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doing business as Shakarchi Trading Company, has maintained close ties with the Republic National Bank." the airplane. The full story may never come out. Attommeys and doing business as Shakarchi Trading Company, has maintained investigators for the airline, as well as US Rep. James Traficant close ties with the Republic National Bank.” (D-Ohio), have suggested that Mansur Al-Kassar may have been involved. Allegedly, heroin smugglers in his employ at Frankfurt | Drug Money Funding ADL International Airport in Germany placed the bomb on board Flight DEA and US Customs investigators tracing the flow of heroin 103, and Al-Kassar's men were protected by CIA personnel in revenues from Lebanon through Turkey and Bulgaria on to the Frankfurt as part of the hostage release deal and other features of | Shakarchi firm in Zurich found that millions of dollars made their the new ‘Syrian-American rapprochement’. way into Account No. 606347712 at the main New York City According to syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, in April branch of Republic National Bank. Meanwhile, DEA agents in 1989 President Bush conferred with British Prime Minister Colombia and on the US West Coast busted up the largest Margaret Thatcher, and the two ordered British and American Medellin Cartel cocaine money-laundering scheme ever unearthed intelligence to cover up Al-Kassar's alleged involvement in the —_as part of the DEA’s Operation Polar Cap. Known as "La Mina" Lockerbie bombing. Whether Anderson's charges are true or not, (The Mine), the money-laundering circuit involved a string of the truth about the Lockerbie massacre has been completely cov- banks in Colombia and Uruguay and a Los Angeles jewellery ered up, as has the role of Syria in the flourishing multibillion-dol- wholesale company called Ropex. Millions of dollars in Ropex lar Middle East heroin and hashish trade. deposits were traced by the Polar Cap team to Account No. One reason for the cover-up is that the use of Middle Eastern 606347712 at Republic National Bank—the same Shakarchi dope-smuggling networks was as pervasive a feature of the Trading Co. account! _ Reagan-Bush era Iran-Contra misdeeds as was the hiring of Not surprisingly, in 1989, as the Shakarchi-Safra story was Colombian cocaine cartcl pilots and money launderers to supply grabbing headlines in Europe and the United States, banker Safra the Contras. In fact, the Colombian and Middle Eastern dope con- was donating a reported US$1 million to his favourite charity— nections have one recurring common denominator: a very promi- _ the Anti-Defamation League! nent Israeli component. Banker Safra’s ties to the Dope, Inc. money-laundering go back During the very month—April 1989—that President Bush and to at least the mid-1970s when Republic Nationa! Bank shepherd- Prime Minister Thatcher were alleged- ed Argentine wheeler-dealer David ly ordering a cover-up of the Pan Am Graiver into the inner sanctums of Wall 103 bombing, a DEA and US Customs ...the use of Middle Eastern Street. Graiver bought up American nell ggg’ seo'vours | dope-smuggling networks was ffx asl ue ew Yox at nee meney laundering Tait fo (lta UMM corveaienny coca" a plane coun Middle East and Tbero-American nar Reagan-Bush era fran-Contra Mexico ‘ti, as bank apie discov- misdeeds as was the hiring of Colombian cocaine cartel cotics trafficking organisations. ered that American Bank and Trust's pilots...to supply the Contras. ° Republic National Bank is owned by cupboard was bare during an audit of Edmond Safra, a prominent Jewish the bank. There was such scepticism banker of Lebanese descent whose over Graiver's disappearance that, for worldwide banking operations extend years, New York State prosccutors con- from Aleppo, Syria, to Rio de Janeiro, tinued to list Graiver as a defendant in Brazil, to midtown Manhattan. the bank fraud case. According to a 13-page memo written by DEA agents in Berne, Of course, Graiver was simply a front man for a Swiss-based Switzerland, and dated 3 January 1989, Safra and Republic | Mossad money-laundering network known as the Centrade Group, National Bank were implicated in a Swiss-centred drug money- _ one of whose leading figures, Tibor Rosenbaum, is profiled at laundering network run out of the Zurich-based Shakarchi Trading _ length in this book. The point is that for the past 20 years, a large Co. US investigators linked Shakarchi to a heroin-smuggling ring and growing component of Dope, Inc. has been the combined that enjoyed the cooperation of the Bulgarian secret police and the machinery of gangster Meyer Lansky and the Israeli Mossad. state-owned export-import agency, Globus (formerly called If there were any doubt about the pivotal role played by shady Kintex). An earlier DEA report had implicated Kintex's director elements within the Israeli intelligence services, in partnership in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Mehmet Ali with British and American counterparts, in the world dope-for- Agca in May 1981. Kintex was identified as the hub of the — gums bazaar, it was shattered in a hail of bullets in a desolate cor- ‘Bulgarian connection’ international drug smuggling network. We __ ner of Colombia on 15 December 1989. provide an inside look at this Soviet-Bulgarian dope ring in a On that date, Colombian Army units invaded the compound of chapter that follows. For now, it is sufficient to note the follow- Medellin Cartel capo José Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha near the ing: town of Pacho. In a separate shootout at Gacha's bunker hidcout, According to the January 1989 DEA memo, "The Shakarchi Rodriguez Gacha and several of his bodyguards were killed. On Trading Company of Zurich, Switzerland, operates as a currency 24 and 28 January, in follow-up raids on two other ranches owned exchange company and is utilised by some of the world’s largest by Rodriguez Gacha, the Army seized large stockpiles of drug-trafficking organisations to launder the proceeds of their | weapons—the majority of which were made in Israel. The Galil drug-trafficking activities... Shakarchi Trading Company main- rifle used to assassinate Colombian presidential candidate Luis tains accounts at the Republic National Bank of New York, a bank Carlos Galdn in August 1989 was part of the shipment. which has surfaced in several previous money-laundering investi- The discovery of the Israeli weapons caches prompted the gations..... While he was alive, Mahmoud Shakarchi maintained a © Colombian Government to make a formal inquiry to Tel Aviv: To close relationship with Edmond Safra and the banking institutions | whom had those particular weapons been sold? The answer came in which Safra had an interest, including Republic National Bank. Since the death of Mahmoud Shakarchi, Mohammed Shakarchi, pag NEXUS ¢ 35 FEBRUARY - MARCH 1995