include live pornography. And while it might’ve seemed like the FBI’s public brawl with Apple over unlocking the San Bernardino iPhone had finally ended, the government jumped back in the ring by filing an appeal in a New York drug case in a second attempt to compel Apple to break the encryption on another iPhone.

And there was more: Each Saturday we round up the news stories that we didn’t break or cover in depth at WIRED, but which deserve your attention nonetheless. As always, click on the headlines to read the full story in each link posted. And stay safe out there.

The Law Firm at the Heart of the Panama Papers Had Very Lax Security
The computer systems used by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that was revealed to be a primary conduit for world leaders and corporations seeking off-shore tax havens, are reportedly drastically unsecure. Reports surfaced midweek that its email client had not been updated for years, and that the version of Drupal behind its client portal had at least 25 vulnerabilities. While it’s still unclear who is responsible for the Panama Papers leak, security researchers say details point to a person who was working inside the company.

Judge Approves $15 Million Sony Payout in Class-Action Suit Over Hack
It’s been two and a half years since a group calling itself The Guardians of Peace hacked Sony in an epic breach, revealing the personal information of thousands of the entertainment company’s employees. In a class action lawsuit with 435,000 of its ex-employees, Sony struck a deal with the plaintiffs in what will amount to a $15 million payout, with a maximum of $10,000 awarded to each individual class action member. The hack, which the US government linked back to North Korea, didn’t just reveal employee data, but also exposed private correspondence between Sony executive staff that revealed embarrassing details about the film industry.

Voter Details of 55 Million Filipinos Revealed in Giant Hack
Weeks before the national elections in the Philippines, a hack exposed 55 million voters’ personal information. It’s being called the largest government-related data data breach in history. Reports say that The Philippines’ Commission on Elections was first compromised by Anonymous Philippines; LulzSec Pilipinas subsequently posted personal voter information just days later. Alarmingly, the data was posted in plaintext, including the passport numbers of overseas voters, along with 15.8 million fingerprints. Anonymous Philippines warned the election commission to enact stronger security over the country’s electronic vote counting system.

Signal Now Sends Encrypted Texts Between Mobile and Desktop Clients
The security community’s favorite encrypted text messaging app is now available for desktop chatting. That means that people who use Signal can now chat with other Signal users with both hands and seamlessly between mobile and desktop. Signal’s new service works like Apple’s iMessage and allows you to text friends via your computer. Like iMessage, it also offers a high level of encryption. The main difference between Apple’s iMessage and Signal, however, is that Signal works between Apple and Android devices, a huge deal for security-conscious friends who don’t all use the same products. A version of Signal for desktop was in invitation-only mode for the past few months; the crew at Open Whisper Systems released a public version on Thursday.

The CIA’s Venture Capital Firm Is Investing in a Line of Skincare Products for DNA Collection
The Central Intelligence Agency’s own venture capital firm, In-Q-TelA, is funding … a skincare startup. It’s investing in Skincential Sciences, a startup that created a patented technology to remove a thin layer of skin to help clear away blemishes. According to The Intercept, the CIA is interested in the skincare company’s method of DNA extraction, which intelligence agencies can leverage for a variety of uses, including event security and biometric identification programs. In-Q-Tel has been backing Silicon Valley startups for 17 years now, including popular videogame manufacturers and mapping software that was eventually acquired by Google.

The FBI’s Ability to Hack Into the San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone Only Works on iPhone 5
James Comey, director of the FBI, claimed this week that the agency’s ability to hack into the iPhone 5 used by the San Bernardino terrorist does not work on newer iPhone models, including the iPhone 6s and 5s. The FBI dropped its very public case against Apple two weeks ago, having obtained the ability to unlock the shooter’s phone via unnamed third party software. While the FBI contends that it can share the software with other law enforcement agencies attempting to open model 5 iPhones, evidence obtained would likely not be permissible in court.

APRIL GLASER. APRIL GLASER SECURITY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 04.09.16.

Find this story at 9 April 2016

Copyright http://www.wired.com/

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he’d be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.

Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday from Munich, Birkenfeld said he doesn’t think the source of the 11 million documents stolen from a Panamanian law firm should automatically be considered a whistleblower like himself. Instead, he said, the hacking of the Panama City-based firm, called Mossack Fonseca, could have been done by a U.S. intelligence agency.
“The CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” Birkenfeld said.
Birkenfeld pointed to the fact that the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. “The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

A poolside view overlooking the newer side of the Panama City skyline.
Panama Papers show tax avoidance like a ‘cancer’
Asked why the U.S. would leak information that has also been damaging to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a major American ally, Birkenfeld said the British leader was likely collateral damage in a larger intelligence operation.
“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

The public relations office for the CIA did not immediately return a message for comment.
Birkenfeld also said that during his time as a Swiss banker, Mossack Fonseca was known as one piece of the vast offshore maze used by bankers and lawyers to hide money from tax authorities. But he also said that the firm that is at the center of the global scandal was also seen as a relatively small player in the overall offshore tax evasion business.
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The sign in front of the building that houses law firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama City, Panama.
Did ‘smart’ people avoid the Panama Papers?
Bradley Birkenfeld, a former banker with UBS AG, walks outside Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution after speaking to the media in Minersville, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Friday, Jan. 8, 2010.
Why did the US pay this former Swiss banker $104M?
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“We knew that firm very well in Switzerland. I certainly knew of it,” Birkenfeld said.
But Mossack Fonseca was just one of a number of firms in Panama offering such services, he said. “The cost of doing business there was quite low, relatively speaking,” he said. “So what you would have is Panama operating as a conduit to the Swiss banks and the trust companies to set up these facilities for clients around the world.”

Eamon Javers CNBC.com
12 April 2016

Find this story at 12 april 2016

© 2016 CNBC LLC.

Multicultureel Vakmanschap bij de politie (samenvatting)

Het beleid ten aanzien van Multicultureel Vakmanschap bij de politie heeft gefaald. Dit blijkt uit openbaar gemaakte documenten. Daarnaast stelde het Landelijk Expertisecentrum Diversiteit, van 2007 tot eind 2014 verantwoordelijk voor beleid en trainingen om interne en externe discriminatie tegen te gaan, weinig tot niets voor.

Het beleid ten aanzien van Multicultureel Vakmanschap (MCV) bij de politie heeft gefaald. Het Landelijk Expertisecentrum Diversiteit (LECD) werd in 2001 opgericht en was van 2007 tot eind 2014 verantwoordelijk voor beleid en trainingen ten aanzien van MCV. De activiteiten van het LECD hebben weinig tot niets opgeleverd. De activiteiten van het LECD is niet geïmplementeerd binnen de NP. De politieagenten die werden bereikt door het LECD waren al geïnteresseerd in onderwerpen zoals discriminatie en diversiteit.

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