Spotlight on International Nonprofit Money Laundering
Ronald Noble, the Secretary-General of Interpol, has a difficult decision to make in 2008. On August 14, 2005 USA Today and other news organizations broke the news that Israeli prosecutor Talia Sasson had uncovered a massive international money laundering network, though it received little Congressional or law enforcement attention in the United States. Sasson detailed how nonprofit charitable funds were used to illegally confiscate and develop Palestinian lands across the Israeli occupied West Bank in direct contravention of Israeli, US and international law.
On March 18, 2005, the Jewish Daily Forward had already revealed that as members of governing bodies of the World Zionist Organization, US divisions of Hadassah, B’nai B’rith and other tax exempt organizations were directly linked to this criminal activity. Unfettered US nonprofit money laundering continues to finance a major source of grief and violence that generates international terrorism.
US law enforcement agencies are hobbled by outside domestic lobbies and internally by political appointees determined to proactively take major law enforcement issues involving Israel “off the table.” Fortunately, Interpol remains well situated to pursue law enforcement solutions where individual nation-states fail and the global stakes are high. 2008 is a good year for Interpol action as the US turns inward to the November elections and law enforcement agencies continue to turn a blind eye on American nonprofit money laundering as a systemic terrorism generator.