A bank identified only as being one of the largest and most prominent in New York has been caught allegedly funneling an estimated $3 billion in profits from drug deals and other illegal activities to Mideast terrorists, The New York Post reports. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the paper says, plugged the profits pipeline as part of an ongoing investigation of suspected funds flowing through local banks.
In the most recent scheme, according to The Post, the money originating from the so-called “tri-border region” of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, was transferred to an account at the New York bank through a money-transfer company in Uruguay and then on to accounts in the Mideast, where they were distributed over the past two years to the likes of Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. “I can’t go out and arrest Osama bin Laden,” the 84-year-old Morgenthau told The Post. “But I can try to cut off his money.”
