After last week's Executive Order from President Bush naming 27 individuals and organisations connected with Osama bin Laden, several Luxembourg banks alerted the local authorities to the possibility that some of their customers may have links with bin Laden, the chief suspect in the terrorist attacks on the US a fortnight ago. Carlos Zeyen, head of the Luxembourg anti money-laundering authority told Agence France Press that he had indeed received calls from local banks concerning a number of suspect accounts.
The banks were in fact responding to a list circulated by the authorities
which had been received from the FBI and which contained 180 names of
people suspected as having close ties with bin Laden and his world-wide
network of terrorists. Zeyen said that the authorities were now investigating
the suspect accounts. In addition, a list naming five banks that are suspected
of acting as laundering agents for Bin Laden was also circulated. However,
Zeyen has said that so far he has not come across any concrete evidence
that would require a more intense investigation.
Luxembourg is one of only nine countries ranked by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as fully compliant with its 40 recommendations on anti money-laundering, and presumably doesn't have to worry about the explicit and implicit threats to offshore jurisdictions contained in the Executive Order and other regulators' pronouncements over the last few days. The country was ranked ninth least corrupt in the world in Transparency International's recent list, just behind the Netherlands, but ahead of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US.
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