Nada Management (Al Taqwa): Italian police detain two Egypti

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Nada Management Organisation
by TrackingTheThreat.com
12/5/03

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The Federal Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday confirmed it had ordered the accounts of the Nada Management Organisation blocked on suspicion that the firm had possible links to the September 11 attacks. No details were given about the amounts frozen or the banks concerned. The move comes after the United States asked Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein and the Bahamas to block all assets belonging to the Nada Management Organisation, which was previously known as al-Taqwa. Two of the company’s bosses were detained by police for questioning in Lugano on Wednesday, as part of a coordinated operation by Switzerland, Italy and Liechtenstein.

Youssef Mustafa Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat were taken into custody after Italian police raided their homes on Wednesday in Campione D’Italia, a tiny Italian enclave in Switzerland, surrounded by canton Ticino. They were later released. Another Nada official, Ahmed Huber, was questioned about al-Taqwa’s activities by Swiss officials in Bern before being released. The Swiss federal prosecutor, Valentin Roschacher, said the investigation was likely to take several months. “We now have enough information to open an inquiry. We seized a lot of documentation on Wednesday, some of which is in Arabic, and it will take a long time to follow the paper trail.”

The US authorities say al-Taqwa is one of several informal cash exchanges – known as “hawalas” – which funnel millions of dollars to terrorists outside the traditional banking system.

Investigators suspect that hawalas also help terrorists acquire material and supplies by acting as front organisations. They believe bin Laden has made use of them to acquire and distribute funds.

Nada Management, founded in 1987 under the name al-Taqwa, is one of the world’s largest financial institutions dedicated to Muslim clients and Islamic business activities. One elemental service these groups provide is the hawala exchange system, by which small amounts of money — usually less than $1,000 — are transferred to other hawala agencies around the world. A sum of money or valuable can be brought to a hawala agency in Europe, for example, where a phone call to a network office in the Middle East or Asia will free up a corresponding amount at the desired destination.

The transaction is almost immediate, based entirely on trust and requires no certification that might leave a paper trail. Western antiterror experts suspect such unregulated transactions allow millions of dollars to be funneled to Islamist groups engaged in terror.

http://www.time.com/time/europe/biz/mag ... 81,00.html

Youssef Mustafa Nada, Leading member of Nada Management
Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, Leading member of Nada Management
Mariam Al-Sheikh A. Bin Aziz Al-Mubarak, Leading member of Nada Management
Ahmed Idriss Nasreddin, Leading member of Nada Management
Nada Management Organisation, Linked to Al-Taqua Bank
Ali Ghaleb Himmat, Linked to Nada Management
Ahmed Huber, Linked to Nada Management
Ahmad Idris Nasr al-Dill, Linked to Nada Management

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Terror suspect sues Swiss government
byswissinfo.ch
June 1, 2006

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Italian police and journalists in front of the villa of Nada Management in Lugano at the start of the investigation (Keystone)

The founder of a now-defunct Muslim firm suspected of al-Qaeda links is suing the Federal Prosecutor's Office for financial damages.

Youssef Nada said he was suing because of financial losses incurred resulting from a three-and-a-half year investigation that was dropped exactly one year ago.

"It was all wrong," Nada, the 75-year-old founder and former managing director of Nada Management, formerly known as al-Taqwa, said at his home in Italy near the Swiss border on Thursday. "Switzerland was mistaken and misled."

The Swiss began investigating the company shortly after the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. The US government says al-Taqwa helped fund Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

But Switzerland was forced to drop the case against top officials of the company on July 1, 2005 because they said authorities in the Bahamas had failed to provide essential bank records by a court deadline.

US officials accused al-Taqwa of sending al-Qaeda money through Malta and Switzerland to bank branches in the Bahamas.

Nada confirmed media reports in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino that he was seeking "tens of millions of Swiss francs", but would not specify the exact amount.

Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, spokesman for the prosecutor's office in the Swiss capital, Bern, declined to comment on whether a lawsuit had been brought.

No charges

Nada and a Syrian born associate, Ali Himmat, 67, founded al-Taqwa in 1988, according to Swiss officials. The company was based in Ticino until it was liquidated in December 2001, soon after the investigation began.

A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo has said al-Taqwa was set up to provide banking services in Europe according to Islamic principles, which forbids the paying of interest.

The company has been listed by the United States since late 2001 as an organisation accused of helping fund terrorism. Nada, Himmat and three Swiss citizens on al-Taqwa's board were listed individually.

After the publication of the list in 2001, police raided the firm's headquarters in Lugano and hauled away vanloads of documents. They also searched the homes of Nada and Himmat in Italy.

Swiss authorities blocked the accounts of the company and the personal accounts of board members, while neighbouring Liechtenstein froze the accounts of an affiliate firm, the fiduciary company Asat Trust.

But the prosecutor's office never filed charges or made arrests. Company officials have repeatedly denied links to terrorism and accused Swiss authorities of taking part in a US-led anti-Muslim campaign.

Although the prosecutor's office removed its block from the bank accounts of the company and its officers, they remain frozen because of UN sanctions targeting those on the US list.

Court criticism

In May 2005 the Federal Criminal Court ruled that prosecutors should have given further reasons for the allegations made against Lugano-based Nada Management and its director in 2001.

It added that Nada, who had been demanding an end to proceedings since 2002, should have been advised of specific charges.

The court also said there was no reason for the prosecutor's office to have taken so long to decide whether to hand the case over to a tribunal.

It also criticised prosecutors for claiming late in 2004 that they were about to launch judicial proceedings.

The prosecutor's office was ordered to pay SFr3,000 ($2,514) in damages to Nada.

swissinfo with agencies

Key facts

September 15, 2001: federal prosecutor launches investigation following the attacks in the United States.
October 24, 2001: investigation is extended to include the activities of Nada Management.
November 7, 2001: Swiss police raid the company's premises and seize documents.
May 2004: investigation still in its preliminary phase, with no judicial proceedings launched.
May 2005: Prosecutors are given until the end of the month to decide whether to pursue the case.
June 1, 2005: Prosecutors halt investigation due to lack of evidence.
June 1, 2006: Nada sues Federal Prosecutor's Office for financial damages.

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Swiss Probe: Anti-U.S. Neo-Nazi Suspected Financial Ties to Al Qaeda
by Jay Bushinsky
Chronicle Foreign Service
March 12, 2002

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(03-12) 04:00 PST Bern, Switzerland -- At the behest of President Bush, Swiss law authorities are investigating an alliance between Islamic militants and European neo-Nazis who have allegedly been providing financial support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Experts say Islamic militants and far-right movements -- a coalition they call the Third Position -- share common hatreds: the United States and Jews.

"Extremists manage to find ways to put aside their differences and find common cause," Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said recently.

The central figure in the probe is Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who says the "Zionist Israel lobby controls the U.S. government and mass media and shapes U.S. policy."

Nada Management, the Bern company Huber helps direct, has been singled out publicly by President Bush.

Huber, a gregarious and outspoken former journalist who spent three decades covering the Swiss Parliament for a socialist newspaper, is a strong supporter of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) and such extreme-right politicians as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Huber serves on the board of directors of Nada Management. Founded by a Swiss Nazi and formerly known as al Taqwa Bank, the consulting and management firm is part of the international al Taqwa group, which the United States believes has long acted as a financial adviser to al Qaeda.

"Al Taqwa is an association of offshore banks and financial management firms that have helped al Qaeda shift money around the world," Bush said on Nov. 7. The U.S. government has frozen Huber's assets and is pressuring the Swiss government to arrest him for his alleged role in the al Qaeda money network.

Swiss investigators say Huber's travels on the Muslim lecture circuit in Western Europe and North America brought him into contact with bin Laden's followers. Huber has admitted to meeting with associates of the Saudi exile, describing them as "discreet, well-educated, very intelligent people." But he denies that Nada Management underwrites al Qaeda activities.

During an interview in his study, lined with books and portraits and photographs of Adolf Hitler, Richard Wagner, Ayatollah Khomeini, Haj Amin al- Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Huber expressed his views to a Chronicle correspondent.

"The U.S. is the ally of 15 million Jews against 1.3 billion Muslims; it is allied with 5 million Israelis against 200 million Arabs," he said. "We will bring down the Israel lobby and change foreign policy. We'll do it in America. When it happens, you'll understand."

Huber minimizes his role on Nada Management's board of directors, saying he is a minor player who receives only $1,500 annually in compensation. He says the company's sponsors are mostly wealthy Muslims from Malaysia and the Persian Gulf states who specialize in projects "beneficial to Third World countries -- like new roads, clinics, agricultural development."

But Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, disagrees. His office has been investigating Nada Management's activities in Switzerland, Germany and the United States for the past six months.

"There have been indications that al Taqwa could have been financing al Qaeda," he said. "Since Sept. 11, we have been seeking criminal connections. We had been on their trail before but did not have enough evidence to open criminal proceedings. This has changed."

Wiedmer says the data he has gathered have been made available to U.S. authorities, but he specified that if charges are eventually filed, the "culprits" will be tried in a Swiss court.

Three other Nada Management board members have also been questioned by Swiss, Italian and U.S. authorities: Youssef Nada, an Egyptian expatriate who has Italian citizenship; Ali Himmat, a Syrian national; and Mohamed Mansour, a Zurich resident.

Nada lives in Campione d'Italia, a tiny Italian enclave and tax haven near the southern Swiss city of Lugano. Three months ago, Campione police raided Nada Management's local office and confiscated records and documents.

The Nada Management board is assisted by a committee of Muslim scholars headed by Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian linked to his country's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The committee's purpose is to make sure Nada conforms to Islamic doctrine such as a ban on interest rates.

Huber's longtime Swiss nemesis is Jean-Claude Buhrer, a correspondent for the prominent French daily Le Monde. Buhrer recently cited a column published in Morgenstern, a newspaper read by surviving former members of Germany's wartime Waffen SS, in which Huber said Muslims and Nazis were involved in the same fight.

"This is tantamount to a marriage between the swastika and the (Islamic) crescent," wrote Buhrer.

Buhrer also assailed Huber for denying the scope of the Nazi Holocaust and for being a faithful disciple of Francois Genoud, a Swiss lawyer who funded Hitler and served as a German agent during World War II.

After the war, Genoud underwrote the clandestine Odessa organization, which,

according to famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, enabled such notorious Nazi fugitives as Adolf Eichmann, Alois Brunner and Klaus Barbie to escape to South America and the Middle East.

Authorities believe Genoud founded al Taqwa Bank and allocated its resources to support international terrorists such as Vladimir Ilich Ramirez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and bin Laden.

Genoud committed suicide in 1996, shortly after Jewish leaders and Swiss banking officials announced an unprecedented agreement to set up a commission to examine secret bank and government files to search for funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims, according to Buhrer.

Over the years, Genoud paid French attorney Jacques Verges to defend Ramirez and Barbie and also covered the legal expenses of Eichmann before an Israeli court in 1961. He also subsidized Khomeini's prolonged exile in France when Iran was governed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Genoud's admiration for Khomeini is shared by Huber. "'He was a fantastic man," Huber said.