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USATODAY.com - Money-transfer case had lagged

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Washington • bjM.1.1 this gtory • Su bar rite to tha nawspaEar »Mq.n-.MP..jgf .g-rflj 12/03/2001 - Updated 10:43 PM ET

Money-transfer case had lagged By Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY Federal investigators say they had evidence in 1999 that an international money-transfer business with U.S. affiliates was helping fund Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Yet authorities did not block the firm's financial assets until nearly 2 months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some government officials and financial experts America on Alert say the delay in moving against the AI-Barakaat Full coverage index network epitomizes several stumbling blocks that hobbled U.S. financial probes of terrorism before Sept. 11. They say the investigations often were marked by a lack of urgency, a failure to exert legal muscle against suspected benefactors of terrorism, and information-sharing problems among U.S. agencies.

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While careful not to suggest that swifter action by U.S. authorities could have averted the attacks, the officials and experts nonetheless call the delay in the AI-Barakaat case troubling. Search

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"It was on the radar screens of some agencies, but it didn't have a high priority," says Sen. Evan Bayh, D-lnd., who led a Senate hearing last month that focused in part on the AI-Barakaat network. "It's the kind of thing we have to make sure doesn't happen again. Investigators blocked the assets of AI-Barakaat on Nov. 7 as part of a worldwide crackdown that Treasury Department officials say stopped al-Qaeda from siphoning millions of dollars in fees that the network charges for its money-transfer services. The co-owner of an AI-Barakaat affiliate in Boston was arrested, but no other network officials have been charged. AI-Barakaat officials have denied links to bin Laden. Senior Treasury officials say evidence before Sept. 11 linking AI-Barakaat to terrorism was scattered in various agencies. Only afterward, in the multifront war launched to avenge the attacks, were the pieces of evidence assembled in a mosaic that enabled authorities to act against the money-transfer network. The attacks "reordered priorities," Treasury General Counsel David D. Aufhauser says. They also "changed the weight in the calculus of whether you designate an entity" for an assets freeze. It is clear that the U.S. government was suspicious of AI-Barakaat long before Sept. 11. In June 2000, IRS agents questioned Hassan H. Hussein, a Somali immigrant and owner of Barakaat Enterprise, a Columbus, Ohio, affiliate of the money-transfer network. Hussein's attorney, Kevin O'Brien, who confirmed the questioning, said the agents asked about hundreds of thousands of dollars Hussein's firm regularly transferred to a bank in Bahrain. Hussein said the money consisted of savings sent home to relatives by law-abiding Somali immigrants in Ohio. Constant strife and lack of a stable banking system in Somalia forces many immigrants in the USA to rely on businesses such as AI-Barakaat, which are able to move funds reliably throughout the Middle East and South Asia.

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