Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: I miliardi di Arafat alle isole Caimane

lunedě, 10 novembre 2003
I miliardi di Arafat alle isole Caimane
Una grande inchiesta di Lesley Stahl per il magazine televisivo "60 Minutes"
sulla rete Cbs (
http://www.cbsnews.com
) rivela la mappa completa delle
ricchezze personali di Arafat, custodite in depositi bancari offshore (dalla
banca svizzera Lombard Odier ai conti cifrati nelle isole Caimane): da uno a
tre miliardi di dollari. Tutti soldi dirottati dagli aiuti internazionali
versati all'autorita` palestinese affinche` costruisca scuole, ospedali,
fabbriche. Il reportage della Cbs attinge a una fonte al di sopra di ogni
sospetto: Salam Fayyad, il nuovo ministro delle Finanze di Arafat, ex
funzionario della Banca mondiale, sta mettendo a nudo l'immenso patrimonio
personale che il leader storico dell'Olp ha accumulato derubando la sua
gente. Arafat e` stato costretto a nominare Fayyad su pressione
dell'opinione pubblica palestinese, indignata per il livello della
corruzione ai vertici dell'Olp.
http://blog.repubblica.it/rblog/page/FRampini/20031110#i_miliardi_di_arafat_
alle
Dal blog di Repubblica Estremo occidente di Federico Rampini
Arafat's Billions
Nov. 9, 2003
(CBS) Yasser Arafat diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds to insure his
political survival, but a lot more is unaccounted for.
Jim Prince and a team of American accountants - hired by Arafat's own
finance ministry - are combing through Arafat's books. Given what they've
already uncovered, Arafat may be rethinking the decision. Lesley Stahl
reports.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
"What is Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority worth today?" asks
accountant Jim Prince. "Who is controlling that money? Where is that money?
How do we get it back?"
So far, Prince's team has determined that part of the Palestinian leader's
wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion -- with
investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a
Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the
Cayman Islands.
Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian
taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all
controlled by Arafat. And, Prince says, none of these dealings were made
public.
"Our whole point is to bring it out of control of any one person," Prince
says.
That's what happened with the portfolio money, which is now under the
control of Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official who Arafat was forced
to appoint finance minister last year after crowds began protesting his
corrupt regime.
According to Fayyad, "There is corruption out there. There is abuse. There
is impropriety, and that's what had to be fixed."
Statements like that have earned Fayyad, a bookish technocrat who spent 20
years in the U.S., a reputation for courage - which was enhanced when he
immediately posted the details of Arafat's secret portfolio on the Internet.
Fayyad's investigators are treading softly, well aware that their probe may
become too embarrassing for Arafat.
Has he tried to stop them? "We run into obstacles in a number of places,
particularly among the old PLO types," Prince says, adding one might draw
their own conclusions as to whether his statement includes Arafat himself.
Martin Indyk, a top adviser on the Middle East in the Clinton administration
and now head of the Saban Center, a Washington think-tank, says Arafat was
always traveling the world, looking for handouts. Money, he says, is
"essential" to Arafat's survival.
"Arafat for years would cry poor, saying, 'I can't pay the salaries, we're
gonna have a disaster here, the Palestinian economy is going to collapse,'"
says Indyk. "And we would all mouth those words: 'The Palestinian economy is
going to collapse if we don't do something about this.' But at the same
time, he's accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars."
The stockpile went well beyond the portfolio. Arafat accumulated another $1
billion with the help of -- of all people -- the Israelis. Under the Oslo
Accords, it was agreed that Israel would collect sales taxes on goods
purchased by Palestinians and transfer those funds to the Palestinian
treasury. But instead, Indyk says, "that money is transferred to Yasser
Arafat to, amongst other places, bank accounts which he maintains off-line
in Israel."
Until three years ago, Israel put the tax revenues into Arafat's account at
Bank Leumi in downtown Tel Aviv, no questions asked. But why?
According to Indyk, "The Israelis came to us and said, basically, 'Arafat's
job is to clean up Gaza. It's going to be a difficult job. He needs
walking-around money,' because the assumption was that he would use it to
get control of all of these terrorists who'd been operating in these areas
for decades."
Obviously, that hasn't happened. No one knows this better than Dennis Ross,
who was Middle East negotiator for the first President Bush and President
Clinton, and now heads the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He
says Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system.
"I used to see that people came in, you know, with their requests," Ross
says. "'I need a phone. I need an operation. I need a job.' Arafat had money
to dispense."
Like a Chicago ward boss, he still doles out oodles of money; Fayyad says he
pays his security forces alone $20 million a month, all of it in cash.
All told, U.S. officials estimate Arafat's personal nest egg at between $1
billion and $3 billion.
Arafat may have $1 billion, but he sure isn't spending it to live well. He's
holed up in his Ramallah compound, which the Israelis all but reduced to
rubble a year-and-a-half ago. Arafat has always lived modestly, which you
can't say about his wife, Suha. According to Israeli officials, she gets
$100,000 a month from Arafat out of the Palestinian budget, and lives
lavishly in Paris on this allowance.
He also uses the money to bolster his own standing. Both Israeli and U.S.
sources say those recent outpourings of support at Arafat's compound were
"rent-a-rallies," and that Arafat has spent millions to support terrorists
and purchase weapons.
Did he steal from his own people?
"He defines himself as being the embodiment of the Palestinian people," Ross
answers. "So what's good for him is good for them. Did they benefit? The
answer is no. Did they lose? The answer is yes."
Palestinians certainly paid dearly for something else Fayyad uncovered: a
system of monopolies in commodities -- like flour and cement -- that Arafat
handed out to his cronies, who then turned around and fleeced the public.
Fayyad says it could accurately be seen as gouging his own people. "And
especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally
unacceptable and immoral, actually."
Of all the monopolies, none was as lucrative or as corrupt as the General
Petroleum Corporation, the one for gasoline. The corporation took the fuel
it purchased from an Israeli company and watered it down with kerosene, not
only defrauding the Palestinian drivers, but wrecking their car engines.
Fayyad says the Petroleum Corporation charged exorbitant prices, and Arafat
got a hefty kickback. "To the president, I can tell you, if there was not
money in the treasury, he went to the Petroleum Corporation."
When Fayyad dismantled the corporation, the man who had run it fled to
California. Ever since, with the monopoly broken up, Palestinian drivers
have paid 20 percent less for gas and 80 percent less for diesel fuel. Gas
stations now advertise 100 percent pure products.
Fayyad became a hero, like the Robin Hood of the Palestinians. Millions of
people were affected by this one move.
He says he was just doing his job. "A lot of this is about, you know,
distinguishing between right and wrong. And that's a straightforward
proposition."
Mohammed Rachid, Arafat's economic adviser who set up his tangled web of
investments and monopolies, says he's cooperating with Fayyad's
investigators. Rachid left the Palestinian territories about a year ago
under a cloud. He asked CBS News not to reveal where we met him for his
first television interview.
"I'm proud of what I did till now," Rachid says. "I think I showed a good
performance."
He's referring to the investment portfolio he managed for Arafat. He also
opened that account at the Leumi Bank in Tel Aviv. According to a recent
report by the International Monetary Fund, that secret account was: "Under
the control of President Arafat and his financial adviser Mohammed
Rachid" -- and no one else.
"If we are having a secret account, we should have it in Israel? You think
this is logical?" Rachid asks.
But that's what the Israelis, and the people working for Fayyad, say it was.
Rachid says that "transfers to Leumi Bank account never stayed. It was
receiving the revenues and transferring the revenues to the Palestinian
Authority's account in the Arab bank in Gaza."
He's saying the Leumi money was sent to the Palestinian Authority. But, in
fact, much of it was sent to Switzerland, to the prestigious Lombard Odier
Bank, for yet another secret investment account that held over $300 million.
In a letter obtained by CBS News, Rachid tells the bank that the funds will
come from Palestinian "taxes" and "customs revenues."
"It was all under the name of the Palestinian authorities," Rachid says.
Doesn't he mean Arafat? "No, Palestinian Authorities, Palestinian
Authorities."
Actually, it was under a code name, "Ledbury" -- not the Palestinian
Authority -- and Minister Fayyad says that this pot of money, too, was
available only to Arafat. The Swiss account was closed out in 2001. No one
really knows where that money is today.
Does Rachid think that it should have gone, in some way, back to help the
Palestinian people?
"Of course," he says. But, "I don't, I don't decide what we do with the
money."
Those who want to know why Arafat didn't bring the money back, he says,
should ask him. But Arafat didn't want to talk.
There's yet another stash of money Arafat might be asked about: the funds he
collected when he was chairman of the PLO in exile. The PLO's former
treasurer told us he saw Saddam Hussein hand Arafat a $50 million check for
supporting him during the first Gulf War. And there were other large gifts
from the KGB and the Saudis.
Ross says, "Arafat used to say to me, 'Where's my money? You need to go to
the Saudis and get my money.' It was never the Palestinians' money."
Fayyad is trying to make sure it's the people's money, but many say his
one-man reform effort is having only limited success. Arafat recently sent
armed men to prevent Fayyad from replacing the head of the civil service,
who runs Arafat's patronage apparatus. That has lead some to think Fayyad
himself could be in danger.
"He cannot know, and we cannot know at what point he crosses the red line,"
says Indyk.
Other people who have dared to call for transparency of all these finances
have been beaten up, shot, and silenced. Why is Fayyad surviving? Indyk
says, "We should not take it for granted."
He has upset so many powerful people, and his offices have already been
ransacked more than once. But Fayyad says he does not feel threatened.
"It's a dangerous neighborhood," he admits. "But you know this is about, you
know, doing the right thing for the people."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/07/60minutes/main582487.shtml

I miliardi di Arafat alle isole Caimane
Mmm esistono le isole Cayman come paradiso fiscale (inglese)... ma non
le Caimane...italianizzazione di bassissima fattura..

Polymita ha scritto:



Mmmmmm.... interessante intervento.....
Paolino
-- 
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le Caimane...italianizzazione di bassissima fattura..
Esistono gli United States of America e non gli Stati Uniti d'America
sulla base della stessa logica :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 -Stefano

caimane e' una parola che non trovo sul dizionario :)
non penso che il buffone riesca a capire il tuo intervento...

Mmmmmm.... interessante intervento.....
E' una precisazione, non un intervento

caimane e' una parola che non trovo sul dizionario :)
Nemmeno "Stefano" lo trovo sul dizionario, pero' e' il mio nome ed e'
italiano :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 -Stefano