The Bahamas Closes Terrorist Suspect's $20m Account

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, New York

17 October 2001

In response to the lists of terrorist suspects issued by the US and the UN, the Bahamas has frozen a bank account belonging to a trust whose beneficiaries include one of the listed names, a US citizen born in Afghanistan. The individual, who has not been named, is one of four brothers who are beneficiaries of the account which was opened by their father.

The freezing of the account was revealed by the US Treasury, and confirmed by Hubert Ingraham, Prime Minister, who said it held $20m and had been set up in 1994. Accrued interest was withdrawn periodically but apart from this, the account was largely inactive, he added.

The Prime Minister says he does not plan to release any further information on the account, in keeping with banking confidentiality rules: "We do not discuss in the Bahamas the freezing of bank accounts by our Financial Intelligence Unit. We shared this information with the US, and they have chosen to make the information public."

Mr Ingraham said: "We have no evidence to support the contention that any of the proceeds from the account were used for terrorist activities. However, the US Treasury has said that monies from the account were used for terrorist acts. We are unable to substantiate that. All we can substantiate is that the name of the person appears on the account as a beneficiary."

''We will redouble our efforts against money laundering and specifically, we will not permit our vital sectors to be used to support terrorism,'' said Mr Ingraham.

The name of the bank also is being withheld but officials say it is one of the world's leading finance houses, with operations in all of the member states of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial powers as well as throughout the Caribbean.

The Bahamas government also announced this week that three of the 19 men suspected by the United States of hijacking planes and crashing them into the Pentagon and World Trade Centre flew to the Bahamas in the past year. Government officials will not release the names of the three terror suspects but say two were prevented from entering the country because they lacked visas. They had arrived from the US and were sent back there. The most recent arrived in May on a light aircraft that authorities believe was a training flight. The plane was flown to Freeport and returned to the United States within a few hours.

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